1. Assessment and Evaluation of S-L
Lori Vogelgesang & Adrianna Kezar

2. Purpose for assessment
Improve partnership
Improve learning outcomes
Improve student experience
Understand impact
Understand student or faculty experience
Understand partner perspectives

3. Vision for assessment Focus is partnership Focus is school wide
Focus is campus wide
Focus is cross campus comparison
If more local – action based and community based models might be better; also customized tools
If more global – standardized instruments could work better

4. Assessment areas Partnership Learning outcomes Community impact
Faculty and staff or stakeholder outcomes
Higher Education institutional impact
We will focus on two for our presentation

5. Assessment areas- Partnerships
common vision and goals
on–going planning
policies
designated leads and roles
communication
decision-making processes
staffing and resources
Cultural differences

6. Assessment of partnerships – timing and goals
Often done as program unfolds, best not to wait until end
track project implementation efforts
make changes to plans and efforts along the way
understand what went well, what didn’t, and why

7. Assessment of partnership
Sample:

8. Student learning: What are we measuring?
Academic (Content) knowledge
Application of Knowledge
Process: how to navigate a system
Civic engagement within a discipline
Exposure to real-world issues around the academic content
Critical Thinking

9. Conceptualizing Learning Outcomes
Knowledge
Behaviors
Attitudes
Beliefs
Can share HERI work here
Importance of pre-test as a predictor
Expected behaviors change a lot during the young adult years
Knowledge is very specific to the task to the course – harder to generalize UNLESS the knowledge domain itself is very broad (i.e. understand the political process

10. Research and Assessment
Using RESEARCH to guide ASSESSMENT
QUALITY matters for learning
Help students make connections
Understand strengths and limitations of national and more targeted studies
Connect intended goals with the experience you shape for students
Clarity on intended outcome is useful!
Be willing to ‘give up’ some pieces to strengthen others – don’t view SL as an “Add-on”
Quality matters in all learning – for service-learning experiences this includes qualtiy supervision, intentional reflection, helping students make connections

11. Matching Purpose to Approach
Capturing learning
Challenge of measuring learning and determining causation
Pre-post assessment vs. end-of-course/experience
Using portfolios and other qualitative measures
Much of student learning can be hard to assess through traditional instruments – intrapersonal, ethics, power, creativity, leadership – need portfolios and other alternatives for many learning outcomes
Items we assess in typical standardized instruments does not tap into above items and may actual discount much of the learning occurring

12. Resources: Assessment
National service learning clearinghouse
- has library of assessment articles and tools
Corporation for national and community service
Campus Compact -

13. Resources: Service-Learning and Civic Engagement
International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement (IARSCLE):
Spencer Foundation initiative on civic learning and civic action:
CIRCLE:
Talk briefly about some emerging areas of research : civic disposition, for example
Pull some talking points from IARSCLE keynote

14. Existing instruments – tons of books and websites
Compendium of research tools :
United Way on-line community of assessment -
Batenburg, Mark and Denise Clark Pope. The Evaluation Handbook: Practical Tools for Evaluating Service-Learning Programs. Oakland, CA: Youth Service California, 1997.