Continuing from the literature review that I was performing during Week 1, I focused on completing the literature review phase of my project during Week 2. Specifically, during last week, I was able to use Google mainly to find white papers and grey literature that provided information regarding the best practices and practical examples for evaluating the effectiveness of education/training resources. Based on the information I found via Google and after my weekly review with my mentors, we decided that we also wanted to expand the literature review to include more scholarly publications. As a result, I reviewed the reference sections of the eight peer-reviewed articles that I gathered during Week 1 in order to determine any additional articles that could also provide relevant formation regarding the methods and guidance for evaluating the effectiveness of education/training resource. I was able to identify nine more articles and had added them to our project documentation accordingly.
Additionally, after reviewing the white papers, the grey literature, as well as the peer-reviewed articles, the available guidance and best practices continued to indicate that a questionnaire/survey might be the most appropriate evaluation tool for DataONE to solicit and to receive user feedback regarding DataONE’s training/education resources. This was mainly due to the fact that DataONE could offer its training/education resources both in-person and via the Internet, and a questionnaire/survey could be adapted easily and administered quickly according to the training/education format. In addition, a digital questionnaire/survey could be more convenient in terms of sharing and allowing other organizations to reuse the evaluation tool. Consequently, I also performed a literature review to collate the guidance and best practices regarding survey design and development. For this literature review, I again focused on using Google for locating white papers and grey literature (the keywords used for the search were: “survey questionnaire design best practices” and “best practice in designing online questionnaires surveys”). This was so that we could look into compiling the lessons learned that had already been made available through previous experiences instead of trying to examine fully the principles of research design. As a result of the literature review, I was able to find 25 different documents, and I will be reviewing with my mentors during our next weekly meeting the survey design and development recommendation that I was able to summarize based on the literature review.
Finally, making progress with the other key final output of this project, I was able to complete the first revision of the “Introduction” and the “Background” sections of the project paper. My mentors and I intended the project paper to document the research, development, and testing process of the evaluation tool, so that this experience could be shared with not only the DataONE community, but also the data management community as a whole. As the project continues, I will be adding additional sections to this first revision as appropriate.
Next week, I will begin the process of drafting the first version of the questionnaire/survey that will be used as the evaluation tool for DataONE’s training/evaluation resources.