Evaluation or Research?

I have to say that before taking this class the differences between evaluation and research never occured to me since I have a little experience with both. I would not think that people might have problems interchanging the two. Well, as I read the book and Dr. Perkins’ notes about the differences between evaluation and research, I started seeing why some people might get confused. In the beginning, I was confused as well, but after rereading the information, it became clear that research is not evaluation and vice versa.

This week I also reviewed a lot of terms and definitions. The way we learned the definitions was by writing our own definition of a term and reflect on it. This is the first time I have used this approach and I still do not know if it worked. I usually studied definitions by drilling, so this is much more engaging activity and I really appreciated the positive change. On the other hand, it was really hard for me to reflect on many of the terms since they were totally new to me. Moreover, in my culture, relfection is something that was never introduced in school, so I am having a little hard time to put my thoughts together and make connections while I learn. I hope that this task will become easier as I practice because sometimes it makes me really frustrated. Wasn’t I talking about this in my previous blog post somewhere…?

I really enjoyed reading about the project proposals of my classmates. I appreciate the diversity of the class and how each person takes different approach. What I missed last semester was that we were sharing ideas about project through the semester, but at the end, I was not able to see the final products. I was so looking forward to read those projects! I would be able to learn from my classmates and compare my project with theirs. I would also like to get feedback from my classmates since they have different views and it is great in the discussion forums. So hopefully we will be able to post the final evaluation projects and I will have a chance to see what my classmates created. I like that some of them are evaluating products, or applications, and others have other creative ideas, such as Joshua who will be evaluating how teachers are using lunch breaks to learn from each other. Isn’t it really smart idea? Well, I really learn from my classmates every day.

What I enjoyed was learning about the different types of sampling. It is interesting by how many methods we can choose a sample from a population for the project. I probably will use the judgment sample for my project since I will be glad to find people who are available to be a part of it. For the survey, I will most likely use google forms. It is easy to create and access.

Well, I am done reading the book. It was reallly fast, I think that I will go back many times to remind myself every aspect of evaluation as I evaluate the application I chose. I really enjoyed the reading, the book was very useful and full of great easy-to-read information. It is definitely a keeper.