Discovery Center Evaluation Plan

Mission and Vision
The Discovery Center for Evaluation, Research, and Professional Learning, located at Miami University, serves as Ohio’s only comprehensive Center for research, evaluation, and professional learning in S.T.E.M. fields. The Discovery Center has the mission to provide comprehensive, high-quality research, evaluation, assessment, and professional development services, to improve teaching and learning outcomes for all learners. By increasing S.T.E.M. learning outcomes a culture of scientific curiosity can be fostered.

Goals
To accomplish its’ mission, the Discovery Center is committed to collaboration, advocacy, and strategic innovation to improve teaching and learning for all. These three commitments lead to the Discovery Center’s

Therefore, all legitimate groups should be represented in the evaluation of the Center (b2), with more weight being given to primary users (b1). This requires a balancing of the stakeholder selection for participation. Due to its more limited interaction with specific projects of the Center, the College, the latent stakeholder, should take a smaller consultation role (c1) in the evaluation process, if the evaluation process is to be of a formative nature. On the other hand, teachers, expectant stakeholders, Center Director, and the Coordinators of Planning and Communications and Operations and Finance Center, the definitive stakeholders, take a deeper participation (c2) in the evaluation due to the greater involvement and interaction with the results of the projects that come out of the Center. Due to the complexity of the evaluation of the Center, the evaluation should primarily be research controlled (a1) at the macro level. This is not to say that teachers will not have an influence in expressing their perceived benefits from projects of the Center and give insight on how to improve the Center’s

Game theory attempts to explain social interaction and how each player and player strategies influence the payoffs for each player in every possible profile of strategy choices. In a simplistic explanation, Game theory in this case tries to predict the findings of Center related projects, such as the improvements in teaching and learning outcomes based on the Center and stakeholder’s interactions, the political objectives, financial limitations, interest in outcomes, other similar variables of each party (strategy), and the perceived benefit (payoff) of each strategy for each party. These factors interact to determine the amount the findings of the project are used (win/loss), the magnitude of influence that the findings pose (reward/punishment), and how effective (profit/cost) it is to implement these outcomes in an attempt to improve teaching and learning outcomes. Interactions between parties can be thought of as Games. Games can end in one of the following