Many educators are not trained as evaluators and need assistance to determine how to design program evaluation. Often, educators do not design evaluation plans for their programs. Without the evaluation planning, they are left with a post-program evaluation model. Lack of planning often leaves educators with data that is not useful to making future programming decisions or describing program success. With useless data and no plans for disseminating this information, it often remains either on a shelf or in a file cabinet.
Evaluation is more than collecting answers or completing the required reporting forms.
Evaluation is a process that helps educators know if they were effective and allows them to redesign programs based on what was learned through the evaluation process. Five Extension specialists from the states of Washington, Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, and North Carolina were involved. The original goal in the retreat was to design a method for evaluating parenting programs nationwide. The group agreed that the Web site should teach Extension educators about the process of developing and evaluating programs. The paper in HTML format was placed on the NNFR Web site.