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The EUROSPIN project aims at the development of a model of co-operation between the media and the schools throughout Europe. The project aims also at developing a model of active civic education that allows students to participate in research efforts. Within the program, students conduct a thorough into the attitudes, political beliefs and ideological dispositions of European youth, under the supervision of experts. In contrast to most comparative studies, which are conducted by experts, EUROSPIN develops a model of active cooperation between students, teachers, experts and the press, giving thus emphasis on the pedagogical value of the activities. The results of this research will be disseminated through printed (in the form of a book, and articles in the newspapers) and electronic media (interactive Web pages on the Internet). The implementation of the aforementioned models is through advanced Web enabled technology so as to familiarize students with the practical aspects of tele-working and European collaboration. The program makes use of the Internet, both as a communication tool, and as an interactive Web - based environment, which facilitates the access to the raw data of the research. The project is expected a) to produce a study with especially interesting results on the current status of European Youth matters, b) to develop a model of getting students "involved" in current affairs, and c) to familiarize students with the methodology of research and investigation through a "real world -hands on" approach. The main questions that have been addressed in order to formulate the evaluation framework are: "Which elements of the project need to be evaluated?", "Which criteria should be used to assess the aspects to be evaluated?". As regards the first question, an evaluation design will need to set the boundaries - which elements of the project will be covered, who should be involved in the evaluation process and how users would particularly be involved. Regarding the second question, evaluation criteria and research questions should be developed in order to evaluate the project outcomes. Typical criteria used to assess the use of ICT in education are related to pedagogy, cost-effectiveness, technical efficiency, user acceptance, and socio-cultural relevance. In addition, while developing the evaluation approach, the following questions have been considered:
Moreover, the evaluation framework that is described in this deliverable is based on principles that have emerged in relevant research (Honey et al., 1999):
The emphasis of the EUROSPIN project lies on the "social experiment". The aspects of this experiment are the cooperation between students and journalists, students' activities in the research field, the use of web technology in school setting, and the international cooperation. More specifically, the evaluation will focus on:
Following the project objectives, the EUROSPIN evaluation focus on the social aspect. It is a process-oriented evaluation and against the initial objectives. It refers to the students as the main target group as well as to the teachers as the implementing group. The EUROSPIN project is aiming at providing guidelines for the implementation of similar activities. Therefore, the evaluation takes into consideration the participant/s and view on the project activities in order to develop suggestions for a better practise. It should be underlined that the evaluation is a continuous process. According to the aforementioned objectives the evaluation will be formative and summative. The purpose of Formative Evaluation is to assess ongoing project activities, with the purpose to provide information to improve the project. Formative Evaluation will be both an Implementation and Progress Evaluation. The purpose of the Implementation Evaluation will be to assess whether the project activities have been conducted as planned, whereas Progress evaluation will assess progress in meeting the project' s goal. Progress evaluation involves collecting information to learn whether or not the benchmarks of progress were attained and to point out unexpected outcomes. The purpose of Summative evaluation is to assess the project's success, in order to check the degree that the project objectives have been attained, as well as to inform about the pros and cons of the implementation of project activities. The summative evaluation aims at answering the following questions:
More specifically, within the aims of the evaluation will be:
A preliminary audit should be undertaken in order to enable an overall project evaluation design to be produced. Thus, the parameters of the evaluation in relation to the stakeholders and their interests in the project should be identified, as well as the timeline of the evaluation, with particular reference to the lifecycle of the project as a whole. The following section includes the group of stakeholders who have been identified as potential holders of a "stake" or interest in the project outcomes. Our interest is to identify the evaluation questions, in order to design a system allowing us to provide an answer to their queries. In all projects, multiple audiences are likely to be involved. Being clear about the audience is very important as different audiences have different information needs. In the EUROSPIN project, two main categories of users could be identified: pupils and teachers. Students (of secondary education): the aim is to give them the opportunity to get familiarized with the methodology of both journalistic investigation and scientific research, in order to enable them to identify the similarities and differences of nations at European level. Pupils, moreover, will be given the chance to apply skills they learn in theory to the real world situations. Emphasis will be also given to the communication and collaboration of pupils at distance. Teachers: they will have the opportunity to pilot test the possibility to use timely content (data collected by the pupils) into various areas of their classroom instructional program. They will have also the possibility to implement interdisciplinary approaches in the everyday school practice. The main stakeholders within the EUROSPIN are the project partners, the educational establishments, and the European Commission. The main concerns of the Project partners are to increase credibility of project outcomes, and to investigate if the project outcomes are of value to learners and teachers. The Educational Establishments to be involved are interested to see if they could improve the teaching and learning processes, the school environment as well as the school conditions, the learning outcomes, the teachers' status and motivation, the learners' motivation to learn, as well as to develop new teachers skills, new ideas and working methods, and promote a collaborative and constructivist way of working. It will be also of interest to educational establishments to investigate if they could increase involvement and support of different members of the broader community in the project process, to create links with other educational establishments and partnerships. And help school gain reputation in the local and/or national community, increasing thus visibility and credibility of the school. European Commission is interested in justifying investment in the European public, policy-makers and funding bodies, as well as in checking adaptability/transferability of tools and services developed in different environments. Thus, it is important for them to know if the project outcomes meet the existing needs of the educational communities, and if they could apply to other environments, and cultures, and to ensure that all or most stakeholders benefit from the project outcomes. The main interest of the Research community is to develop synergies with the educational community, to better understand the conditions and process of innovations within traditional school settings. Media are interested in developing collaborations with small age groups at international level, as well as in collaborating with the educational community. Each potential question has been considered for inclusion in the evaluation framework on the basis of the following criteria:
