My Case Study Protocol (draft)

Questions directing this phase of the research:
Why was a particular evaluation approach chosen and how successful was it?
How can we overcome barriers to successful evaluation praxis?
How does perception influence evaluative practice?

Overview
It has been shown that evaluation of locally funded learning and teaching projects is not reported in the literature (reference - lit review). The studies that are reported have been analysed and applied to the context of HE to find that xxxxx
Three cases will be studied to further explore these findings. Each case is an internally funded learning and teaching project, running for 12 months. These projects came from a successful application for a grant. One was taken from each of the currently running grant programs at one Australian university, the teaching innovation and scholarship; the competitive grants and the priority grants [is this true?].  Project 1 comes from the department of Education and is titled 'MOOCS'; Project 2 is a joint research study between the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Human Sciences, investigating feedback methods; Project 3 is from the Office of Social Inclusion (?) and is investigating the embedded mentor program.

why did we select these? They were only ones that volunteered... Wanted to follow along with them as they progress - find out what they were doing in terms of evaluation.

Procedures
General plan:

• Receive Ethics clearance.
• Meet with the project team (if there is one). Show the list of questions which will be used as part of the data gathering instrument. Answer any of their questions about the study.
• First 'interview' for follow up on answers plus some background to project. Take information and consent forms. Record interview.
• Attend all of their project meetings (where possible) or presentations or focus grups etc and take notes which I will use in my reflections. Act as participant-as-observer.
• Meet two more times for 'interview', once after the progress report is due and again at the end of the project - perhaps after the final report is submitted. Each time, there will be a set of questions to be answered. Obtain further clearance from Ethics for these questions.
• Review other documentation including minutes of meetings, reports and application etc.

Questions
were there any identified barriers  and what did they do to overcome these (project leaders)
what approaches did they choose and why (project manager)
what was written about evaluation in the application (documents) and how does this compare to what actually happened (self reflections and interview data)
how did their individual experience with evaluation affect the way evaluation was conducted? (self reflection)
how were the projects similar and different in respect to their chosen approach and their identified barriers and their methods for overcoming barriers.
What does the literature say about such barriers (refer to lit review)
How important is the evaluation component in the selection of successful grant applications? (grant selection committee)

Report

At this stage I'm hoping to publish the findings from this case study in a journal or conference publication. Although having read Yin he suggests it is difficult to get this done, I will nontheless give it a go. I'm thinking about the corroboration of evidence and also the investigation of alternative propositions. If I could present something at a seminar or similar and get people to share like experiences/findings, this would be a great way to validate the findings of the study.

So who is the audience for this study? Who would benefit from the findings? I would say it is future project / grant holders. A list of guidelines to help with L&T project evaluation would certainly be helpful, aimed at how to overcome barriers etc. In addition, if we want to deal with the perception angle - then publishing findings in this area is one way to gather input.