Sun Associates specializes in designing plans and procedures to evaluate and assess the impact of educational technology on teaching and learning. Our evaluation work is designed to take schools and districts beyond their current strategic technology plans and into an area where they can begin to assess their progress in meeting the vision and goals of these plans. In the area of program evaluation for funded projects (i.e., "grants"), we work with projects to focus their goals, define evaluation questions, collect data, and to create formative/summative evaluation reports.

Our work centers around an authentic assessment process which combines practice profiling, the development of indicators of success, and the creation of data collection procedures which are to be used to perform a formative progress evaluation of a school or district's educational technology initiative. Our clients often choose to combine our work in designing an evaluation procedure with what amounts to an audit of current technology implementation. In this way, our formative evaluation process can produce a summative product.

An important element of our work is capacity development in our client districts. One desired outcome for all of our work is to help clients improve and develop their ability to scale up the projects that Sun Associates has been brought in to create. We do not overwhelm our clients with "experts"rather, we collaborate to apply assistance where needed and always strive to leave our clients in a position where they can be even stronger collaborators in the future.

Wireless Laptop Evaluation

Sun Associates works with school districts to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of particular technology initiatives. One increasingly common initiative relates to one-to-one wireless computing environments. See our recent article in Technology & Learning for the report from one of our wireless evaluation projects.

Edtecheval.org

Many of the types of resources found below are being migrated to our new, specific to technology evaluation, site -- www.edtecheval.org. This is a great place to visit to find more evaluation tools, sample reports, links to actual evaluation projects, and other resources for technology project evaluators.

Evaluation Workbook

In light of NCLB-inspired state and district interest in assessing technology's impact, we have recently revised our district workbook for creating technology evaluations.  While this workbook is not designed to "stand alone" as a full technology evaluation, it does provide district administrators with a good overall picture of how to design an effective technology evaluation.  It's a good starting point for setting evaluation priorities and for charting out a process for making evaluation an integral part of the district's technology implementation effort.

Three Steps for Technology Evaluation

Most of the evaluation projects we facilitate consist of three distinct steps. This document outlines the steps and outcomes.

Resources and Samples from Sun Associates Evaluation Projects

To give you a better idea of the overall evaluation process as well as some of its tools and products, we have collected a page of samples from various projects. Check here for sample reports, rubrics, presentations, surveys, and other tools.

Technology & Learning -- See our article "Is Wireless Worth It?" in the May, 2003 issue

Learning & Leading with Technology -- See our article on evaluating technology in the April, 2000 issue. (Note, you'll need an ISTE member number...or contact us for a reprint)

Descriptions of Example Projects

The following is a selection of recent Sun Associates technology evaluation projects. For more information about any of these projects, please contact us directly. A full list of our clients is also available on-line.

• Massachusetts Fund Code 170 (Title IID) Grant Recipients - Sun Associates is the evaluation partner on 10 of the current Technology Enhancement Competitive Grants (Fund Code 170) awarded by the Massachusetts Department of Education to high need school districts. Given NCLB's accountability provisions, formal evaluation of these funded projects is an important piece of these grants. Sun Associates, in the role of external project evaluator, is responsible for monitoring and assessment of the projects' progress toward meeting their individual programmatic goals. Award recipients partnered with Sun Associates include Benjamin Banneker Charter School, Boston Renaissance Charter School, Gill-Montague Public Schools, Greenfield Public Schools, Hampshire Educational Collaborative, Metro Southwest Regional Employment Board, Orange Public Schools, and Salem Public Schools, Webster Public Schools.

• Evaluation of Instructional Technology's Impact on Teaching and Learning: Fayette County (KY) Public Schools - a year-long program evaluation of technology's impact on teachers and students in Kentucky's second-largest public school district. Work will include surveys, observations, interviews, and a variety of data collection and reporting procedures. The full report is available on Fayette County's district website. We also have a PowerPoint presentation from NECC 2000 which details this particular project.
  
• St. Louis (MI) Public Schools Technology Evaluation – formative evaluation of technology’s impact on teaching and learning. This project is a pilot for ultimately developing evaluation projects 11 districts in this Central Michigan educational service region.
  
• Katonah-Lewisboro (NY) Schools Technology Evaluation - formative evaluation of the impact of technology on student achievement and teacher behavior in the district. In this multi-year project, we initially focused on assessing general technology use and impact. During the 2001/2002 school year, we are conducting research on the specific impact of wireless technologies on middle school teachers and students.
  
• Evaluation of Lexington (MA) Public Schools Technology Plan Implementation -- evaluation of the impact and effectiveness of the unique train-the-trainers approach that this district is taking for developing basic technology skills in all of its elementary and middle school teachers. The evaluation process involves developing indicators of success and rubrics which the district will use in its evaluation and on-going technology planning efforts. This Sun Associates project has continued for three years and focuses annually on different aspects of Lexington's plan implementation.
  
• Program Evaluation for the Northeast and Islands Regional Technology in Education Consortium (NEIRTEC) -- Sun Associates provides program evaluation for this five-year, seven state, technology technical assistance project funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
  
• Preparing New Teachers 2 Project -- Sun Associates provides program evaluation for the NH Department of Education's three-year PT3 Catalyst Project. This is a $1.2 million per year project that involves all 14 institutions of higher education in NH.
  
• Evaluation of Cambridge (MA) Public Schools Technology Design Teams -- services include training and consultation in the development of evaluation strategies for assessing the implementation of the district's educational technology professional development plan. In the 1998 - 1999 school year, this plan focuses on the creation of technology "design teams." Our work will center on evaluating the effectiveness of these teams in developing teacher technology skills. Activities include data collection and design of data collection procedures.
  
• Evaluating the Impact of Technology: A Workshop Series for Kentucky School Districts- an on-going series of two-day workshops for school districts in Kentucky to develop procedures and plans related to the evaluation of technology implementation efforts. Held in partnership with the Appalachia Educational Laboratory, these workshops provide hands-on experiences related to understanding the basic types of educational program evaluation; the links between strategic technology planning and the evaluation of technology implementation; and developing processes and procedures for evaluating district educational technology implementation.
  
• An Evaluation of Educational Technology Implementation for Warren County (KY) Independent Schools - a six month study, with a 150-page final report and various presentations for a 15-school district in south-central Kentucky. This study examined the current use of educational technology across the district. The goal of this project was to assist the district in assessing the effectiveness of current technology use and the implementation of its district technology plan.

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