Evaluating the Effectiveness of the Courseware Development Project: Pilot studies

This project involves a comprehensive generalizable and transferable evaluation of the Courseware Development Project (CDP) at Dalhousie University's School of Business Administration. This C$3 million, three-year project is divided into four levels over three time phases. The results of the study of the impact of this unique project are expected to be both relevant and applicable to other universities in Canada and throughout the world. This on-going evaluation of the CDP centers around a systems model where: inputs are divided into drivers and materials; throughputs are the conversion processes on a matrix composed of six parties (faculty, students, staff, administrators, organizational structure and processes, and contributing/participating corporations) as the rows and the four levels of the CDP as the columns; and outputs are divided into manifest and latent variables. Demographic, attitudinal, behavioral, and organizational variables will be used in a time series analysis. Using an action research model over the proposed three-year full study, the researchers will assess which elements Of the project are effective at the end of each year of the evaluation. Based on this information the researchers will keep the effective elements in place for the next year and modify any ineffective elements based on the first year's results and competing theory. This cycle will be repeated after year two. Thus the proposed study will contribute to evaluation methodology as described in this paper by treating simultaneously both a case study and a quasiexperiment of the impact of computers on (business) education. A preliminary description of the effects arising from Level 0, the integration of computers in the business school, and Level 1, courseware development. is given here. The general impact of the project upon faculty, staff, and students is described and preliminary findings are presented.