Program Design and Evaluation

Welcome to the Program Design and Evaluation course! By the end of this course, you will gain an in-depth understanding of the conceptual and methodological steps in designing and evaluating a program or a project to operationalize a public policy initiative. You will learn how a program aims to allocate resources to its intended beneficiaries by engaging multiple stakeholders. You will analyze its necessity when a market, generally seen as the most efficient mechanism to allocate resources, fails to do the needful in the desired measure. You will further explore that the beneficiary of a program or a project may be an individual, a firm, or even a collective community, an organization, and different layers of a state. You will analyze that while a program or a project involves collective public action, it is necessary to ensure that such action delivers the desired outcomes. The course focuses on how program design entails identifying the required collective actions relevant for translating a public policy initiative into desired social outcomes, even if such actions may succeed or fail to deliver the desired outcomes. You will gain insights into how program design, implementation, and evaluation feedback help make a program or a project successful in meeting its stated objectives.