Course Description
The course focused primarily on program-level evaluations within education/ training programs and projects. The course is designed around a small group collaborative project to systematically design an evaluation plan and conduct the evaluation as the final product. With a focus on planning, client relations, problem analysis, data collection and analysis, reporting, evaluation management and ethics, basic concepts and procedures for conducting evaluations are covered. Our group went through the phases of planning, implementing, managing and evaluating the program evaluation with our client and presented the findings within our class and with the client.
Project
Syracuse University Project Advance is an enhanced concurrent enrollment program linking Syracuse University (SU) with secondary schools. One of its stated mission is to provide college readiness tools, programs and services. This major project undertook was of a program evaluation that aimed to evaluate this very mission of Syracuse University Project Advance (SUPA).
The evaluation report presented to the instructor and the client, along with the accompanying presentation are linked below:
Syracuse University Project Advance- Evaluation of Student’s College Readiness Report
Final Grade: A
Reflection
Coming from working in the Monitoring and Evaluation field, the content of this course was of utmost interest for me. I really enjoyed doing the major project work which I got to lead, and had the invaluable help of my fellow student colleagues. The fact that I had the opportunity to work with my current employer in Syracuse University Project Advance and with my colleagues there, made it so much more meaningful and provided a more holistic learning. Performing a program evaluation within the time span of a single semester, and creating a decent product, was a worthwhile achievement for me personally. I would have liked more content to have been covered in terms of evaluation field area knowledge, and to have had a some sort of suitable final short project that would have helped us to reinforce the overall objectives of the course. All in all, this course helped me understand the evaluation field in a different light and was very useful.