Teaching Evaluation Through Community-Engaged Learning Courses

Abstract

This paper describes a framework for educating future evaluators and users of evaluation through community-engaged, experiential learning courses and offers practical guidance about how such a class can be structured. This approach is illustrated via a reflective case narrative describing how an introductory, undergraduate class at a mid-size, public university in the northwest partnered with a community agency. In the class, students learned and practiced evaluation principles in the context of a Parents as Teachers home visiting program, actively engaged in course assignments designed to support the program's evaluation needs, and presented meta-evaluative findings and recommendations for future evaluation work to the community partner to conclude the semester. This community-engaged approach to teaching evaluation anchors student learning in an applied context, promotes social engagement, and enables students to contribute to knowledge about effective human action, as outlined in the American Evaluation Association's Mission.

Undergraduate certificate in community‐based assessment and evaluation

“…The fifth course, Applied Program Evaluation, is a practicum in which students gain practical experience by assuming developmentally appropriate roles alongside the instructor in an actual evaluation. The evaluation literature already contains some examples of how to engage undergraduate students in experiential learning exercises (Alkin & Christie, 2002) and how to incorporate community‐engaged learning (Whitmore, 2022) and service‐learning (Warner, 2020) into undergraduate courses. Applied Program Evaluation is unique because the course is embedded within a larger program of study.…”