Abstract
This thesis reports on the evaluation of departmental resource centres in higher education in Great Britain. The aims of the project were to: (a) evaluate the educational significance of departmental resource centres, (b) help in the establishment of a resource centre, (c) assess the effectiveness of Six Category Intervention Analysis applied to interviewing, (d) synthesise the concept of educational evaluation, and (e) conceptualise departmental resource centres. The literature review considers educational technology, educational innovations with particular reference to departmental resource centres and evaluation itself. The evaluation results are reported through accounts of two case studies and a national survey of departmental resource centres. In the main these showed that departmental resource centres are a means of augmenting the departments' teaching and learning as well as of creating opportunities for further growth of individuals and of departments: they contribute to students becoming more self-directed learners and to staff becoming more competent professionals. The development of a preliminary scheme for a departmental resource centre is documented; this showed that for a department which makes extensive use of resources someone in a fulltime capacity is desirable and that for the volume of resources involved the best way to approach the cataloguing is through automated means. The application of Six Category Intervention Analysis suggests that researches who use the interview technique should be trained in this powerful skill. A synthesis of evaluation, which is within the framework of the illuminative approach, is developed to resolve some of the contradictions between the traditional and innovative approaches. Finally the concept of "departmental resource centre" is formulated in terms of the functions of evaluation as set out in the synthesis. It proposes a new definition to overcome the shortcomings of previous work and places equal emphasis on the provision of physical resources and the involvement of the human resources. The general tendencies, functionings and particularities of departmental resource centres are also presented.