Qualitative methods provide a better understanding of the context in which the intervention is embedded, whereas when a major goal of the evaluation is the generalization of the findings, quantitative data are usually needed. When the answer to an evaluation question calls for understanding the perceptions and reactions of the target population, a qualitative method is most appropriate. The quantitative techniques to be adopted within EUROSPIN are surveys based on questionnaires, whereas the qualitative is teacher's logbooks. Surveys are especially useful for obtaining information about opinions and attitudes of participants or other relevant informants, but they are also useful for the collection of descriptive data, for example personal and background characteristics (race, gender, socio-economic status) of participants. Survey findings usually lend themselves to quantitative analysis: the results can be expressed in easily understood percentages or means. The cheapest surveys are self-administered: a questionnaire distributed (in person or by mail) to eligible respondents. Relatively short and simple questionnaires lend themselves best to this treatment. Teacher/s logbook These are diary sheets, which could help to follow more closely the tasks that users have been involved in. In the Logbooks (Annex 1) teachers are going to write down their experiences and observations in a logbook. This has to be done at the end of each classroom activity. They mainly refer to:
Teachers should provide information on how the lessons/activities are related to the curriculum, what help they have provided to the pupils, how they have organised their lesson, explain sufficiently their activities, how they have collaborated with the pupils, and enabled the collaboration of pupils, etc. Evaluation Questionnaires The evaluation involves the development of two evaluation tools - questionnaires, which are actually a checklist of criteria designed to facilitate the assessment from the point of view of pupils. It should be pointed out that the questionnaires would be distributed to the pupils who were responsible to collect the data (interviewers). The first students' questionnaire (Annex 2) should be filled in at the end of the first set of activities, meaning after the data collection and input. It will focus on the research-aspect. It refers to:
The second students' questionnaire is handed out after the second part of the project, after the data analyses and first publishing activities. It refers to:
The needs
of participants will be taken also into consideration. Being part of an
evaluation can be very threatening to participants. Thus, they will be
told clearly and honestly why the data are being collected and how the
results will be used. This way the objective of the survey will be achieved
whereas the danger of misinterpretation will be avoided. Usability Usability of the environment will be specifically measured in terms of access and retrieval speed, navigation, and user friendliness. More specifically, the be examined in order to identify:
All these elements are said to enhance the environment's usability and increase its pedagogical value-added and user- friendliness.
There is a dynamic shift occurring in the field of education, as we move from traditional definitions of learning and course design to models of engaged learning that involve more student interaction, more connections among schools, more collaboration among teachers and students, more involvement of teachers as facilitators, and more emphasis on technology as a tool for learning. An advance-learning environment should promote critical thinking and doing (problem solving, research, analysis), creativity (new knowledge creation etc.), collaboration, cross-cultural understanding, communication, computing, and career & learning self-reliance. The only real measure of the effectiveness of technologies and technology enhanced educational programs is the extent to which they promote:
Students need to learn the skills of problem-solving and innovation, as well as to transfer knowledge acquired in one area to others. Knowing how to manage information, how to find and evaluate it, organize it, and use it - is more important now than ever before. As rote learning is replaced by project -based learning, whole - class lecture - style pedagogy gives way to a variety of collaborative strategies, including student-with-student, student-with-teacher, teacher-with-teacher, and student-teacher-outside expert. Students (and their instructors) discover that it is they themselves who are in control of their own learning. Each of these transformations has a profound impact on student performance, as a review of the literature indicates:
According to the framework developed by Barbara Means of SRI International, there are seven variables that, when present in the classroom, indicate that effective teaching and learning are occurring. These classroom variables are:
More specifically, the indicators against which the pedagogical-educational value of the project activities will be evaluated could be the following:
The evaluation will focus on the school activities in order to see the degree of integration of new technologies in everyday practice. Thus, the contribution of teachers is quite necessary. The teachers will be asked to keep logs of the activities in the classroom, trying at the same time to run a short of evaluation, since the logbooks will not be a simple description of the activities but they will include at the same time teachers' comments and observations. Flechtling, J., Sharp, L. & Westat, Inc. (1997) User-Friendly Handbook for Mixed Method Evaluations, National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and human resources, Division of Research and Communication. Heinecke, W., Blasi, L., Milman, N. & Washington, L. (1999), New directions in the evaluation of the effectiveness of educational technology, http://www.ed.gov/Technology/TechConf/1999/whitepapers/paper8.html Honey, M., Mcmillan K. & Carrigg, F. (1999), Perspectives on technology and education research: lessons from the past and present, http://www.ed.gov/Technology/TechConf/1999/whitepapers/paper1.html Jones, B. F., Valdez, G., Nowakowski, J. & Rasmussen, C. Plugging In: choosing and using educational Technology, http://www.ncrtec.org/capacity/plug/plug.htm Riel, M. & Fulton, K. (1998) Technology in the Classroom: Tools for Doing Things Differently or Doing Different Things, Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, April 1998, http://www.gse.uci.edu/mriel.html/riel-fulton.html SchoolNet Network of Innovative Schools (2000) Innovation through technology and learning, http://www.schoolnet.ca/nis-rei/pdfs/nita-e.pdf Stevens,
F., Lawrenz, F. & Sharp, L., (1992) User-Friendly Handbook for Project-Evaluation,
National Science Foundation Directorate for Education and human resources,
Division of Research and Communication. |