The Practical Program Evaluation initiative offers free webinars and an annual summer institute for language educators.
These professional development experiences are provided by the initiative co-leaders, Margaret Malone, Director of Assessment and Research at ACTFL, and Celia Chomón Zamora, former Director for Professional Learning and Certification at ACTFL.
Program evaluation can provide insight into how to maintain, improve, and protect language programs. When undertaking program evaluation, it’s essential to consider the purpose of the program, the motivation for evaluation, and how these will be reconciled in sharing results and planning for change. Moreover, program evaluations can be developed and conducted by external or internal reviewers or a combination of both. At the same time, many administrators and instructors do not understand the nature of program evaluation and how to effectively implement it. This webinar provides a quick overview of how to use program evaluation to explore what works within a program, improve aspects that need support, and demonstrate the value of language programs.
Evaluation is critical to understanding the outcomes of language programs. In conducting evaluation, it is important to take a comprehensive approach that considers the needs of learners and teachers, the requirements and capacities of administrators, parents and other stakeholders, the values of the discipline and the contributions of the program to society, locally, nationally and internationally. However, many instructors mistake evaluations as opportunities to eliminate programs or evaluate the performances of individual instructors. Join us as we provide an overview of why program evaluations are crucial to the longevity and success of language programs, and combat myths of what they are NOT.
