In 2018, the United States Congress passed the "Strengthening of Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act." This legislation included the requirement to conduct a comprehensive local needs assessment, which must include input from community stakeholders. This project designed and evaluated a three-step process that…

New Extension educators experience a steep learning curve when attempting to develop effective Extension programs. Formative evaluation is helpful to new, and experienced, Extension educators in determining the changes necessary for making programs more effective. Formative evaluation is an essential part of program evaluation. However, its use…

In the spring of 2015, the Centre for Academic Communication (CAC) at the University of Victoria began a series of projects aimed at understanding the needs of undergraduate and graduate students with English as additional language (EAL), with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of the Centre's programming. The first project, detailed in this…

Cities around the country are building systems that seek to make the most of public and private resources to provide widespread, high-quality, out-of-school time opportunities. Local officials are leading these efforts because participation in OST programs not only benefits young people but also the cities in which they live, with the potential to…

Virginia's SHARP logger program is a Cooperative Extension program currently providing training to over 1,500 loggers, foresters, and others. We conducted a mail survey of SHARP loggers to characterize program participants, assess programming needs, and evaluate program effectiveness. Results indicate a diverse group of participants in terms of…

A considerable amount of time, effort, and other resources go into the development and implementation of education projects. Quite obviously, the goal is to create effective projects that can serve as models of excellence. Whether the project is an hour-long endangered species talk, a family festival, a severe weather awareness workshop, marine…

School improvement might be initiated by state or district mandate, or it might be motivated by the concerns of school personnel. Teachers and administrators frequently enter the process with some idea of what needs to be reformed or improved, but issues can be overemphasized or overlooked if the process does not begin with a comprehensive needs…

The Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is one of several structured, small group approaches that can be used in the evaluation process. It has most often been used in needs assessment, to generate categories of potential need and/or alternative solutions to perceived specific problems. The process is based on a set of rules and uses silent idea…

A discrepancy model defines what successful continuing medical education is and what it should be. Then data are collected and analyzed to describe the nature and scope of the discrepancy. This approach to educational needs assessment uses an outcomes focus to plan more effective continuing-education programs. (SK)

Designed for use in a workshop entitled, "Organizing Information," this handbook provides a kit of materials for monitoring a Title I evaluation and for providing evaluation technical assistance. The handbook is divided into four sections. There are checklists which can be used to gather needed information to monitor programs. Facts and…

This handbook is designed for anyone seeking a methodical approach to needs assessment, but it is intended primarily for human resource development (HRD) professionals and for those who must validate HRD programs. It lays the foundations for needs assessment, discusses the "whats" and "whys," and then reviews the "how tos." These chapters review…

A model is presented for conducting follow-up studies of preservice and inservice teacher training. (JD)

Arguing that "needs assessment" is too vaguely defined, this paper considers the term's location within the planning field, compares two variants of the discrepancy model (classical versus social welfare approaches), and reflects on the assumptions and implications imbedded in needs assessment technocracy. Includes 16 notes and 26 references. (MLH)

This report provides a selection of examples of National Diffusion Network participant forms utilized between Developer/Demonstrators, State Facilitators, and Local Educational Agencies. They were selected to demonstrate variety and to be a source of ideas for others. Forms are grouped in five categories: needs assessment, adoption agreement,…

Describes four major types of evaluation: needs assessment, formative, implementation, and summative evaluation. Suggests the general categories of information that must be collected, analyzed, and interpreted, as illustrated by the example of the evaluation of staff development at a two-year college. (AYC)