This course has been designed with the philosophy that any course learning community is part of a larger community and that the C&I 490 EIT learning community has the potential to reach out to that larger community. With this in mind, the course centers around the idea that our course community is an "evaluation center" complete with its own online newsletter, evaluation teams, and projects, both virtual and real. Therefore, each student in C&I 490 EIT is considered to be a member of the evaluation center.

The center facilitators, Chip Bruce, Michelle Hinn, and Kevin Leander, have assigned each member of the evaluation center to a team. For team identification purposes, each team has been given the name of a famous artist. This reflects the sentiments of Lee Cronbach who stated, "Evaluation is an Art."

The course has been divided into seven sections, with each section covering a two-week activity period for the center. Each section contains a discussion of the section's topic, a reflection on readings related to that particular section, and team activities and commentary based on the center's progress on an "assigned" virtual case study. Team- and discussion group-based work will reflect the majority (2/3) of each center member's grade.

In addition to the team-based work of the center, center members are required to complete some individual project work. Center members are required to conduct a formative evaluation project in addition to the team- or group-based work that they do. The individual work will account for 1/3 of each center member's grade.

On Saturday, November 21st, the center will be holding a live symposium, consisting of poster presentations by the center members. The presentations will highlight the individual (or small group) formative evaluation projects conducted by the center members throughout the semester. The poster presentations count as part of each center member's individual work.

All work that the center conducts throughout the semester will be reflected in the center newsletter that will be made available on the Web at the end of the semester. This newsletter will contain section introductions, videos and interview transcripts of discussions with a variety of evaluation professionals, evaluation team work including discussion and case study summaries, and will host special events such as portions of the evaluation project portfolios.

C&I 490 EIT is sponsored by the Curriculum, Technology and Educational Reform (CTER) Masters Degree Program, the Technologies for Learning Program (TLP), and the Center for Writing Studies. Additionally, this course has been used to satisfy course requirements for students undertaking the Evaluation RMAC in the College of Education.