Easy Outcomes is a standardized approach to building an evaluation plan developed by a master evaluator using the new outcomes and evaluation software called DoView.
When studying program and policy evaluation you're normally presented with many different evaluation theories, frameworks, approaches, tools and methods. Your problem is how to make sense of all of this and come up with an approach you can use in practice when you're planning an evaluation during your course and also after you've finished studying.
Four things using Easy Outcomes can do for students like you
1. Help you make better evaluation plans by giving you a clear format for developing plans that includes all of the important steps.
2. Provide checklists for you at key points in the plan (e.g. the seven possible outcome evaluation designs, the list of possible evaluation methods, the list of economic evaluation methods, the list of evaluation management issues) so you don't forget to consider any important options.
3. Help you work faster because you are building the plan in new DoView outcomes and evaluation software. Using DoView we can build plans in about 1/2 the time it normally takes.
4. Give you a framework for quickly documenting why you are, and are not, using certain outcome evaluation designs - this lets you present a more robust and defensible evaluation design.
5. Help you have total control and oversight of your evaluation plan because it is structured around clearly specified evaluation questions mapped onto a visual outcomes model (logic model) and can always be presented to a class or stakeholder meeting using a dataprojector.
How can you use Easy Outcomes in your course if you have to submit an evaluation plan?
• You could talk to your lecturer or professor and ask if you could submit your evaluation plan as a Easy Outcomes evaluation plan in a DoView file.
• You could post your Easy Outcomes evaluation plan in DoView as a web model onto your course web site (from the end of April 2008 DoView will be able to create a web page version of any model in a DoView file).
• You could build your evaluation plan using the Easy Outcomes approach in DoView and then quickly write it up in a more traditional format because you will have already done all of the hard thinking. If appropriate you could attach a PDF of the DoView model as an appendix (A PDF of a DoView model can be created from within DoView).
• Just use DoView to draw a comprehensive outcomes model (logic model, program logic, program theory etc.) and cut and paste it into your evaluation plan.
Download the comprehensive Easy Outcomes Workbook now.
Go to the DoView site now.