Thank
you for your willingness to present at this summer’s institute. We look forward to another informative and
enjoyable experience for the participants and for all of us who work on the
institute. We hope it will be a
valuable and enjoyable experience for you also.
This
rather lengthy note and attachments provide specific information about the
institute, participants, presenters, and staff. Please read it carefully and keep it as a reference as you are
finishing your preparations for the institute.
You can use the attached response form to return the information
requested. We have highlighted below
the specific things we are asking you to prepare for the institute. If you have any questions about the
information in this document or about your role in the institute, please let us
know (see address, etc. at the end of the document).
We have sent this note to you via regular mail and as an attachment to an email message. You may find it easier to use the form in the email message for your response.
We
will also post the information in this document to the project web site for
your reference as well as for the participants. We hope this will give them clearer expectations about the
institute and that it will prove useful to them as they plan their own
institute presentations.
Enclosed
with this note is a separate document summarizing the information obtained from
the participants. We have received confirmation
of acceptance from all 15. It is still
possible that emergencies may require substitutions, but we want you to have
the information so you can become familiar with the group. That familiarity should help you tailor your
instruction.
The
following is quoted from the “Call for Applications.” It provides a good overview of the institute’s focus.
“The
MTS project (NSF funded) and the institute are intended to enhance
participants’ evaluation capacity in mathematics, science, engineering, and
technology education. The focus of the institute is The Practical
Development and Application of Evaluation Designs, Instruments, Models,
Materials, and Processes.
“The
institute will focus on providing appropriate background to enable participants
to design and develop evaluation plans, instruments, procedures, and reports
and on developing and evaluating instructional support materials useful for
training opportunities.
“The
three-week institute is tailored to serve the identified group of participants,
who will receive instruction in evaluation fundamentals:
A
challenge in the past was to provide a sense of focus and coherence for the
participants while allowing presenters ample opportunity to use professional
judgment in planning presentations and activities. We have tried to enhance the focus and coherence of the institute
by providing as much preliminary information as we can to both presenters and
participants. It is with that intent
that we provide this orientation to presenters and ask below for supporting
materials for the presentations.
Enclosed
with this note is a draft schedule for the institute. Please note the days and times for which we have you scheduled
(circled in red on the enclosed copy).
If you have conflicts or suggestions about the schedule or the topic(s)
for which you are listed, please direct them to Dale Farland. A few things are still in flux, so it is
possible that we may have to contact you individually to adjust the
schedule.
To
simplify day-to-day activities, we have kept the daily schedule relatively
consistent. An organizational session
will begin at 8:00 each day, with instruction going from 8:30 until 11:45. Depending on the day, one presenter may have
the whole morning or different persons may be scheduled for the two sessions in
the morning.
Afternoons
will be spent in a wider variety of activities, including presenter sessions, a
series of sessions about the materials development aspect of the institute,
“fireside chat” sessions, and participant presentations. Afternoons will also allow participant work
time (which will likely overflow into the evenings).
We will have a 15-minute break in the morning and in the afternoon. We have also scheduled time each day, right after lunch, for an evaluation of the morning’s activities. This evaluation will be conducted by another center on campus. Last year they were able to provide a daily summary of the data; we will provide the summary to you as soon as it is available.
One
suggestion from past participants has been to have more activities interspersed
into the presentations. Participants
have appreciated the chance to apply the content of the presentations and to
discuss the material. We encourage
you to build in hands-on opportunities as appropriate.
We
will provide the participants a set of materials for their use during the
institute and as resources to take home.
Included will be The Program Evaluation Standards, a draft of the
Student Evaluation Standards, the two NSF-sponsored User-Friendly
Handbooks on project and mixed methods evaluation, Stake’s book on the Art
of Case Study Research, Light & Pillemer’s, Summing Up, and other documents to be
determined. If you have additional
materials to provide to the participants, you can bring them or we can have
them copied (assuming there is no problem with copyright infringement). Please let us know as soon as possible if
you would like help with copying materials.
