CDEV085 - Program Planning and Evaluation

Course Description

In this course, you will build your capacity as a manager to monitor and evaluate human service programs effectively. Utilizing stakeholder engagement, inquiry, reflection, and action, you will learn to optimize program performance. Moving beyond traditional methods, you will explore principles of developmental evaluation, integrating inquiry and systems thinking to foster innovation and adaptation.

You will engage with a framework of action evaluation to drive programs towards their goals. The course includes stakeholder engagement, strategy development, logic modeling, and implementing feedback and learning cycles for continuous program improvement.

Course Outline

In this course, you will explore:

• Leadership and Principles
  • Develop organizational commitment and support
  • Learn principles and processes of learning, adaptation, and change
  • Explore utility-focused and developmental evaluation based on Michael Quinn Patton (2011)
• Preparation and Transition
  • Understand the evaluation context and engage stakeholders in inquiry and dialogue
  • Determine evaluation purposes and gather necessary resources
  • Apply logic modeling to program design
• Design of the Evaluation
  • Formulate evaluation questions, indicators, and data collection methods

Learner Outcomes

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Engage stakeholders effectively in the evaluation process
• Apply principles of developmental evaluation to support program innovation
• Use systems thinking to adapt and optimize program processes
• Develop and use logic models for program strategy and objectives
• Formulate evaluation questions and design appropriate indicators and data collection tools
• Implement feedback and learning cycles for continuous program adaptation and change