This week, we celebrate the theme of cluster, multi-site, and multi-level evaluation with its topical interest group.
This blog was originally posted on February 19, 2014.
Hi, I’m Audrey Rorrer and I’m an evaluator for the Center for Education Innovation in the College of Computing and Informatics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where several projects I evaluate operate at multiple locations across the country. Multisite evaluations are loaded with challenges, such as data collection integrity, evaluation training for local project leaders, and the cost of resources. My go-to resource has become Google because it’s cost-effective both in terms of efficiency and budget (it’s free). I’ve used it as a data collection tool and resource dissemination tool.
Lessons Learned:
Data Collection and Storage:
- Google Forms works like a survey reporting tool with a spreadsheet of data behind it, for ease in collecting and analyzing project information.
- Google Forms can be sent as an email so that the recipients can respond to items directly within the email.
- Google documents, spreadsheets, and forms can be shared with any collaborators, whether or not they have a gmail account.
- Google Drive is a convenient storage source in ‘the cloud.’
Resource Dissemination:
- Google Sites provides easy to use website templates that enable fast website building for people without web development skills.
- Google Groups is a way to create membership wikis, for project management and online collaboration.
Rad Resource:
Go to www.google.com and search for products. Then scroll down the page to check out the business & office options, and the social options.
For a demonstration of how I’ve used google tools in multisite evaluation, join the AEA Coffee Break Webinar on February 27, “Doing it virtually: Online tools for managing multisite evaluation.” You can register here.
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