The Application of Curriculum Components for Course Evaluation

Generally, program evaluation is of prime importance to check the workability of a course. In this way, it can be made sure that the course achieves its intended goals and objectives, and consequently fulfills the learners’ needs, wants, and aspirations. Therefore, an attempt was made to evaluate the instructional functioning of the Simple Prose and Newspaper Articles course which is offered to the undergraduate English majors at the university of Tabriz, Iran and is taught by the researcher/instructor himself. To this end, Brown’s (1995) model of program evaluation was opted for. Based on local needs and objectives, this model was modified and extended to seven curriculum components: objectives, attitudes, needs analysis, time, classroom activities, materials, and assessment. In order to gather quantitative and qualitative data, a mixed methods design was employed. The quantitative data were obtained through a questionnaire which comprised 35 items based on the aforementioned curriculum components, i.e. five items for each component. Also, the qualitative data were collected through a semi-structured interview. The participants consisted of 36 undergraduate English majors, i.e. 12 male, 24 female. The results of the study indicate that this course is quite useful for the students to develop their linguistic, cultural, and social knowledge. However, it needs to be modified in order to be more fruitful. One of the main implications of this study might be that the seven curriculum components proposed by the researcher could be employed for the evaluation of any course of study. Another implication might be that these seven curriculum components could be utilized by syllabus designers or curriculum developers for the development of any syllabus.