15/5s - Week of April 4 through April 11, 2016

Formative evaluation is the process of identifying deficiencies and improvement opportunities in the instructional materials, and addressing the identified issues and improvement opportunities to make the instructional materials more effective for the learners in accomplishing instructional goals.  

A formative evaluation plan is devised to identify specific shortcomings and area of improvements for this instructional unit with the help of subject matter expert and target learners. Five data collection instruments (SME notes form, Observation notes form, Interview protocol, Attitude survey, and Learner performance measure) were developed to collect a variety of data set. In general, data will be collected regarding the structure, content, attitude, and learners’ performance to identify the weakness, inefficiencies, and improvement opportunities for the instructional unit. Finally, necessary corrective measures will be taken to revise the instructional unit by utilizing instructional theories and best practices.

Though initially I thought formative evaluation is just a concept document; now I can see a clear value of formative evaluation plan which is helping us to organize our thought to coordinate and conduct three different kinds of formative evaluations: SME evaluation, one on one evaluation, and small group evaluation.

Learning project management process and learning how to work successfully in team set up are two of the essential skill sets for any profession. To master these skill set one needs both pedagogical backbone and practical experiences. I am seeing progress from both of these ends slowly but steadily! Finally, learning is a continuous journey, not the destination! 

Google hangout are becoming extremely valuable in sharing ideas and building consensus; besides that document sharing feature is helping us a lot to complement our discussion in a more efficient and effective way. Asking questions and learning from the peers and Dr. Weaver is a unique and enlightening experience. I am learning a lot of different perspectives by watching the screen casts from my peers. These resources are continuously helping me to think hard and understand new dimensions of any task at hand. Finally, watching Dr. Weaver’s screen cast provides a clear guideline on how to deal with so many moving parts without getting overwhelmed. I would like to apply the techniques I am learning from Dr. Weaver and my teammates to utilize in my future teaching profession.

My task list for week three:

Task	Percent Complete	Time Spent in hrs
Weekly Group Meeting	100%	2
Contribute to the group discussion in G+	100%	1
Develop Formative evaluation plan	60%	5
Discussion and feedback on formative evaluation plan	100%	2
Update project tasks/sub-tasks in Asana	100%	.5
Keep up with Dr. Weaver's post	100%	2
Discussion and development of  Formative Evaluation Instruments	30%	3
Screen-cast Preparation for upcoming screen cast	30%	1
Posted 15/5s for my blog	100%	.5
Developing content in Articulate Storyline2	10%	4