Student Learning Outcomes of Community-Based Research

Posted by on April 30, 2012

A research team based at Princeton University has developed a survey instrument to assess the student learning outcomes of community-based research (CBR) and made the instrument available for your use.  The survey captures five dimensions of outcomes, including academic skills, educational experience, civic engagement, professional skills and personal growth.  Development and testing of the instrument were supported by the Corporation for National and Community Service under Learn and Serve America’s grant to Princeton University in partnership with the Bonner Foundation.  More information about the survey’s development and testing is available in last June’s issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, http://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/index.php/jheoe/article/view/534.

The survey is available online as part of a national study.  The researchers seek to quantify student learning outcomes and to research the influence of various practices and academic factors on what students learn from CBR experiences.  They hope to provide data and information useful to practitioners and the field.  This study has the potential to assess learning outcomes at the student, course, and institutional levels and is approved by Princeton University’s Institutional Research Board for Human Subjects.  The online survey assesses CBR student learning outcomes for cumulative CBR experiences, and you are encouraged to invite your students to participate.  Princeton will collect the data, perform the analyses, and report the results back to faculty members and institutions whose students participate.

If you would like more information about the survey and how it will work please see http://www.princeton.edu/cbli/student-cbr-survey/ or contact tthorme@princeton.edu.