Section 3: Evaluating, Implementing and Managing Instructional Programs and Projects

Constructivist Evaluation (or Fourth Generation Evaluation)
This is a form of evaluation that suggests that all people need to be involved in instructional evaluation. Since, our experiences are assumed independent of any foundational truth, and our understanding of stimulus depends on prior knowledge and sophistication to use that knowledge, we must use a hermeneutic-dialecticism, a process of discovery and negotiation, to evaluate education. In other words, everyone sees the world as they see it. So, it is important for evaluators of education to include all the people who are touched by the education process. Then the group works out a system to determine the essential criteria and the standard to meet the criteria. This is followed by a report from the evaluator that inducts this meeting of stakeholders into further rounds of discussion. The benefit is that no one is left out, evulation is on-going, and the group is ultimately responisible to itself. The down side is that it adds hour of hard work to everyone’s schedule, and it leaves room for students and other to shut down since this is a confrontational debate. I might use this in parent/student/teacher conferences and I might use it departmentally, but sparingly.
Key Evaluation
This form of evaluation is centered on facilitating the client to develop the ideal for the instruction, thus allowing the evaluator to determine true merit, worth, and significance. Merit is define as the internal value that someone places on something, worth is defined oppositly as the value that is given by the community and significance is the intensity of merit and worth. So, a restaurant’s to-go service may have low merit for the employee’s and high worth to the customer, but the manager/owner ascribes the significance.
In Key evaluation the evaluator elicits (m/w/s) and the essential processes needed to function and then the evaluator devises the test and method of evaluation, carries out the methodology, and reports the results. This system shares many points ontologically and epstimologicly with fourth generation evaluations, but it differs in that the client is considered as the only necessary source of input and no consensus is necessary, though the process is ongoing. I would use this sort of evaluation measure first year of performance.
A recent technological innovation at the Riggs house was the inclusion of Netflix movies on the Wii. My wife and I decided to add the service to our household. It provided the relative advantages of on-demand movies and television, and it allowed us to lower spending in the household, since we downgraded cable. Unexpectedly, we have found that this practice also limits the amount of time our children watch television and cuts out commercials, definitely adds to the adoption. The compatibility was a plus, too! We already enjoyed movies and used Netflix, but the system was complex! We had to sync our wireless router and the Wii, we then took several days to receive the software, etc. Finally the screen is difficult to navigate and the movie selection is limited. Overall however the system is adaptable to all member of the household and everyone finds reasons to watch, so I would say Netflix on the Wii is defiantly institutionalized here.