Project Evaluation

Getting Started
Throughout the NUR-495 course, you will actively engage in strategically planning for and managing a planned change project within the scope of your current professional role. For this field-based project, you will identify a specific problem or need to serve as the foundation for a faculty-guided capstone experience. Project-related experiences are integrated throughout the course, and will involve application of strategic planning and management processes.

As you consider the activities necessary to implement your capstone project, you will find many similarities between the “planning and implementation” phases of the nursing process to the “work schedule” used to guide the capstone project. In both cases, these steps serve as an action plan to direct specific activities and tasks that will facilitate achieving a specific outcome. In the case of your capstone project, the work schedule you developed in Workshop Three serves as a dynamic plan to communicate the activities and tasks that are necessary to perform to successfully achieve your project outcome. During Workshops Four and Five, you identified challenges to the capstone project and related contingency plans, while considering the financial impact and sustainability of the initiative within your organization over time.

This week, you will consider the evaluative phase of the planned change process. Although each student’s project may be in varying stages of implementation, you will examine the stated methods of evaluation, and determine any necessary modifications as a result of evaluative findings.

Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:

Determine alignment between the project outcome and corresponding plan for evaluation.
Appraise the progress made toward achievement of the stated capstone project outcome.
Implement the activities of your strategic plan necessary to complete the capstone project.

Resources
Textbook: Fundamentals of Project Management
Website: My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA)

Background Information
As discussed in Workshop One, the planned change process is rather iterative in nature, with dynamics that are organic rather than static. For this reason, we tend to think of a planned change project as a work in continual process. With each workshop, you will polish and fine-tune aspects of your plan as part of the learning process. Each facet of the planned change process will be unpacked, examined, and critically applied to your capstone project. As you advance in the course, each workshop will bring an opportunity to carefully reflect upon and streamline your work. When the capstone course ends, your final project documentation will accurately articulate the planned change process that you have created and managed.

In the previous workshops, you considered a variety of factors that impact the change process, established a problem statement, plan for evaluation, and detailed a work schedule to guide the capstone project. You examined potential threats and challenges to the capstone project, and assessed its financial impact and sustainability.

In Workshop Six, you will evaluate the planned change process. Specifically, you will consider your chosen evaluation methods and appraise their congruence with your stated project outcome. Additionally, you will determine modifications to the plan that may be needed as a result of your findings.

When considering project evaluation, it is important to clarify the difference between process evaluation and outcome evaluation. Although process evaluation is important, for the purpose of this learning activity, you will focus on outcome evaluation.

Effective evaluation begins with correctly identifying your project’s intended outcome or goal. When the outcome statement is accurately defined, it will clearly indicate how the successful achievement of the outcome will be made evident. Once you know how to recognize the successful achievement of the outcome, you can then determine the type of information needed to measure that achievement. The type of information you need and how to gather that information are essential elements of your evaluation plan.

Please note: Eight hours of workshop time is allocated to your efforts in this assignment; this work directly pertains to your 7.3 Capstone Project Presentation where you highlight your accomplishments.

Instructions
Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.
Read the section titled “Project Evaluation” in Chapter 10 of your textbook, Fundamentals of Project Management.
Go to the My Environmental Education Evaluation Resource Assistant (MEERA) web page “Plan an Evaluation” at http://meera.snre.umich.edu/evaluation-what-it-and-why-do-it and read the critical concepts included in the background information.
Revisit the capstone work you completed in the previous workshops, as well as the instructor feedback that you received. Specifically, consider your project outcome statement and the corresponding plan for summative evaluation.
Navigate to the threaded discussion and respond to the following:
Briefly state your project outcome, your corresponding plan for evaluation, and date for evaluation.
What type of data or information must you gather to determine the degree to which your capstone project outcome has been achieved?
For instance: In our example, the information necessary to determine project outcome achievement is the incidence of CAUTI on the unit before and after the project was initiated.
What data collection method will you use to gather the information you need to determine whether the project achieves your desired outcome?
For instance: In our example, the data collection method would be tracking/monitoring the CAUTI incidence on the unit. Collaboration with the unit manager may be necessary to obtain this data.
How can you ensure your evaluation results are credible to stakeholders and others in your organization?
What limitations can you identify about your evaluation plan?
Are there any aspects of your capstone outcome statement or corresponding evaluation plan that need further clarification, modification, or streamlining? If so, please share along with your plan to improve alignment between these two aspects of your strategic plan.
Post is at least four paragraphs with a minimum of three sentences each.

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