Introduction to Evaluation Design | Self-paced

Well-designed evaluations save time and money, delivering useful insights that enable evidence-based decisions

Well-designed evaluations save time and money, delivering useful insights that enable evidence-based decisions. To get started, you will need to refine the focus for your evaluation. You will also need to ensure that the evaluation scope and methods are both realistic and robust.

About this course

This professionally designed course introduces evaluation design.

This course cover the following topics:

• Laying the foundations for effective evaluation
• Getting to know the value of impact evaluation
• Distinguishing between output and outcomes
• Understanding the range of evaluation approaches and tools available to you
• How to develop your evaluation plan
• How to be an ethical evaluator
• Data consent and how it should be handled
• How to organize data for qualitative and quantitative analysis

By the end of this course, you will:

• Understand key concepts for evaluation, including 'impact’.
• Be ready to articulate your 'theory of change'.
• Be capable of translating your evaluation goals into clear, measurable outcomes that can be assessed.
• Be able to develop an evaluation plan based on available time and resources, as well as your evaluation goals.
• Make an informed decision about which type of evaluation approach and tool is most likely to be appropriate for evaluating your intended outcomes.
• Be able to apply basic ethical principles to your evaluation.
• Be able to effectively organize and store evaluation data.
• Make sure you are in line with GDPR rules.

This online course is entirely self-paced so that you can engage with the course or access resources when it is most convenient and timely for you.

Dr. Eric Jensen

Dr. Eric Jensen is an internationally-recognised social scientist specializing in innovative methods of conducting impact evaluation research in informal learning and public engagement contexts.

Dr Eric A. Jensen is a social scientist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge in sociology. Author of Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research (SAGE), Dr Jensen brings extensive methodological expertise in quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods social research and evaluation. Jensen has been working in science communication research and practice since 2001, beginning with a National Science Foundation-funded project on International Ethics and Equity Issues Relating to Biotechnology. ensen has delivered hundreds of training workshops on evaluation methods and evidence-based science communication, as well as leading and consulting on projects large and small on public engagement with research, impact evaluation, socially responsible research and environmental communication. Jensen’s latest book is Science Communication: An introduction. He works on the Responsible Research and Innovation Networking Globally social research project as a Senior Research Fellow at ICoRSA. He is part-time professor at the University of Warwick and visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Psychological Research of Sigmund Freud University.

Research Methods

Impact Evaluation

Survey Design

Qualitative Methods

Quantitative Methods

Participation notes

This course is designed to be highly practical, distilling a lot of methods and underpinning theory into clear, pragmatic guidance. Depending on how extensively the reading and supplementary material is explored it is expected to offer 16-20 hours of training. However, it is flexible since the course is aimed towards people who need to vary the amount of time they put into the course from week to week.

How To Reserve Your Place

This course is designed to be ‘self-paced’ and ‘self-completed’, therefore there are no strict limitations on course capacity.