Building environmental educators’ evaluation capacity through distance education

Monitoring Educational Organizations' Culture of Sustainable Consumption: Initiating and Evaluating Cultural Change in Schools and Universities

“…In this way, the proposed approach to the monitoring of organizational COC employs both qualitative and quantitative indicators and blends elements from both diagnostic and dialogic traditions of organization development (Bushe et al, 2009). Yet, in order to successful adapt, implement and apply such inductive approach to monitoring, it is necessary to overcome the widely shared reservations to self-evaluation and to build respective evaluation and deliberation capacity among change management teams responsible for the design, implementation, controlling and monitoring of measures of intervention (Fleming et al, 2010).…”

Insights From an Evaluability Assessment of the U.S. Forest ServiceMore Kids in the WoodsInitiative

“…Requirements that are currently under consideration include asking grant applicants to provide logic models, explain how what they propose builds on past evaluation results, and include detailed evaluation plans as well as a budget for evaluation. Options for building evaluation competencies under consideration include encouraging the use of self-directed learning evaluation resources such as web-based 4 (Zint, 2010;Zint et al, Forthcoming) and workbook-based (Ernst, Monroe, & Simmons, 2009) evaluation guides, creating supportive evaluation systems (e.g., EUGENE 5 ), encouraging the completion of environmental education evaluation courses (e.g., Fleming & Easton, 2010), and participation in other professional development opportunities to learn about evaluation. These options are likely to also be appropriate for other grant programs and organizations that seek to strengthen environmental education programs through increased and improved evaluation practices.…”

“…Thus, evaluability assessments can foster stakeholders' use of evaluations, which has also been limited among environmental educators (Fleming & Easton, 2010;Zint, 2012). Because evaluability assessments can clarify program objectives and design as well as provide preliminary formative information about program implementation and plausible outcomes, they can also be used to inform program improvements in a more timely and costeffective manner than intensive evaluations.…”

Environmental Education Research

“…The evaluation of the national environmental education program Project Learning Tree's online workshop found that participants were motivated to use learned activities in their practices (McConnell and Monroe 2012). Fleming and Easton (2010) point out challenges in teaching online courses for environmental educators, including attrition rates and creating a social learning environment. Studies of online courses focused on environmental issues rather than environmental education per se have demonstrated that participants not only increased environmental knowledge and attitudes scores (Aivazidis, Lazaridou, and Hellden 2006), but also point to the success of courses in engaging students in interactive learning (Eckelman et al 2011;McCormick et al 2005;Vann, Pacheco, and Motloch 2006).…”