Title: The Evaluation Process for Duke University's Project CALC
Speaker: Jack Bookman
Duke University is the site of one of the major, multi-year
calculus reform projects funded by the National Science Foundation.
Paralleling the development of the course from 1989-1994 a plan for
evaluation was designed and implemented. The plan has three main
components: (1) a problem solving test given to both Project CALC (PC) and
traditional students (TR); (2) a
"retention" study of sophomores and juniors, both PC and TR; and (3) a
followup study focused on the question, "Do PC students do better in and/or
take more courses that require calculus?" In this paper, some of the results
will be presented but the emphasis will be on how the evaluation was
conducted and what was learned about the process of evaluation. I will
discuss what worked and what didn't and how our original evaluation plans
were modified as the evaluation process was conducted. In particular, I
will discuss the role of inside and outside evaluators, qualitative and
quantitative data, instrument development and the sampling process.