The use of evaluation to improve practice in learning and teaching

Evaluation has become an everyday activity for many us, whether of our practice in the classroom, the student experience, institutional performance or funded projects. This article looks at the main aspects of evaluation and adopts a systematic approach to evaluation by looking at why, what, for and by whom, when and how to evaluate. The emphasis is on why we want to evaluate and its use in decision making rather than on how we are going to carry it out. The assumption is also that we want to involve as many stakeholders in the evaluation as possible so as to promote greater ownership of the whole process.