What are the Types of Evaluation in Educational Technology?

Types of Evaluation: These are as follows: Evaluation can be classified from different perspectives like:

(a) Product Evaluation:

‘Product Evaluation’ indicates the strengths and weaknesses of Educational Technology. Whether Educational Technology has been successful in producing expected outcomes or not; to what extent it has been successful in this direction; what are the limitations of products of Educational Technology can be’ identified through product evaluation. For example, if you use OHP in your teaching, you can assess the impact of the use of OHP on the final learning outcomes of students’ achievement at the end of your teaching through product evaluation.

(b) Process Evaluation:

Process Evaluation indicates whether programme “implementation follows appropriate paths or deviates from them. Monitoring the day-to-day operations of a programme and record keeping may generate a lot of data to identify strengths and weaknesses in the procedures adopted therein.

It helps us in making on the spot decisions about the programmes, bringing suitable modifications in the strategy etc. For example, you want to assess the impact of lecture method on the students’ learning outcomes, you assess the processes of lecture. At each stage of the processes, you may evaluate the lecture method and ensure that it follows the right path.

(c) Summative Evaluation:

Summative Evaluation means evaluation of product of Educational Technology at the end of its implementation. There may be several criteria to judge the worth of Educational Technology towards the completion of the project. It reveals whether Educational Technology has been ‘successful’ or ‘unsuccessful’; ‘worth’ or ‘worthless’ at the completion stage.

(d) Formative Evaluation:

Formative Evaluation means evaluation of performance of Educational Technology from time to time. The evaluation may be continuous in nature. Evaluation of performance at the end of a unit may help us to bring improvement in the process to be adopted for consecutive units. For example, you use inquiry method to teach concepts in science classes. You can evaluate the impact of inquiry method from time to time.

(e) Objective-based Evaluation:

Objective-based evaluation worth of Educational Technology against the criteria of pre-specific objectives. The expected outcome of Educational Technology is pre-determined. The evaluation indicates the success or failure of Educational Technology in the context of achievement of objectives.

Of course, another development has taken place in this context. That is whether the objectives are worth or worthless should be determined first. Evaluation of objectives helps the developers to determine what the goals of the Educational Technology programme should be.

Once suitable objectives are finalized, the evaluator’s major task is to determine the extent to which the programme achieves the objectives in practice. Suppose, your objective is to develop certain laboratory skills in your learners. For this, you showed to your students a video programme on the development of skills. After this, you can evaluate whether the video programme has been able to develop laboratory skills in your learners.

(f) Goal Free Evaluation:

It proposes that the evaluation should not be conducted against the pre-determined goals. The evaluators should not know the programme goals in advance. Instead the evaluator should discover the actual effects of the programme in operation. It is done to avoid the evaluator’s bias in only concentrating on pre-specific outcomes and overlooking other effects of programme, especially adverse side effects. The evaluator becomes alert about both beneficial and adverse effects of a programme through ‘Goal Free Evaluation’.