#13 evaluation presentation

Assalamualaikum..

On this class, we have to present the task that have been given to us two weeks ago. We need to present our topic of evaluation website. For me, i got a focus group topic.

Focus groups are moderated meetings of 'involved' people discussing their experience of an educational intervention.

They are a useful tool for formative/developmental or summative/retrospective evaluation and can serve as a single, self-contained method or link to other evaluation activities.

Uses

-Generating hypotheses 
-Developing interview schedules 
-Identifying key issues 
-Developing emergent themes 
-Illuminating quantitative responses 
-'Learner centred' course development 
-Getting reflective feedback on interim interpretations of study outcomes 

Main advantage: obtaining a large amount of interactive information on a topic comparatively easily, within a short time.

Main disadvantage: the setting is not 'natural' but deliberate

Process:

1. Define issues for focus 
Start with broad themes which can be made explicit to the groups, keep a checklist of individual points of concern to prompt for, if they don't emerge naturally.

2. Identify participants from relevant population
Try to make these representative of various types of 'user', i.e. different motivations, different entry levels, different learning environments ... 

3. Design the sessions 

Set group size - between 6 and 12 is recommended.

•Decide whether mixed groups or contrastive groups will best serve your need, comparing similar groups to check agreement or distinct groups to establish perspectives on issues.

•Decide on structuring strategy - one or two broad topics, or a guided programme for discussion within allocated timeslots? Let conversation flow, if purpose is exploration.

•Define required analysis level - qualitative, 'ethnographic' or systematic content coding, or a combination of these, depending on goals and resourcing. (The data will be 'rich' so it is best not to set too many focus items for one sitting.)

•Decide on recording options - notes? audio recorded? video-recorded?

4. Stage the sessions! 
The most important thing is to be both confident, and relaxed - then they will be too. 

5. Transcribe records 
Verbatim, expressing as written text, or noting against pre-defined criteria whilst listening to/watching tape.

6. (Code and) analyse transcripts 
Start with two, and examine closely to establish most useful breakdown of detail in terms of evaluation targets. Broad possibilities are by topic theme, or by participant type. When procedure agreed, test it against remaining transcripts - does it cover the data?

7. Interpret findings 
Integrate with other outcomes from other methods used.