OVERVIEW

Whereas measurement is the development, administration, and scoring of assessment procedures, evaluation is a summing-up process in which value judgments play a large part (Hopkins 1998). Up to this point, the design and administration of learning measures have been discussed. These are measurement activities. Now it is time for evaluation. It is time to conduct analysis of the data collected from the learning measures and determine how effective the program is in meeting its learning objectives.

There are two users of learning data evaluation, the program designers who want to know the extent to which each of the learning objectives was met and the client organization that wants to know how effective the program is in meeting the program objectives overall. They want to know if "they got it," and if not, "why not?" To answer the designers' questions, an item-by-item analysis is done by grouping scores for each test item. Because the evaluator linked the test items to each learning objective, it is easy to determine the extent to which each objective was met. This chapter will focus on answering the questions the client typically asks because this requires using evaluation techniques that the evaluator needs to understand.

Whether looking at the results of a test administered once (as for a pilot program) or of a test that has been administered many times, the evaluator or analyst organizes the data in a way that makes sense and is easy to analyze. The evaluator then interprets the...