Assessing Student Learning & Evaluating Impact
In a community-engaged course, you should assess how well students achieved both the content and community-engaged learning outcomes. For content outcomes, your assessment strategies may not need to change when you transform your course to include community-engaged learning. However, you should also evaluate the partnership from the perspectives of the community partner and students, and potentially from the perspective of those who use the partner’s services.
Assessment of Student Learning
Measuring student learning in community-engaged courses may need to include a wider variety of assessments than you typically use, although you can likely continue to use some or all of your existing assessments. When assessing student learning, consider incorporating the following:
- Direct assessment of learning outcomes, such as exams, papers, and projects (with rubrics that align to the course and program outcomes)
- Indirect assessment, such as reflections and exit interviews
- Affective learning, including emotions (how they feel during and after the community engagement) and attitudes or values (how their perspective has changed)
Direct Measures
Directed writings ask students to consider the community experience within the framework of course content. The instructor identifies a section from the textbook or class readings (e.g., quotes, statistics, key concepts) and structures a question for students to answer in 1-2 pages. A list of directed writings can be provided at the beginning of the semester.
Experiential research papers ask students to identify an underlying social issue they have encountered at the community site. Students then research the social issue. Based on their experience and library research, students make recommendations to the agency for future action. Class presentations of the experiential research paper can culminate semester work.
Online discussion is a way to facilitate reflection with the instructor and peers involved in community projects. Students can write weekly summaries and identify critical incidents that occurred at the community site. Instructors can post questions for consideration and topics for directed writings. A log of the e-mail discussions can be printed as data to the group about the learning that occurred from the community experience.
Ethical case studies give students the opportunity to analyze a situation and gain practice in ethical decision making as they choose a course of action. Students write up a case study of an ethical dilemma they have confronted at the community site, including a description of the context, the individuals involved, and the controversy or event that created the ethical dilemma. Case studies are read in class; students discuss the situation and possible responses.
Community engagement portfolios contain evidence of both processes and products completed and ask students to assess their work in terms of the learning objectives of the course. Portfolios might contain any of the following: community engagement contract, weekly log, personal journal, impact statement, directed writings, photo essay, products completed during the community experience (e.g., agency brochure, lesson plans, advocacy letters). Students write an evaluation essay providing a self-assessment of how effectively they met the learning and community objectives of the course.
Class presentations might be three-minute updates that occur each month, or thirty minute updates during the final two class periods during which students present their final analysis of the community activities and offer recommendations to the agency for additional programming. Agency personnel can be invited to hear final presentations.
A weekly log is a simple listing of the activities completed each week at the community site. This is a way to monitor work and provide students with an overview of the contribution they have made during the semester.
Reflection
Without opportunities for students to reflect upon their community work in the context of course content, the learning potential of community projects is limited. There should be some mechanism that encourages students to link their community experience to course content and to reflect upon why the community work is important. Below are some reflection exercises or assignments that are particularly helpful in community-based projects.
This journal includes a set of prompts that ask students to consider their thoughts and reactions and articulate the action they plan to take in the future:
- Describe a significant event that occurred as part of the community experience.
- Why was this event significant to you?
- What did you learn from this experience?
- How will this incident influence your future behavior?
- What new action steps will you take next time?
Each page of the weekly journal entry is divided into three parts; description, analysis, application.
- Description: students describe some aspect of the community experience
- Analysis: students analyze how course content relates to the community experience
- Application: students comment on how the experience and course content can be applied to their personal or professional life
Before students submit their reflective journal, they reread personal entries and, using a highlighter, mark sections of the journal that directly relate to concepts and terms discussed in the text or in class. This makes it easier for both the student and the instructor to identify the academic connections made during the reflection process.
Students describe their personal thoughts and reactions to the service experience on the left page of the journal and write about key issues from class discussion or readings on the right page of the journal. Students then draw arrows indicating relationships between their personal experience and course content.
Students turn in brief note card reflections at the end of each class period. On the cards, students reflect on disciplinary content from class discussion and explain how this information relates to their community involvement. Exit cards can be read by the faculty member to gain a better understanding of student experiences. The faculty member may want to summarize key points and communicate these back to students during the next class.
Evaluation
Evaluation of each community experience is important in determining to what extent the goals and learning objectives of the project were met. Evaluation helps ensure the success of the next community project — reinforcing design and implementation practices.
Community projects should be evaluated from the perspectives of the community partner and students. The Division of Outreach, Engagement and Regional Development can provide you with valuable support for evaluating the short and long-term outcomes of the project.
Community Partner
Throughout the partnership, engage in ongoing conversation with your partner about how the partnership is going. Some questions to answer during the partnership:
- To what extent is the partnership meeting their expectations?
- Are students performing at the appropriate level?
- What changes might be needed to meet their needs?
After the partnership has ended, or at significant milestones, you can measure the impact that the partnership has had. Your partner can help to define the metrics that are important to them and are appropriate for the focus of the project, such as increased services or resources provided to the community, decreased cost, satisfaction of their clients, etc.
Students
At the end of the course, you can collect information from your students about the experience, either verbally, via a survey, or in writing. Questions might include:
- To what extent did the experience meet their expectations?
- What might have made the experience better?
- What community needs did your work fulfill?
- What community needs were not addressed?
- What changes would you suggest to improve the experience?
Portions of this guide were developed by the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. They have been adapted for NIU by the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning and are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.