After creating, developing, and eventually proposing a partnership project to be done with Sustainable Northwest, there is a question of how our group will go about assessing the success of our endeavors. We have laid out a number of goals for this project, all of which we hope can be met throughout the duration of our partnership with the organization. In terms of assessing how well these goals are met, there are two ways that we can do this: summatively and formatively. The former is done to determine to what extent project goals have been reached at present, while the latter is done to help better reach project goals in future.
As a reminder, our group has proposed an academic workshop, one in which Sustainable Northwest might work with organizations outside of their current operations to deliver a workshop-style curriculum to students across upper high school to college. In terms of a summative assessment, the success of this can be measured in a few ways! First and perhaps foremost, the number of participating students active within each workshop – and perhaps even the amount of recurring students – can be a great indicator of the relative success of our project. Over the course of these workshops and their deliveries, we also hope that new partnerships might be forged between Sustainable Northwest and the other organizations who might be working hard to deliver such a workshop.
In terms of a formative assessment, the easiest way to gauge how we might complete our goals in the future is through a series of surveys. The first survey, which would be taken directly after the workshop’s conclusion, would see the participants answering questions concerning the content of the workshop, the organizations involved, and of course, how much they enjoyed the way the workshop was handled. Another survey might be distributed later on to assess whether or not the participants have become involved with any of the organizations present at the workshop. Lastly, keeping track of how many new, fruitful projects are created as a result of having a new audience can be a wonderful way of assessing the impact of an academic workshop.