Formative Evaluation
One-to-One Evaluations

The one-to-one evaluations took place at the high school where the lessons will eventually be delivered. Due to time constraints, I had to rely on the classroom instructor for the delivery of the one-to-one evaluations. I explained to the instructor what the goal of the formative evaluation is, and what types of questions to ask while the evaluation is in progress. I also explained what instructions should be given to students, as well as what the objectives were for each session. Copies of each lesson's instructions were made for the students that participated. Students were selected from the target population based on a random process during regular classroom hours.

Objectives:

• Determine if the instructions and content is clear and understandable to the target population
• Determine if the instruction impacts the learner's attitudes and achievement of the objectives and goals
• Determine the feasibility of the lessons at this stage of development.

Student Participants: The students that were chosen for the formative evaluation were chosen because they match the intended audience exactly. The intended audience for these lessons is sophomore and junior level high school students taking a required Health course.  The students will have some prior knowledge of how to use computers and the Internet.  The age range is between 15 and 18 years old. 

Clarity of Instruction: I asked the teacher and students for feedback on the clarity of the lessons. The teacher relayed to me all questions that the students had as they went through the instructions. Students were also encouraged to circle words or phrases that they did not understand. The teacher also helped to explain to students anything that they were confused about.

Impact on the Learner: I discussed with the teacher how she feels the lesson will help her to deliver the lesson content. Also, I received some feedback on the lessons from the students if there were any difficulties throughout.

Findings For All Lessons

Clarity of Instruction Findings: As the students began going over the instructions, the teacher noticed that they were not very motivated to read the instructions. The first concept that students had difficulty understanding was the blogging. I decided to ask a question about blogging in the small group phase of the formative evaluation to see what I could find about students' familiarity with blogging. The students circled some words in the lesson that they had trouble with. The teacher attributes this to lack of reading levels. She pointed out this happens with random words at random times, sometimes depending on the students' willingness to think. The most consistently circled word was "analyze." Other than that, the students did not have very much feedback. The teacher pointed out that feedback from teenagers is difficult to receive sometimes. Due to that, we decided to expand the small group stage of the evaluation to encompass an entire class of 28. This way, more feedback could be obtained.

Impact on the Learner Findings: Overall, feedback from the learners on impact was scarce. The students felt that the lessons were "okay," and that was the extent of the feedback. Due to this, I decided to develop a survey for the small group portion of the evaluation in an attempt to receive more feedback.

Feasibility: Due to the lack of feedback for the one-to-one evaluation, the feasibility of the lessons is difficult to determine. The teacher feels that the lessons are feasible, but that she needs to find a better group of students to get feedback from for the small group evaluations.