Health Education Development/Evaluating a group-based lesson

With this topic, we will be concluding our general exploration of program logic and how this might relate to group-based lessons for teaching and learning. Take some time to review the past sessions and ensure that you have reviewed the resources. You will need to have an understanding of this material for your next assessments.

Instructions

Each week we hold a lectorial and a tutorial. The lectorial is a lecture involving audience participation. The tutorials are for discussing the and group activities relating to the topic, and for working on the assignments.

Lectorial

Watch the videos in this playlist here. There are only three for this topic. One is longer than most and should probably be watched in stages. It will help you to start thinking about how we gain resources for running our health education programs for rehabilitation and public health.
Review the learning outcomes for this and previous topics and decide to what degree you are getting the point of the various topics and the whole subject to this point. How do you think that the materials, lectorials and tutorials are linked? How might your assessments be the clue?
Read the story for this topic and the background, and review learning outcomes here. If you have time, see if you can find and scan the references and resources.
Visit and explore the following web-sites for important insights and resources on obtaining funding for and planning, implementing and evaluating projects.
Continue to read through and think about the various theories and models of change in Chapter Four of Health education: theoretical concepts, effective strategies and core competencies (WHO 2012) and read through Chapter Eight, Explanation of key definitions, pages 54-56.
Attend the lectorial and be prepared to work through an application of program logic to a particular situation.

Tutorial

Hand in your team contracts!
Review the activities for Team 5 (page 122) and Team 6 (page 123). The teams will have already been preparing; so, this instruction is for everyone else.
Attend the tutorial.

What are the important program-logic considerations for Evaluating a group-based lesson?

The original goal of the health professionals had been to improve health in a high rise housing estate in a major Canadian city. It took a lot of preparatory work to get the community to the point where they were ready for the classes. Then, they had to decide what needed to happen IN the sessions. So, the community actually had to plan out the actions and procedures that are the focus of the educational process which may or may not lead to health literacy. This is an important point. We are always assessing, planning, implementing and evaluating. We are always seeking A PIEce of PIE (A/PIE). Planning got the community to the moment of activity which they, then, had to actually undertake. When these activities and procedures were underway, there was always the question of whether they were working well enough in the moment (process). But, after the session was over, or as it was finishing, it was necessary for the community to ask whether anything was different (impacts). They also had to ask themselves if it was worth all of their efforts. Did eating nutritious food make any difference to their lives? Would they have fewer visits to the general practitioner or would they live longer? These are the potential outcomes and they can be separated by just this length of time. What plans must have been in place to collect the information that would answer these questions long after the activities had concluded? Interestingly, the community did believe that the journey was worth the effort because the journey in itself, and not merely the destination, had changed them. They were now in control of more of the factors that influenced their lives. So, there can be unanticipated or parallel outcomes that are often just as, if not more, valuable than those which had been intended.

Background

We are completing our problematique of 'nutrition for life'. When we are planning and implementing, we typically want to ensure that we have thought about our need for evaluation. We often refer to this as 'process evaluation'. I spoke about it in the last topic and above as 'in the moment' evaluation. But, we also need to know what the immediate 'impact' and the long-term 'outcomes' are as well (PPHB 2010). We need to develop a program-logic narrative for this to ensure that we are gathering the data that we will use to analyse the situation and determine whether what we have done has been worthwhile. If we wanted to play volleyball without everone getting a sunburn in order to increase our skills in the game so that we might play more regularly to improve our fitness, we can check the immediate impact and the long-term outcomes. The immediate impact is that the slip, slop, slap, slip on, and so forth message was heeded and 90% of people left at the end of the day without a sun-burn. You can check that the next day. But, what about the increased skill-sets that might reduce the hesitation to play volleyball regularly in a local gym? How will you assess that? How will you evaluate the knowledge, skills and attitudes and their overall affect? Funding bodies will want to know how you intend to demonstrate the success of your lesson or program. The Centers for Disease Control in the United States have a useful guide that lists a number of resources in addition to an example of how a narrative illustrating the logic diagrams might look for a national program (Sundra, Scherer & Anderson 2003). The Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, which is located in Newtown (NSW), has conducted an audit and analysed a variety of ways in which health promotion is evaluated. They recommend "a greater emphasis on the use of program logic in planning interventions (and their evaluation) will enhance evaluation capacity within the sector" (Wilkins & Booker 2009:8). It is worth quoting them at link as to why program logic narratives can help in evaluation by linking planning (intentions--thinking) and implementation (activities--behaviour) to outcomes and reflections (values and attitudes):

Program logic is a tool to describe a series of events for bringing about change and to relate activities to outcomes. It helps to describe how and why a program will work. For some reports, there was an unclear link between the intentions of the program, the activities undertaken, the outcomes recorded and the reflections made by the evaluator. This weakness was identified primarily among those reports authored by project staff. Program logic also assists in determining the evaluability of projects by determining when and how they are ready to be evaluated. (emphasis added, Wilkins & Booker 2009:7)

References and Resources

PPHB (2010) Evaluation framework for health promotion and disease prevention programs. Melbourne: Prevention and Population Health Branch, Victorian Government Department of Health.

Sundra, D.L., Scherer, J. and Anderson, L.A. (2003) A guide on logic model development for CDC's Prevention Research Centers. Atlanta, GA: Prevention Research Centers Program Office, Centers for Disease Control.

Wilkins, R. and Booker, N. (2009) AFAO Health Promotion Evaluation Audit and Analysis, Stage 1--June 2009. Newtown, NSW: Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations.

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this topic, through your own investigations, group preparation, tutorial participation and lectorial explorations, you should be able to:

Distinguish various ways of displaying a ‘program-logic’ narrative for the purpose of evaluating a health education session relating to a two-hour ‘nutrition for life’ lesson.
Judge the effectiveness of activities in terms of developing and demonstrating the achievement of outcomes in the cognitive domain that takes account of various learning styles.
Assess the effectiveness of activities in terms of developing and demonstrating the achievement of outcomes in the behavioural domain that takes account of various learning styles.
Rate the effectiveness of activities in terms of developing and demonstrating the achievement of outcomes in the affective domain that takes account of various learning styles.