Evaluation

This area of the wiki contains information about the Evaluation of the Isthmus Project. Currently this has been roughly divided into the 4 areas indicated below, however this may be subject to change if deemed appropriate as the project progresses.

1. Defining initial Research questions

At the very start of the project the team use the Research Questions area to discuss and define our initial research questions, which have subsequently informed later stages of the project.

This stage also involved a literature review and technology review to establish current trends in the area to inform the formative surveys and interviews.

2. Initial Formative Evaluation

This evaluation was undertaken at the start of the project to establish our real requirements from students and then to refine them in light of our possible plans.

This phase consisted of two rounds of online surveys and one set of interviews.

The initial surveys of our three student groups took place over June and July 2007,elicited feedback from nearly 300 students, and proved very informative. They confirmed our knowledge that our catchment is atypical in HE with the vast majority of respondents over 25 and significant numbers over 55. We also have a very high percentage of overseas students and non-native English speakers. As expected we have a very wide range of responses in terms of the sophistication of technology use of our students. This also matches the 3 groups (members of the telecoms forum, CPD students on technology courses and students on online courses in traditional academic areas) in the ways we had anticipated.

We then followed this with a survey in October of our main student group from the PP courses, with an additional 80 responses.

In December eleven interviews, six face-to-face, and five by telephone (as a result of our global student cohort) were completed. The results were transcribed over the Christmas period and an initial analysis has been completed. A more through coding of the interview data is currently underway and will inform future phases of the pilots.

Further information about this process will be available here soon.

3. Pilot Evaluation

Our plans for evaluating the pilots are available in the document attached to the bottom of this page.

4. Summative Evaluation

This phase of the evaluation will look at the project as a whole and consider the lessons learned.