Evaluation of the Educational Scholarship Festival over the Past Seven Years from 2008 to 2014 in Iran based on the CIPP Model

*Corresponding author: Sousan Hassanzadeh Salmasi, Email: SALMASISH@yahoo.com © 2015 The Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. Article History: Received: 17 Agu 2015 Accepted: 29 Nov 2015 ePublished: 1 Feb 2016


Introduction
The main objectives of the National Festival Secretariat located in the office for faculty affairs in the Educational Deputy of Ministry of Health and Medical Education are as follows: identification of desirable academic processes; enhancement of current educational Scholarship projects in the universities; innovation; modification of processes, facilities, equipment, and teaching aids; and attention to the conduct of educational Scholarship projects at universities and institutions of higher education in order to appreciate them.Holding this festival leads to the identification and introduction of faculty members, promotion of desirable academic educational Scholarship projects and participation in the national educational festival.Educational Scholarship projects include all activities of learning done by faculty members to enhance the quality and product of education.Processes in various educational fields, including clinical and basic sciences, training in fields and new methods of evaluation are identified and sent to universities.Introducing the leading educational Scholarship projects without limitations in procedures and that are irrelevant to the current processes is permissible, but individuals cannot introduce more than two educational Scholarship projects.There is no limitation for institutions producing educational tools and educational aids to introduce their leading processes. 1,2ased on the literature review, and considering the costs and opportunities that have been allocated to the educational Scholarship festivals annually, the lack of a comprehensive evaluation in the past seven years, and the importance of an evaluation for improvement, in this study we decided to evaluate the festivals using the CIPP model.The researchers chose this model, which was designed by Stufflebeam at Ohio University in the United States in 1970s; because this evaluation model is one of the most influential systematic models we have. 3The CIPP model is a comprehensive framework used to direct the evaluation of programs, projects, products, institutions and systems. 4he main reason for using this evaluation model is its comprehensiveness and further application, because some information can be obtained in terms of desirable objectives of the development plan, desirable operational programs and projects and desirable executive results of the program to help improve academic activities and obtain the university's desired efficiency. 5,6terials and Methods This is a cross-sectional study.The data was collected through a questionnaire based on the CIPP evaluation model designed by the National Faculty Member Secretariat.This researcher-made questionnaire has been designed in two parts.The first part includes the information about the participants in the study: respondent post, role in festival, history of attending the festival, and the executor or cooperator of top process and the second part contains questions on four areas of the CIPP model including context, input, process and output.In order to determine the reliability of the questionnaire, the questionnaire draft was given to a number of educational experts and festival practitioners, and all the questions were examined in terms of transparency, simplicity, relevance and importance.The comments were applied and its validity was assessed using Cronbach's alpha (R =0.8).Purposive sampling was used in this study, so that lists of all process owners, festival scientific committee members, festival officials and practitioners, educational deputies and heads of departments participating at every festival for seven years were prepared.The number of participants enrolled in the census and given questionnaires was 155 and 120 people completed and returned the questionnaires.The researcher used purposive sampling and enrolled process owners in this study to get better benefits from the possibility of recall.It should be noted that, based on the results, the participants in this study were very interested in education and have been involved in educational Scholarship projects and festivals in recent years.Finally, the data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics, averages, percentages and analysis of the significant relationships between the results and the participants.

Ethical Consideration
This Study does not deal with any sensitive information pertaining to human, invasive procedures and informed consent.

Results
The results showed that 7.8% of participants were educational deputies of the involved faculty members, 3.1% were directors of the Medical Education Development Center (over 6 years), 1.6% was educational experts and 87.5% were faculty members, of whom 43.1% were members of refereeing committees in previous festivals.In total, 80% of participants had taken part in more than two festivals and 63.9% had participated in providing processes.In a general overview of the festival evaluation, the results were as follows: context (mean 44.92 ± 29.25), input (mean 47.90 ± 34.12), and product (mean 42.56 ± 27.1) were evaluated as moderate and process (mean 58.36 ± 30.35) was evaluated as good.Overall satisfaction of the participants with the festival was also assessed as good (mean 68.71± 24.02).The results of the survey in different areas are shown in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 from the viewpoint of the participants.(The scores are between 0 and 100).

