Introduction to Module 4

Measurable outcomes…impacts…assessments…Yikes!

For many, the idea of measuring the effects of your program is the single most daunting element of your work! With all that educators are juggling today, evaluation should not be painful. In fact, learning more about your efforts, with the hope of improving your approach and telling your story to others, can be very rewarding.

In a perfect world, we would all have had detailed course work in program evaluation, or we would be working with a highly trained program evaluation specialist. This typically isn’t the case, and many of our plates are too full to take the time to reflect and plan for evaluation.

With this in mind, Cornell's Garden-Based Learning Program has created an evaluation toolkit, with tools you can use in your programs even while you are on the run. Although this approach should not replace a thorough, long term evaluation plan, it can provide you with very valuable information that you can use to improve a program, report results, and plan for the future.

Ideally, evaluation

  • Begins when the program starts; in other words, before you begin your program you have a rough plan in place for how you’ll be measuring the desired outcomes in your participants.
  • Is on-going.  Throughout your program, you’ll check with your plan to see how it’s progressing, and perhaps modify it if you want more information. 
  • Includes at least three methods; this helps to strengthen validity. 
  • Is unbiased, objective, and neutral.  

Learn more about evaluation guidelines, surveys, interviews, observation, creative expression and more at Cornell's GBL pages on evaluation. Be sure to click on the different links on these pages to see sample tools you can adapt for your program.

https://gardening.cals.cornell.edu/program-tools/evaluation-toolkit/