Evaluating Human Resources, Programs, and Organizations (Professional Practices in Adult Education and Human Resource Development) download epub

Evaluating Human Resources, Programs, and Organizations was written for professionals, involved in adult education, who are looking for new ways or more information about evaluating adult education programs. The purpose of this text is to examine ways to evaluate people, programs, and organizations. The author discusses evaluations that are completed by an outside evaluator, someone who is not a part of the organization, and information is also given about evaluations completed by someone from within the organization.

Currently I am a 4-H Program Associate, or a youth development educator in Wyoming. A major part of my responsibilities is to create, present, and evaluate programs. Throughout my life I have been involved in a variety of program planning situations while a 4-H member myself, in college, and at past jobs; however, looking back I realized that there was only one situation, that I can remember, that an evaluation was given as a part of the program. Due to my lack of knowledge in this area I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at evaluations. The text was very interesting, and very beneficial in my search for understanding the evaluation process.

Evaluating Human Resources, Programs, and Organizations is broken down into three major sections. The introduction gives some basic information about evaluations and organizations and the conclusion helps sum up the text, the meat of this text is broken into three parts two chapters each on evaluating people, programs, and organizations. Burnham has written this text based upon personal experiences and observations in the field of program evaluations. He is a program evaluator; he travels from organization to organization and evaluates people, programs, and organizations. Burnham backs up his personal experiences with scientific facts that he has located through a variety of sources.

The goal of the text is to give the reader some tools needed to successfully evaluate programs, people, and organizations. The text discusses the challenges that might arise when completing an evaluation from the political and leadership perspectives. The author then goes into detail on ways to measure or evaluate programs, people, and organizations. Each section discusses different models used to evaluate these three different sectors, and how to analysis your finding, and make presentations depending on a variety of circumstances described. These circumstances included such things as who the evaluator is, were organization members involved in the evaluation process, who are the stakeholders, and what will the results of the evaluation effect.

Personally, after reading the text I feel that the author did a good job of reaching his goals. He did an outstanding job of providing models to be used during evaluations, and he discussed in detail some problems that evaluators might encounter, and what to do in these situations. The author did a great job of introducing evaluations and I walked away from this book with more knowledge, and more confidence in my abilities to evaluate a program and my organization.

Two major factors influenced my reaction to this text they were. First, the author describes a way to evaluate employees using "job descriptions, work performed, evidence of that work, the assessors, the criteria, and a weighing criteria." (19) This hit home because this is how I am evaluated. The author discusses the importance of stakeholders input, and my organization allows input in the evaluation process as well. After reading about this type of evaluation in the first chapter, the credibility of the author really stuck out. I knew that the author had real world experience and that his examples and ideas were going to be true to life, something useful in my program. Learning about personal evaluations will help me in my job to evaluate volunteers, and I am already brain-storming ways to use this evaluation method to help me to involve my volunteers in the evaluation of the county program as well as their personal clubs.

The second reason that I found this book useful and creditable was it's symmetry to the class text. The first chapter discusses formative and summative evaluations. "Formative is used to guide the implementation and management of an evaluation. Summative is often conducted at the end of the program and is used to make some judgment about how well the program did and how worthwhile it was." (5) The author goes into detail and discusses both types of evaluations thoroughly, helping me to understand the differences.

Another symmetry, between the class text and Evaluating Human Resources, Program, and Organization was the discussion on objectives. The course text discusses at length the importance of aligning the objectives and the evaluation. The purpose of the evaluation is to see if the program was effective, if it was effective then the objectives should have been met. Burnham discusses in the section on evaluating people "The newest age of performance appraisal is based on how well established objectives have been met." (18) In other words even in performance appraisals organizations are moving toward looking at objectives.

The class text discusses evaluations at length, and what to include when evaluating programs. Burnham also discusses the importance of instrument design. The author states "Only gather information that will be used." (75) I think this is the most important aspect of evaluations. Gather data that is useful, that will be beneficial to the program, and will help to move the organization forward.

In conclusion, I am highly involved in program planning and believe that this text would be very beneficial to anyone who is planning programs. This text is also beneficial for those who are asked to do formal performance appraisals because it gives ideas about what the evaluator is looking for. In other words, the text could be beneficial in many different avenues and I would highly recommend it to anyone who is involved in program management, program planning, or human resources. The author does a fantastic job of illustrating the practices of evaluations in ways that are beneficial to professionals in adult education.

Discusses the process of evaluation and issues relating to the role of the evaluator. Chapters discuss: personnel evaluation; evaluating programs, program planning, and human resource development outcomes; and evaluation of organizations in such areas as morale, structure, administration, functions, and strategic planning. Tends to focus on educational environments but has value for application in business.