Week 4: 1/27 - 2/2 - Formative Evaluation

Week 4: 1/27 - 2/2 - Formative Evaluation

I want to start out with my original thought around formative evaluation because I really felt that the answer needed to be pounded out of the guest speakers:
It really caught me in the beginning how much the formative evaluation question was avoided. I find this to be
true in my career as well. The client does not want to pay for formative evaluation. They also expect a product
that is spot on and that is hard to produce when you don't know where you are going.

I cannot say that any one student assisted with my thoughts on the subject or even will walk away with what I had mentioned. I feel that I may be jaded when it comes to the formative evaluation process because I have seen the client design interaction. The company that I work for is very training focused they want training and they want it now and they want to show that we are worth what they pay us. The issues that arise out of this becomes the fact that in order for us to do our jobs properly then we need to successfully analyze and modify our course work as it is created. This will allow us to move on to my most important comment of the discussion around ROI:
I think you are right with the ROI focus on summative evaluation. I see that you mention level 1 and 2 a
couple of times. I think that most companies have an issue because they are never able to reach level 3 and
up to actually get the ROI.
I would like to add that I think that since most companies and clients do not understand the value of the
needs analysis and formative evaluation. The problem lies in the last statement when you are trying to do
ROI you need to produce widgets. instructionally if we do not define the widget and how the widget saves or
makes money we can level 1 and level 2 all day long but we will never get to ROI.

If the client assist us in the beginning and allows us to define the learning widgets we can then formatively evaluate and modify our product. So when it comes down to releasing our content to the consumer we can successfully run through or levels of evaluation and show the client ROI.