A few weeks ago we were joined by Dr. Tessmer from CIIT to discuss the role of formative evaluation in instructional design. I enjoyed listening to Dave and Marty discuss the formative evaluation process. Our class conversations on the presentation were varied.
Many cohorts were interested in the pricing examples that Dr. Tessmer used. Some expressed shock at the costs of developing on- line trainings. Others wondered at how cost estimates (bids) were derived. On cost, Dr. Tessmer suggested padding 10%-20% of your worst estimate (depending on how developed the ideas are from a given client). I liked that he would “sneak in” the formative evaluations and front end analysis. Sometimes he would do this by not breaking these items out as separate line items. Other times, he would do this by marketing these items as a “new means for new technologies.” It was a guerrilla marketing strategy implemented on behalf of the formative evaluation process!
Another topic of interest was how to apply the formative evaluation process to our Ed-Web projects. A sample of the questions here; how many people to have reviewed a project, how many times to review a project, issues in paying a reviewer, how to affect a formal formative review in our own projects. I would like to acknowledge Jessica D. for her contributions to the discussion this week. She suggested setting up a peer review/formative evaluation. Jessica also noted the need to carefully word the questions asked of evaluators in the formative evaluations. It is important to word questions so that evaluators do not feel there was a deficiency in them, or their understanding. Rather, the evaluators are detecting problems in the materials. I wanted to follow up on Jenn M.’s story about being a “google” test subject. The “think aloud” strategy Jenn M. mentioned also came up in the forum discussion, which we were able to see at the end of the week. Think aloud strategies are a real help to me in learning. It was interesting to see that such strategies are used in formative evaluations.
My most valuable contribution was summarizing one of Mr. Tessemer’s strategies for getting feedback using surveys. He suggested that we use less questions and place comment boxes after each question. In the context of the conversation, this came up as an alternative way to structure surveys. One of our cohorts confessed that they tend to try to escape surveys in the quickest manner! Dr. Tessmer’s strategy was more of a “luring” approach.
There were a lot of good ideas generated by the presentation and discussion that will help us in furthering our understanding of Formative Evaluations.