Evaluating Adult and Continuing Education Information Series No. 375  by Alan B. Knox  Order No. IN 375, Price $7.00  Ordering Information  Full text available online

Planning and conducting effective educational programs for adults entail contributions by various stakeholders including participants, instructors, coordinators, policy makers, and funders. They each make informal evaluative judgments. Sometimes reliance on such informal evaluation is insufficient because judgments may be based on inadequate information and are not shared with people who might use them to plan, improve, or justify the programs.

This monograph reviews and synthesizes highlights from relevant writings on evaluation and suggests interpretations and applications for practitioners who plan and conduct various types of educational programs for adults.

In this monograph, concepts, procedures, and examples from evaluation reports have been selected to represent eight aspects: needs, context, goals, staffing, participation, programs, materials, and outcomes. Many evaluations focus on just one or two of these aspects. Conducting a program evaluation entails many decisions that can be grouped into eight broad action guidelines. The guidelines pertain to purpose, stakeholders, planning, coordination, sources, data collection, analysis, and utilization. Many examples contain enough detail to portray the actual evaluation project and not just illustrate a guideline.

Readers can use this overview to clarify basic evaluation concepts and procedures, locate publications likely to provide detailed assistance, and use suggested guidelines to conduct evaluations on selected program aspects of interest. Selecting a program on which to focus should entail selecting an issue of importance, being responsive to stakeholder interest, and considering available expertise and resources for evaluation.

Information on program evaluation in adult and continuing education may be found in the ERIC database by using the following descriptors: *Adult Education, *Continuing Education, Data Collection, Evaluation Criteria, *Evaluation Methods, Needs Assessment, *Program Evaluation, Staff Development. Asterisks indicate particularly relevant descriptors.