Formative Evaluation Program Overview
The aim of formative evaluation is to refine and improve educational technology programs predominantly while they are under development.
The Biomedical Multimedia Unit has established a program of formative evaluation which has been in use since 1998 and has been accessed by numerous educational technology development teams.
The goals of the program are:
- to refine and improve educational technology programs being developed in the Faculty
- to establish a program of evaluation which leads to a "culture of evaluation" in the Faculty
- to coach educational technology developers in the process of evaluation so that they become more independent and are able to manage their own evaluations.
The critical features of the program are:
- an emphasis on the iterative nature of formative evaluation which is tied to the educational technology development cycle
- the need to consider different evaluation domains and specific evaluation criteria within these domains
- the need to consider different evaluation perspectives including both internal and external review
- the need to employ a variety of data collection techniques
- the provision of modifiable template questionnaires and checklists for staff to use.
This program of evaluation dovetails with the BMU’s design and development cycle.
To complete an interactive overview of the Formative Evaluation Program view the Shockwave movie [580 KB, screen resolution at least 1024 x 768].