Ecur 809 Final Assignment

For my final assignment, I completed an evaluation plan for the Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Student Bursary Program.

Please visit the link below for a PDF.

Ecur 809 Final Assignment Evaluation Plan: Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Student Bursary Program.

Ecur 809 Assignment 5

For this assignment, I chose to do a survey on Full-Time Post-Graduate Degree Experience.

Since the program I will be evaluating deals with students pursuing full-time post-graduate studies, I felt it would be helpful to survey some people who had experience in that area.

I sent my survey out to four people with master's degrees in a variety of fields, and then using their answers as well as their feedback on the survey, I adapted the survey to achieve better results on the information I wanted to collect.

The original survey can be found here: Full-Time Post-Graduate Degree Experience Survey (Pre-pilot Test)

The adapted survey can be found here: Full-Time Post-Graduate Degree Experience Survey (Post-pilot Test)

Changes included wording to increase consistency (i.e. post-graduate instead of graduate in some places and post-graduate in others); the addition of the wording in the scholarship section to include bursaries; the inclusion of check boxes, rather than making the user write out yes or no and to make the follow-up questions clearer; changing the scale section into statements with a word scale instead of a number scale; and re-wording the second open-ended question to better reflect the answer I was looking for.

Ecur 809 Assignment 4

Below is a PDF of the logic model for the Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Bursary Program, which is described in the assignment 3 post.

Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Bursary Program Logic Model.

Ecur 809 Assignment 3

For Assignments 3 and 4 and the final assignment, I will be evaluating the Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Bursary Program. This program was created in order to provide financial assistance to Métis students pursuing full-time graduate studies in either Masters or Ph.D programs that are focused on fields relating to Métis people. The overall goals of the program are to have research conducted in fields relating to Métis people, and to increase Métis employment in Saskatchewan and within the Gabriel Dumont Institute. The program provides $50,000 in funding per year, split between two adjudications, with a maximum of $10,000 per student per year.

Below is a pdf of my evaluation assessment, based on the University of Wisconsin template.

Evaluation Assessment of the Gabriel Dumont College Graduate Bursary Program.

ECUR 809 Assignment 2

To evaluate the program in the case study, a summative evaluation should be chosen. This program was a 2-year pilot program, and so it is important to evaluate if it was successful and met its goals, in order to decide to continue its funding, alter the program, or have it discontinued.

There are many reasons why a summative evaluation would be the best choice. When applying Bertrand’s chart to the program, many of the fields relating to the summative evaluation fit. The goal of the program is specifically to use exercise as the primary preventative strategy for high risk populations of type two diabetes, and therefore measures both a change in behaviour and health status. Since this program lasted for two years, there should be a large amount of data available for the initial, intermediate, and long-term effects it had on the participants. Gathering the data should not be difficult because of the welcoming environment the program created. It would be important to find out from the participants what effect the program had on their health, and the health of their children, who would be approximately 15-16 years of age if this evaluation was carried out today.

Lastly, an impact assessment can be carried out by analyzing all the data collected from the program participants deciding if the goals of the program were reached. After careful analysis, of whether or not the goal of preventing type two diabetes was successful, a decision can be made on the continuation, reinstatement, or cutting of this program at the YMCA.

ECUR 809 - Assignment 1

The evaluation I chose for this assignment was “An Evaluation of the Academic Portion of the Métis Housing Administration Program” submitted by the Gabriel Dumont Institute, to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC). This evaluation was completed in 1994 after the program was created in 1992 by the CMHC, Saskatchewan Department of Community Services - Housing Division, and the Provincial Métis Housing Corporation.

The evaluators took a product-based approach to their evaluation. They analyzed the program by describing what the program entailed, then by surveying the clients (students), they came to their conclusion on how to improve the product (the program). The first section of the evaluation gave the background on why the program existed, and who was involved. There were three program objectives identified in section two, which included addressing a shortage of qualified Métis delivering, administrating, and managing housing programs; ensuring that the training that took place addressed the shortcomings of the existing CADRE program; and to assist Métis in entering the job market. Section three described the program design as well as the shortcomings of the CADRE program that this program was meant to overcome. Section four described the recruitment process of the ten students selected, while the fifth section outlined the demographics of the students, including personal information, education, and languages. Section six gave anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of the preparatory phase of the program by providing student comments. The seventh section analyzes data on the academic phase gathered through student surveys on each class and its instructor. Following the survey section of each class, more information was provided on what the student liked best about the class through anecdotes, and then the evaluator provided a judgement on areas of improvement.

The evaluation contained both strengths and weaknesses which in most cases were intertwined. The background information on the program objectives and design were well written and allowed me to get an excellent snapshot on the purpose and process of the program. The weakness of this area was that the program objectives were not revisited in the conclusion. The evaluator made judgements only on the students’ perceptions of the individual classes and not on the program objectives. The evaluators should have asked the following question at the end of their survey: After taking this program, do you feel qualified in delivering, administrating, and managing a housing program? This would have given more information on if the program was successful in its objective. The evaluators should have also analyzed if the shortcomings of the CADRE program were overcome since they knew exactly what they were. It seemed like such a large portion of the background information to ignore in the judgement. In addition, a description of what the CADRE program is or what CADRE stands for would have helped the report. The third objective of the program could have been answered by following up on the students’ employment following the program. The information gathered through the survey was great, and the comments made by the students really helped evaluate the specific class needs, but the evaluation could have been improved by having the instructors give their evaluations on how the program worked. The evaluators recommended showing the surveys and comments to the instructors to help them improve, but self-reflection could be a part of the process as well.

Overall, the program evaluation did succeed in finding ways the program could improve, therefore improving the product they were evaluating. However, a more thorough examination relating to the specific objectives of the program would have been worthwhile.

Source: http://www.metismuseum.ca/resource.php/06734