Evaluation Plan for a leadership seminar

This was a collaborative effort between myself and 3 other teammates. We took on the role of consultants tasked to design a process to evaluate the efficacy of an existing joint leadership seminar between a national fraternity and sorority. One of our teammates was a key contributor to the leadership seminar and she served as both our SME as well as a contributor to evaluation plan.

COMPETENCIES DEMONSTRATED:

Written as a formal proposal to present to a client, this artifact demonstrates my ability to create a process for evaluating an existing learning program to make data driven decisions about it’s effectiveness and to recommend enhancements based on findings.

Understanding the role of both formative and summative evaluation methods including when to use one versus the other
The ability to identify and justify summative and formative methods to use for gathering data including: anectodal records, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups and expert reviews
The ability to create instrumentation to collect data from all stakeholders including participants and facilitators

The Evaluation Plan Process
	My team and I used principles from Reeves and Hedberg in their book Interactive Learning Systems Evaluation for reference as we worked systematically through 13 components outlined in an evaluation template which became the framework for our project. We tackled each step as a collaborative team and rotated responsibility for summarizing and writing up our assigned sections. Prior to submission, our group once again collaboratively edited and approved the final documents. Our goals for the evaluation were to: Use formative evaluation to examine existing learning materials and determine whether or not changes are needed to maximize the participant's experience. This plan addresses the following questions: -Structure and flow: Is the content set up in a logical and meaningful way? -Layout: Are the instructor and participant guides easy to follow and use? -Content: According to reviewers, would the instructional plan meet the seminar objectives? Use summative evaluation to validate or ensure the goals of instruction are being achieved in regards to the seminar's intended vs. actual outcomes. This plan address the following questions: -Does the content of the course meet or exceed the expectations of the participants? -Is the course material being presented in such a way that it is understandable and relevant to those in the audience? -Does the material accomplish the seminar's objectives? In our evaluation process we set up a process to: Collect data to improve marketing to organization membership Gather data to analyze cost effectiveness Evaluate choice of seminar location Collect data on the need for continued education Investigate the need for online leadership training Set procedures for future evaluations
Final Report
	Our final report described in detail the assessment process. Included are the instruments we built to collect data from a formative and a summative standpoint. The report is written in part as a proposal to our client therefore, we included setting expectations for potential limitations, estimated timeline for completion as well as our consulting fees. My team and I received full credit for our project.
Reflections
	I thoroughly enjoyed this process and felt that my team came up with a very professional and thorough product. One of the things I would have liked to do given more time, would be to carry out the plan. The timeline we created for example was pure speculation and it would have been nice to see how long things actually do take and which evaluation tools worked better for us and why.

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references

Reeves, T. and Hedberg, J. (2003). Interactive Learning Systems Evaluation. Educational Technology Publications