Teaching Evaluation

Although evaluations are conducted in a wide variety of organizational and community contexts, most formal training in the field occurs in institutions of higher education, where classroom-based courses remain the traditional vehicle for instruction. Thus, a major challenge in teaching evaluation is to develop strategies that can facilitate—more effectively than conventional lecture methods—acquisition of the applied skills in evaluation that are needed if evaluators are to function effectively in environments that can be complex and intimidating. At the micro level, instructors have generated a rich array of in-class experiential activities (e.g., role-plays, small-group exercises) to explore specific tasks and issues that practitioners can face at each stage of the evaluation process. At the macro level, several approaches exist for giving learners the opportunity to experience ...