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ERIC Number: ED178428
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1979-Aug
Pages: 25
Abstractor: N/A
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Entering Unexplored Space: Evaluating Interdisciplinary Programs in the Social Sciences.
Menzel, Robert K.
The paper explores various aspects of evaluation of interdisciplinary programs in social sciences at the college level. Program evaluation is concerned with changes in student knowledge, skills, and attitudes as a result of participation in a given program. It is also concerned with resources, priorities, quality, and results of specific activities, and with educational objectives of the institution sponsoring the program. Teachers suggest that there is a lack of research on program evaluation because most social scientists are unfamiliar with interdisciplinary research and teaching, are unaccustomed to being evaluated for non-cognitive measures such as teaching effectiveness, and are unable to devise models or theories of interdisciplinarity in research or teaching. Educators will improve their ability to make quality curricular and program assessments in interdisciplinary areas if they devise a rationale for program evaluation, devise a model which emphasizes the evaluation process, make decisions in advance regarding the potential impact of the evaluation on students and faculty, identify data sources, assess affective and behavioral domains in addition to cognitive, employ a variety of measures for gathering evaluative data, compare programs to be evaluated with similar processes and products which have been evaluated by other methods, analyze data by quantitative as well as qualitative methods, and disseminate results so that other social scientists will have some program evaluation guidelines. (DB)
Publication Type: Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Note: Paper prepared for Annual Conference of the Western Social Science Association (Denver, CO, April 21-23, 1977); Table 1 may not reproduce clearly from EDRS in paper copy due to small print type