Provost's Grant Supports TIE Innovation

New Tools for Teaching Evaluation

Ilona Holland, Lecturer on Education and TIE faculty member, received the second of two $10,000 Provost's Content Grants in June 2005. The goal of both grants is to enhance student learning in Formative Evaluation (T-523).

Holland's Formative Evaluation class provides students with hands-on experiences in applying evaluation principles to real-world situations. Throughout the class, students are learning by doing --they are conducting formative evaluations on educational products such as televisions shows, I-MAX movie rough cuts, and websites --and a key feature of the learning experience is the invaluable feedback they receive.

The Provost Grants provided Holland with the resources to develop content for web-based labs; the labs offer T-523 participants additional opportunities to practice and to develop an understanding of the nuances of evaluation. "Placing the content within a scaffold of on-line learning labs permits students to enrich their knowledge base and therefore participate more fully in the class," explains Holland.

The course is fast paced, problem-centered and project-based, and combines traditional lectures, interviews with various design teams, and application laboratories ("labs"). With the technology tools and resources from the Provost Grants, Holland has been able to build formal and informal feedback loops into the labs. These feedback loops allow the instructor to observe learning through student input and interactions and catch misconceptions earlier.

Fall 2005 enrollees in T-523, Formative Evaluation, are the first students to experience the innovations and enhancements made possible by the 2005 Provost Grant. Enhancements to T-523 extend beyond the class and the TIE Program. "Content created can be repurposed for other on-line projects, especially for collaborations with other faculty," noted Holland. "Doctoral students in particular may find the information in the labs helpful in creating instruments for their research."