Sun Associates specializes in designing plans and procedures to evaluate and assess the impact of educational technology on teaching and learning. Our evaluation work is designed to take schools and districts beyond their current strategic technology plans and into an area where they can begin to assess their progress in meeting the vision and goals of these plans. In the area of program evaluation for funded projects (i.e., "grants"), we work with projects to focus their goals, define evaluation questions, collect data, and to create formative/summative evaluation reports.

Our work centers around an authentic assessment process which combines practice profiling, the development of indicators of success, and the creation of data collection procedures which are to be used to perform a formative progress evaluation of a school or district's educational technology initiative. Our clients often choose to combine our work in designing an evaluation procedure with what amounts to an audit of current technology implementation. In this way, our formative evaluation process can produce a summative product.

An important element of our work is capacity development in our client districts. One desired outcome for all of our work is to help clients improve and develop their ability to scale up the projects that Sun Associates has been brought in to create. We do not overwhelm our clients with "experts"rather, we collaborate to apply assistance where needed and always strive to leave our clients in a position where they can be even stronger collaborators in the future.

Resources for Educational Technology Evaluation

Focus group and interview questions can be found here. We also have sample surveys and classroom observation protocols.

Edtecheval.org

Many of the types of resources found below are being migrated to our new, specific to technology evaluation, site -- www.edtecheval.org. This is a great place to visit to find more evaluation tools, sample reports, links to actual evaluation projects, and other resources for technology project evaluators.

Evaluation Workbook

In light of NCLB-inspired state and district interest in assessing technology's impact, we have recently revised our district workbook for creating technology evaluations.  While this workbook is not designed to "stand alone" as a full technology evaluation, it does provide district administrators with a good overall picture of how to design an effective technology evaluation.  It's a good starting point for setting evaluation priorities and for charting out a process for making evaluation an integral part of the district's technology implementation effort.

Three Steps for Technology Evaluation

Most of the evaluation projects we facilitate consist of three distinct steps. This document outlines the steps and outcomes.

Resources and Samples from Sun Associates Evaluation Projects

To give you a better idea of the overall evaluation process as well as some of its tools and products, we have collected a page of samples from various projects. Check here for sample reports, rubrics, presentations, surveys, and other tools.

Technology & Learning -- See our article "Is Wireless Worth It?" in the May, 2003 issue

Learning & Leading with Technology -- See our article on evaluating technology in the April, 2000 issue. (Note, you'll need an ISTE member number...or contact us for a reprint)

Descriptions of Example Projects

For more information on Sun Assocaites and our various projects, see the About Us section of our site. For more information about any of our past or current projects, please contact us directly. A full list of our clients is also available on-line.

 

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