Service-Learning Evaluation: An Overview

Posted by on January 10, 2011

Learn and Serve America, the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse, and the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement are pleased to announce the upcoming free webinar, “Service-Learning Evaluation: An Overview,” Thursday, January 20, from 3:00 – 4:00 pm Eastern time.

Space is limited, so register today.

http://www.servicelearning.org/webinar-signup

Description:

Rigorous evaluations can be helpful to service-learning practitioners. Effective evaluations can document outcomes, identify program design characteristics associated with outcomes, and provide data to use to improve service-learning practice. This one-hour seminar will provide information about the basics of evaluation – how to develop evaluation questions from logic models, choices for evaluation design and the benefits and disadvantages associated with each, developing and/or identifying appropriate instruments for data collection, data collection strategies and issues (including human subjects protections), and reporting. A “case study” example, using a cluster evaluation of eight Learn and Serve America state grantees and two national studies, will be provided.

Presenters:

Dr. Shelley H. Billig is Vice President of RMC Research and an active evaluator and researcher in the field of service-learning. She was one of the founders of the International Association of Service-Learning Research and Community Engagement (IARSLCE), has won the John Glenn Scholar award and the IARSLCE Senior Researcher of the Year awards, has co-edited or authored 12 books and dozens of articles on service-learning and other educational reform issues, and helped to develop the K-12 standards and indicators of service-learning quality.  She currently serves as the K-12 Senior Program Advisor for the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse and the lead qualitative researcher for the Broad Prize in Urban Education. For more information about Dr. Billig or RMC Research Corporation, see http://www.rmcdenver.com.

Moderator, Scott Richardson, is the K-12 Program Coordinator for Learn and Serve America at the Corporation for National and Community Service. He is responsible for Learn and Serve’s programmatic and grant-making activities in school-based service-learning. Formerly, Scott was the Director of Research and Design at Earth Force and Director of Curriculum at the Close Up Foundation, where he conducted civics and service-learning workshops for teachers and students in the US, Russia, Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands.