140 - Teaching Evaluation through Community-Engaged Partnership

Abstract Information: Through this think tank, we hope to engage those who are teaching the next generation of evaluators by engaging external community partners with evaluation courses. Specifically, the questions we plan to pose are: What are best practices for engaging a community partner when teaching evaluation to students? What are the challenges and opportunities of this approach, particularly when thinking about amplifying and empowering voices in evaluation? The facilitators will briefly share how our courses use semester-long collaborative projects to develop evaluation toolkits for community partners. We will address questions and considerations underlying instructional design utilizing community partnership. For instance, regarding initial planning, questions addressed will include: How are community partners identified? What makes for a “good” community partner fit, and what happens in a community partner proves challenging for a course or for students? How is the scope of student projects determined? What are the tradeoffs between having students focus on designing and evaluation and/or having students focus on implementing an evaluation? Regarding the structure of partnership, questions include: Do students engage with community partners individually or in student teams/groups? Do you have one community partner engage with multiple students or teams, or one community partner per student/team - and what are the benefits and challenges in each? Regarding format of engagement between instructors, community partners and students, questions include: To what degree does or can an instructor directly engage with a partner and learn about their programming and context particularly if there are multiple partners in the course, and how does instructor knowledge of partner perspective/work (or lack thereof) affect their ability to provide students with effective feedback? How is community partners’ perspective on students’ work incorporated into grading, if at all?

Following discussion decision-making processes for questions outlined above, facilitators will implement a live poll to determine key areas of desired further discussion among the group. These will then be addressed in breakout groups where participants to share their experiences in teaching evaluation, including rationales for or against working with external community partners and perspective on key areas of interest, as identified. During discussion, breakout groups have the ability to take notes and share resources in an online shared space (e.g., Google Docs), which will be available after the session and—ideally!—support those interested in integrating community partnership in teaching evaluation. We hope to uplift practices that instructors have found to be particularly successful, how challenges have been navigated, and opportunities for added and/or varied engagement approaches. The session will close with a collective reflection, including a discussion of take-home messages and desired supports when working with community partners while teaching evaluation. We will additionally gather contact information for any session participants that would like to remain engaged in these topics ongoing, with potential to form a community of practice.