Recognizing
the importance of having clear goals for learning, we ask you to (1) prepare
a description of expected learning outcomes for each presentation (destination). As a related part of the road map, please
(2) prepare explanations and activities that will provide guidance to the
participants as they are learning the material (directions). Finally, we ask that you (3) prepare
activities or assessments that will provide feedback to participants
indicating that they are on the right road (signposts). These materials fit with our emphasis of
developing support materials (see the item below). Please have the descriptions and other materials available to
give to participants or send them to us for copying.
An increased focus of the NSF grant that funds the MTS project is the development, testing, and dissemination of materials that can be used to support evaluation training. An important outcome of your institute presentation will be materials that can be shared with the evaluation community via the project web site. In particular, we are interested in materials such as those described above that give clear learning outcomes (destinations), guide learning of evaluation content and are keyed to other available resource materials (directions), and provide feedback to the learners that they are headed in the right direction (signposts). For example, your presentation may be based in part on participants reading an evaluation resource such as a book or article. The support materials may take the form of learning objectives, a presentation outline (e.g., PowerPoint slide show), and activities and assessment devices to provide feedback.
We
will provide some examples on our web site of what we have in mind and will
send an email with the address. We also
offer our help and feedback if requested.
Our plan is to work with you to revise your materials after receiving
feedback from the participants and then, with your permission, to post the
materials for free public access on the project web site.
To
aid your planning, we provide this description of our facility. The instructional room is about 15 feet wide
by about 35 feet long. Seating is
around a conference table that fills most of the room. The presenter usually is at one end of the
room. At that end of the room there is
a 5-6 foot projection screen. The other
end of the table/room is far enough from the rather small screen that text on
transparencies or slides must be reasonably large to be legible. The whiteboard is on the sidewall of the
room and not conveniently placed. A
flipchart or computer with data projector may be more appropriate for
summarizing discussions or impromptu topics.
It is not possible to rearrange the table for small work groups. The participants will be organized into 5
teams of 3 each. Each team will have an
office (with a desktop computer) near the conference room.
The
room has phone and Internet access (for the presentation station). You will have access to an overhead
projector, Windows notebook computer and data projector, flipchart, and
whiteboard (see caveat above) for your presentation. As you determine your presentation media needs, it would be
helpful to let us know so we can schedule the proper equipment.
For
most afternoons of the institute, we have scheduled a half hour fireside
chat. The purpose of these sessions is
to provide an opportunity for the presenter to delve into a topic that is of
current interest. It also provides a
chance for the participants to interact more informally with the
presenter. We expect the sessions
will start with a short introduction by the presenter on a topic of choice
(which may be unrelated to other presentations). The remainder of the session may then follow that topic or may
range to other topics initiated by questions from participants or the
presenter.
During
the institute, participants will work on developing a topic to present to the
institute. We will work with them and
help coordinate their presentation to fit with other presentations and with the
materials development emphasis. We have
also asked participants to come to the institute with an evaluation problem in
mind to provide an anchor for what they learn about evaluation. The intention is that they will have
opportunities to ask questions and receive advice regarding their evaluation
problem.
We
will also ask participants to provide input for the evaluation resources on our
web site. Our intention is that this
will be an activity that continues beyond the institute.
Finally,
over the next several years the participants will have an opportunity to
participate in an evaluation internship as part of the project. The internship will give them an additional,
structured opportunity to apply what is learned at the institute.
We
will follow this mailing with an email message more specific to your individual
presentation. Watch for it and reply
with questions if you have them.
If
you have questions about the schedule, curriculum, what we are requesting for
materials, or other items in this note, please address them to either of us.
Arlen
Gullickson Dale
Farland
arlen.gullickson@wmich.edu dale.farland@wmich.edu
The
Evaluation Center
401
B Ellsworth Hall
Kalamazoo,
Michigan 49008-5237
616-387-5895
FAX 616-387-5923
www.wmich.edu/evalctr
If
you have questions about contracts, travel or housing arrangements, or other
similar issues, you should address them to Patti.
Patti
Negrevski
patti.negrevski@wmich.edu
We
look forward to working with you.
Institute Schedule