Evaluation Working Group- A year's experience - GLOBE International STEM Network

Hello GLOBE friends!

The Evaluation Working Group was formed last summer and our first meeting took place during  the GLE in New Delhi, India. The purpose of this group is to get in touch with the people who actually do GLOBE all over the world and find out how the Program works in schools, identify tools, resources and practices, build on the existing experience and provide suggestions that can help its implementation and outcomes.

For this purpose, and after having  several teleconferences, we developed a set of questions that were included in the Annual Partner Survey. From this survey we got information on evaluation tools being used, successful teacher practices using GLOBE material, barriers and challenges implementing the Program and support suggestions that the Partners provided for their GLOBE area schools.

Our next step was to design and develop a questionnaire for the GLOBE teachers, the people who are working with students in their classrooms for all the activities that are implemented using GLOBE materials. What we are interested in learning from this survey is the teachers' success, as well as their challenges with implementing GLOBE; the outcomes they measure (or would like to measure) to assess the value of GLOBE in their classrooms; and their current level of support (or more support needed) to implement GLOBE.

The Group is very excited about this questionnaire - which we should mention has been translated (by the group members and Eslam Khair) in French, Spanish and Arabic!  We hope that the feedback we get will allow us to identify ways in which GLOBE' s aspirations and outcomes are being accomplished and ways in which the Program can become more effective and be more successfully implemented. The survey has been uploaded on Survey Monkey and we are happy to know that teachers are already acting very positively participating in this effort.

The Group was meeting very other month  since last August-via teleconference- and lately has been meeting every month, working on preparing the questionnaire and identifying guidelines for its processing. Our next meeting will be on June 17th and then we hope to see each other at the upcoming Annual Meeting in Los Angeles.

Our Group members are:

• Africa: Rogeleine Brettenny (South Africa) roge@globe-africa.org
• Asia and Pacific: WT Tuder Senarathna, (Sri Lanka) sena_edu2@hotmail.com or senat631@gmail.com
• Europe:  Nektaria Adaktilou (Greece) nadak@phys.uoa.gr or  nektaria.adaktilou@gmail.com (Group Chair)
• Latin America and Caribbean: Andrea Ventoso (Uruguay)  andrea.ventoso@mvotma.gub.uy
• Near East and North Africa: Maryam Al Refaei (United Arabic Emirates) maryam.alrefaei@moe.gov.ae
• North America:  Svetlana Darche (USA) sdarche@wested.org; (Group Vice Chair)
• North America: Tina Cartwright (USA) tina.cartwright@marshall.edu (Group Secretary)
• North America: Kevin O'Connor (Canada) koconnor@mtroyal.ca

It has really been both productive and fun to work in the Group, using everyone's skills and ideas and constantly brainstorming to produce the best result possible.  We all look forward to being in touch with  all of you in the GLOBE community and we would love to meet you in person in LA!