Surface Expectations For Courses

Reading Martineau & Hannum's book "Evaluating the Impact of Leadership Development: A Professional Guide (2004) I was starting to think I was a bit thick, or from the wrong planet. The preface, introduction and chapter 1 did not make much sense. I had to check the author's website to work out what the book was about: how to assess management training courses.

I suggest skipping the Preface, Introduction and Chapter 1, as they use of the sort of jargon which Lucy Kellaway criticizes in her BBC broadcasts. At Chapter 2 "Focusing the Evaluation", it appears a different author took over and the book gets much more readable.

The chapter starts out with useful points: ideally the evaluation of a course should be planned while the course is being designed and it has to fit into the organization schedule. So it is not a good idea to be taking teachers away from their desks to ask them questions, when they are busy marking. Similarly it is not a good idea to ask students about satisfaction with a course when they are cramming for the examination.

Martineau & Hannum suggest these steps:

1. Identify stakeholders
   
2. Define purpose
3. Determine resources
4. Establish the desired impact and timing (they had impact and timing as two steps but I see them as the one)
   
5. Surface expectations
6. Determine evaluation questions

The chapter then goes into details, providing worksheet and examples. The one part I had difficulty with was "Surface expectations". After reading the detailed description I was still not sure what these are. They appear to be assumed impacts: that is results of the course which are not formally expressed because they are considered so obvious they need not be stated. A web search for the term "surface expectations" suggests it refers to how smooth a concrete slab should be, but I don't think that is the meaning intended here. ;-)

The chapter then goes on to sampling and data-collection methods and planning for use of results. At this point the chapter started to get interesting, but then ended. Hopefully there is more of the same in chapter 3.