Priority Goals in Evaluation of Institutions
What are the top goals when organizations ask for inside systematic evaluations? Despite the differences of the companies, the highest targets of evaluations would be the constructional relationship among staff, collective learning for improvement of the outcomes, and social accountabilities. Affected by the new theme of sustainable global contributions, companies tend to attain and keep the target of worldwide competitions and global subscriptions.
Before starting the work, evaluators should answer what kind of institutions evaluate. The priority of companies are various and depend on their benefits in targets. Business companies would have marketable precedents and targets more than NGO organizations. Despite the benefits companies seek in evaluation, they share some goals, such as assessments to promote the qualities of outcomes, find solutions for the problems, and remove the barriers of presenting in worldwide activities.
The first destination for the companies is tending to promote the quality of their activities' outcomes for reliability and accountability in society. D’Ostie-Racine et al. 2016 stressed that “systematic and impartial examination of humanitarian actions [in a company] intended to draw lessons to improve policies and practices and enhance accountabilities” (p. 1). They expected positive relations with evaluation for collaboration, collective critical thinking, learning, and showcasing the ability to offer qualitative products and services. Transparent feedback in evaluation coheres to the resolutions of the improvement approaches toward constructive relations among team members.
The second common goal would be deeper in outcomes. The results should address the problems clearly with achievable solutions (Benson et al., 2009), save supportive related information, and hear all voices inside the institution to fabricate the solutions. According to D’Ostie-Racine et al. (2016), the results should be used as instruments to identify the problems, conduct solutions, and guide decisions and actions to manage the system motivating staff persuasively.
Staff's voices are eminent for improving the systems. They see details of an organization that investigators admit listening to employees helps them recognize the culture and the relationships among the staff. Fundamentally, personal and collective perspectives, work policies, and procedures compose the cultures of work environment and relations within the organizations. These elements are effective in collaboration, learning, and outcomes. Therefore, employee self-assessments and systematic assessments both together instigate changes in organizations.
The third common goal would be assessing organizations according to international standards for human activities to prepare them for living and working as global citizens. Patton (2020) named global citizenship as Blue Marble World, which means a world without boundaries and borders. Citizens in a global democratic society are committed to the world-savvy and decisions about global environmental, economic, and political problems. One of the worldwide evaluations is CEOs for the institutions of higher education, concentrated on outreaching works for accessible education for all students, from detrimental local populations to other countries. Also, in the UK, Office for Students (OfS), Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), had been established to develop the culture of equity and justice in education for all citizens (Mountford-Zimdars, 2017-2019). A new feature and goal of assessment for the higher education organizations and NGOs is global sustainability in the post-modern system.
Moreover, the same as methods of assessments, the measurement tools to perform a meaningful evaluation is equally important. Instruments such as acceptable worldwide standards help to analyze data and produce measurable results, qualitatively and quantitatively to use. Rubric for Assessing Online Postings.pdf, a guideline for scoring, assists professors in evaluating students' efforts qualitatively and quantitatively at universities. Instructors would be able to illustrate the level of weakening and remarks of the students' learning and attempts.
In conclusion, in general, the evaluation goals for most institutions would be systematic changes. Essentially, evaluators sign up with simple factors then organize complex assessments accompanied by trustworthy relations with organizers to complete the projects. The outcome and results of an organization's appraisal should address the barriers of the system's improvements and social accountability locally and internationally alongside ubiquitous learning and creativity approaches for the employees.
Mehrossadat Saberi March 2021