Conclusion
The results of the study show some weaknesses in various areas.
In the context area, holding an annual educational Scholarship festival to improve the allocation of resources in education has worked poorly.However, in other cases, such as creating educational motivation, enhancing research in education, promoting relationships among faculty members, creating a spirit of participation to improve education quality and encouraging the participation of faculty members in the production and implementation of educational Scholarship projects and motivation to improve the quality of education at the university, the effectiveness of the festival was moderate.Based on the results, motivation is very important in the above-mentioned categories.Because motivation is something personal, situational, permanent, timeless, variable and complex, it is not possible to issue valid and definite rules and instructions on individual motivation.However, it is desirable to plan for motivation by considering the characteristics of the individuals involved and the educational environment as well as by providing intrinsic rewards such as the enjoyment of teaching, improving the organizational climate, encouraging empowerment, providing job security and promoting responsibility among faculty members through festivals and other similar programs. 7n the input area, holding the annual educational Scholarship festival has performed poorly only in providing adequate funding for research in education, but in other cases, including the appropriate educational regulations, workshops, providing adequate funding and resources for the production of processes, developing a systematic evaluation program and using experts, the results were moderate.

Table 3. The frequency distribution of comments of participants -Product
Since the input evaluation is related to judging resources and strategies needed to achieve major and minor goals and information gathered during this stage of evaluation, it should help decision makers to choose the best possible strategies and resources despite the specific limitations. 8n addition, considering that participants in this study evaluated the input area as moderate, it seems that a closer look at this area is required in order to identify strengths and weaknesses and provide possible strategies and resources as well as research on these strategies' effectiveness in achieving better and more effective outputs.
In the process area, the educational Scholarship festival performed well, and the results of the majority of activities were evaluated as intermediate-high.Since the evaluation procedure involves monitoring the implementation of activities and collecting data on the decision-making during the implementation of activities, 9 and regarding the fact that the process assessment is, in fact, deciding on the methodology and implementation of the program, 10 using the results of this study in the process area will help with restructuring plans and methods related to the process for a better and more effective festival in the coming years.
In the output area, the festival activities were rated lowmoderate on increasing student satisfaction with education quality improvement, increasing educational motivation of the faculty, improving faculty relations, creating an atmosphere for the commercialization of products, creating an atmosphere to attract and direct investments in science production, student satisfaction with the faculty teaching method and increasing the production of educational rules and regulations.But in other cases, this area was rated moderate, including faculty members and student satisfaction with improving the educational quality, increasing motivation, performance, improvement in teacher-student relations, creating spaces for knowledge production, improving current processes, appreciating and supporting processes, increasing educational effectiveness and improving evaluation methods.This study showed that the educational Scholarship festival failed to achieve some of the key objectives of the festival such as increasing education quality improvement and educational motivation of the faculty, investments in education and science production and educational rules and regulations.If these goals are accomplished, there can be substantial and long-term developments in the field of medical education.Therefore, it is necessary to study the areas of context, input and process of the festival to achieve the cited objectives.
In addition, the following areas were all rated good: the total average satisfaction with the festival, secretariat performance, refereeing the processes and products domestically and nationally, and festival qualitative and quantitative progress.Some factors, such as promoting information on new missions of faculty members, departments, schools and universities; lack of competent management in departments; and lack of attention to intellectual rights of faculty members and their teaching oversight are of great importance in the participation of faculty members in the educational Scholarship festival and new educational Scholarship products and processes.As it turns out, it is necessary for university administration to provide support to strengthen decision-making in departments and schools so that a sense of responsibility and accountability can be fostered.In addition, evaluations to improve the quality of educational activities should be distributed among all, thus creating a common sense of purpose and values among faculty members.University administrators can utilize the festival to create a consulting system so that faculty members are employed for this purpose in different ways either within or outside the university in order to increase the faculty member participation in getting the festival to reach its desired level. 11Attention should be paid to emphasizing the main tasks of educational authorities to create areas to increase vitality in educational settings and enhance positive beliefs related to education improvement for a sense of responsibility and awareness through various educational workshops in the field of providing educational Scholarship projects.It is hoped that some positive steps can be taken to improve the quality of the festival with the guidance and support of university authorities in the coming years.

Table 1 .
The frequency distribution of comments of participants -Context

Table 2 .
The frequency distribution of comments of participants -Input

Table 4 .
The frequency distribution of comments of participants -Process

Table 5 .
The frequency distribution of comments of participants -Overall level of satisfactionManagers can use the output evaluation in deciding to continue or modify the program, and it aims to measure, interpret and judge the results obtained from the program.