Course Evaluation

1. Evaluation of a Course

2. Evaluation
The systematic collection and analysis of all relevant information necessary to promote the
improvement of a curriculum and assess its effectiveness within the context of the particular
institutions involved.
Purposes:
- Promotion of improvement
- Assessment of effectiveness

3. Product-oriented Approach
The focus of the evaluation is on the goals and instructional objectives with the purpose of
determining whether they have been achieved.
If the objectives have not been achieved, there has been a failure to attain the goals of the program.
If the objectives have been achieved, the program has been successful in meeting the goals.
Steps:
1. identifying precisely what is to be achieved
2. Defining the descriptive variables
3. Stating objectives in behavioral terms
4. Assessing the behavior described in the objectives
5. Analyzing the results and determining the effectiveness of the program

4. Static-characteristic Approach
It is also to determine the effectiveness of a program.
Conducted by outside experts who inspect a program by examining various accounting and
academic records, as well as such static characteristics as the number of librarian books, the
number and types of degrees held by the faculty, the student-to-teacher ratio, the number and
seating capacity of classrooms, the parking facilities, and so forth.
Static-characteristic evaluations are used even today for institutional accreditation.

5. Process-oriented Approach
Scriven (1967) stressed the importance not only of evaluating the degree of attainment of
program goals but also questioning the very worth of those goals in the first place (goal-free
evaluation). Perhaps unexpected outcomes, which, once recognized, could be studied further.
Evaluator engage in descriptive as well as judgmental activities.
Judgmental operations:
◦ antecedents (prior knowledge)
◦ Transactions (interactions between participants)
◦ Outcomes

6. Decision-facilitation Approach
Decision-facilitation approach holds the most important function of evaluation that is to help in
making decisions.
In this approach, evaluators attempt to avoid making judgments.
Instead, they favor gathering information that will help the administrators and faculty in the
program make their own judgments and decisions.
Discrepancy model:
1. defining program standards;
2. determining whether a discrepancy exists between some aspect of program performance and
the standards governing that aspect.
3. using discrepancy information either to change performance or to change program standards.

7. Dimensions of Evaluation
Formative – Summative
Process – product
Quantitative – qualitative

8. Formative vs Summative
Formative evaluation takes place during the ongoing curriculum development processes.
The aim of this type of evaluation is to collect and analyze information that will help in
improving the curriculum.
Summative evaluation is usually characterized as occurring at the end of a program.
The purpose is to determine the degree to which the program was successful, efficient, and
effective.

9. Process vs Product
Process evaluation is any evaluation that focuses on the workings of a program (processes).
Product evaluation as that sort of evaluation in which the focus is on whether the groals
(products) of the program are being achieved.

10. Quantitative vs Qualitative
Quantitative data are countable bits of information which are usually gathered using measures
that produce results in the form of numbers.
Qualitative data consist of more holistic information based on observations that may not readily
lend themselves to conversion into quantities or numbers.

11. Reference
Brown, J. D. 1995. Elements of Language Curriculum. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers.