Evaluation Hints & Tips
It is important to take a moment mid-way through our journey, or at the completion of key milestones or events, to take the time to reflect on how things went, and to evaluate whether our objectives have been met, or are being met. This process should be more than a check-box exercise, and not done simply to make a funder, investor, or outside party happy. It is rather an opportunity to check-in with your progress in comparison with your aims, and to make adjustments along the way where needed. And ultimately, it is a good way to hold a leadership team or partnership accountable to those who have a stake in the issue.
It is therefore important to include key stakeholders in your evaluation process, to gather crucial feedback and insights, but also to ensure that we are being inclusive and equitable in our actions.
The Association for Science and Discovery Centres in the UK advises its members and partners to take a strategic, long-term approach to setting up evaluation frameworks, and to assist them in this has developed handy list of hints and tips. These aim to help ensure that the expectations of stakeholders and participants are be adequately explored and met.
"Enabling all stakeholders to take part in the evaluation process in an open and transparent way is the key to embedding the learning process for all participants. It reduces the risk that participants become subjects of someone else’s observation and research or are ‘left hanging’ at the end of a project without suitable feedback or understanding of their participation."
The first step is to think about who should be involved in the reflection and evaluation process,
Make sure that you have clearly stated your aims and objectives as a project or initiative,
Discuss these with key partners and stakeholders from the very beginning, to ensure that their aims and objectives are also accounted for, and that your activity planning is well aligned with these aims,
It can be helpful to lay out a logical series of steps that describe how to achieve the impacts or outcomes you are aiming for, both the aims and those steps can thus form the basis for evaluation of whether things are on track
SOURCE: https://inclusion.sciencecentres.org.uk/evaluating-inclusion/starting-out/
The UK Association for Science & Discover Centres Evaluation Hints & Tips
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