SIMAD UNIVERSITY
ASSIGNMENT FOR MONITORING AND EVALUATIONS
Subject: ASSIGNMENT FOR MONITORING AND EVALUATIONS
By Ibrahim Abdi Hassan
Q: 1 EXPLIAN WHY M & E INFORMS GOOD PRACTICE.
Monitoring and evaluation are essential to any project or program. Through this
process, organizations collect and analyze data, and determine if a project/program
has fulfilled its goals. Monitoring begins right away and extends through the
duration of the project. Evaluation comes after and assesses how well the program
performed. Every organization should have an M&E system in place. Here are ten
reasons why:
M&E results in better transparency and accountability
Because organizations track, analyze, and report on a project during the monitoring
phase, there’s more transparency. Information is freely circulated and available to
stakeholders, which gives them more input on the project. A good monitoring
system ensures no one is left in the dark. This transparency leads to better
accountability. With information so available, organizations need to keep
everything above board. It’s also much harder to deceive stakeholders.
M&E helps organizations catch problems early
Projects never go perfectly according to plan, but a well-designed M&E helps the
project stay on track and perform well. M&E plans help define a project’s scope,
establish interventions when things go wrong, and give everyone an idea of how
those interventions affect the rest of the project. This way, when problems
inevitably arise, a quick and effective solution can be implemented.
M&E helps ensure resources are used efficiently
Every project needs resources. How much cash is on hand determines things like
how many people work on a project, the project’s scope, and what solutions are
available if things get off course. The information collected through monitoring
reveals gaps or issues, which require resources to address. Without M&E, it
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wouldn’t be clear what areas need to be a priority. Resources could easily be
wasted in one area that isn’t the source of the issue. Monitoring and evaluation
helps prevent that waste.
M&E helps organizations learn from their mistakes
Mistakes and failures are part of every organization. M&E provides a detailed
blueprint of everything that went right and everything that went wrong during a
project. Thorough M&E documents allow organizations to pinpoint specific
failures, as opposed to just guessing what caused problems. Often, organizations
can learn more from their mistakes than from their successes.
M&E improves decision-making
Data should drive decisions. M&E processes provide the essential information
needed to see the big picture. After a project wraps up, an organization with good
M&E can identify mistakes, successes, and things that can be adapted and
replicated for future projects. Decision-making is then influenced by what was
learned through past monitoring and evaluation.
M&E helps organizations stay organized
Developing a good M&E plan requires a lot of organization. That process in itself
is very helpful to an organization. It has to develop methods to collect, distribute,
and analyze information. Developing M&E plans also requires organizations to
decide on desired outcomes, how to measure success, and how to adapt as the
project goes on, so those outcomes become a reality. Good organizational skills
benefit every area of an organization.
M&E helps organizations replicate the best projects/programs
Organizations don’t like to waste time on projects or programs that go nowhere or
fail to meet certain standards. The benefits of M&E that we’ve described above –
such as catching problems early, good resource management, and informed
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decisions – all result in information that ensures organizations replicate what’s
working and let go of what’s not.
M&E encourages diversity of thought and opinions
With monitoring and evaluation, the more information the better, Every team
member offers an important perspective on how a project or program is doing.
Encouraging diversity of thought and exploring new ways of obtaining feedback
enhance the benefits of M&E. With M&E tools like surveys, they’re only truly
useful if they include a wide range of people and responses. In good monitoring
and evaluation plans, all voices are important.
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Q: 2 WHAT IS FUNDAMENTAL SIMILARITIES AND DEFFERENCES BETWEEN
MONITORING AND EVALUATION?
A: Monitoring is periodic and continuous, conducted after program initiation and
during the duration of that program or intervention. The data acquired is
primarily input- and output-focused and is generally used as an ongoing strategy to
determine efficiency of implementation. For example, an NGO delivering training
for school teachers might track monthly the number of sites visited, trainings
delivered, the number of teachers trained, etc.
Key questions to consider for monitoring strategy include:
What key metrics can give us an idea of the state of implementation?
Do we have lean data collection and analysis processes?
How efficiently are we implementing our program(s)?
Based on the data acquired, do we need to make any changes to our program(s)?
A monitoring plan usually focuses on the processes occurring during the
implementation of a program. These can include tracking the following during
defined periods of time:
When programs were implemented
The location or region in which programs were delivered
Which departments or teams delivered activities
How often certain activities occurred
Number of people reached through a programs’ activities
Number of products delivered (or number of hours of a service)
Costs of program implementation
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B: WHAT IS EVALUATION?
A program evaluation focuses on the performance of the intervention and is
principally used to determine whether beneficiaries really have benefited due to
those activities. It generally looks at outcomes, assessing whether a change
occurred between the outset and termination of an intervention (or at least between
two specific time periods). Ideally, that change should be able to be attributed to
the activities undertaken.
Key questions that an evaluation considers:
Did our activities make a measurable difference in our target beneficiary group(s)?
How much can the changes observed be attributed to our activities?
What contributed to our success (or failure)?
Can we scale observed changes? Or replicate in other contexts?
Did we achieve impacts in a cost-effective way?
Have any unexpected results occurred?
At the outset of a program it is important to acquire baseline data, which will be
used to compare progress at every evaluation interval and at the end of the program
period. When thinking about how to measure for outcomes (changes that have
occurred), consider the following key elements:
Understand how your inputs, outputs, activities, etc. generate change (see Theory
of Change)
Design your evaluation plan (i.e. research plan) before launching a program or
intervention
Use outcomes that are relevant for your beneficiaries
Use data collection methods that fit the needs of beneficiaries and the skills of your
employees
Incentivize beneficiaries to provide you with data at key intervals
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Q: 3 the deference between formative assessment and summative assessment
A: Formative assessment is to monitor student learning and provide ongoing
feedback to staff and students. It is assessment for learning. If designed
appropriately, it helps students identify their strengths and weaknesses, can enable
students to improve their self-regulatory skills so that they manage their education
in a less haphazard fashion than is commonly found. It also provides information
to the faculty about the areas students are struggling with so that sufficient support
can be put in place.
B: Formative assessment can be tutor led, peer or self-assessment. Formative
assessments have low stakes and usually carry no grade, which in some instances
may discourage the students from doing the task or fully engaging with it.
The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an
instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. Summative
assessments often have high stakes and are treated by the students as the priority
over formative assessments. However, feedback from summative assessments can
be used formatively by both students and faculty to guide their efforts and
activities in subsequent courses.
Q: 4 Formative assessments is an on-going method of evaluation that helps
teachers to monitor learners' progress and identify any challenges that students are
facing as they learn. It includes a series of quick-fire tests that provide on-time
feedback on students' performance.
Summative assessments pay attention to the outcome as measured by a
performance marker and while formative assessment focuses on the on-going
learning process. Due to its focus on the on-going learning experience, formative
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assessment encourages changes and modifications to the learning process based on
the feedback from the program participants.
Purpose
The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate the student's understanding of the
course and the course materials within a specific period. On the other hand, the
primary purpose of formative assessment is to observe students as they learn and
get real-time feedback on their knowledge and experiences.
Formative assessments use different tools and methods to monitor knowledge and
skill-acquisition at different points in the learning curve. Summative assessment,
on the flip side, is all about grading the quality of a student's knowledge based on
his or her performance.
They answer both: In formative assessments answers the evaluation of how
someone is learning material throughout a course. While Summative assessments
answers evaluation of how much someone has learned throughout a course.
End
