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Evidence Based Program Design - Focus on Student Learning and Community Capacity Building

During the High-Impact Initiative meetings, the teams utilize an outcome-based planning process. 

Student Learning Outcomes:

Projects are created around an interrelated set of student learning outcomes and community impact outcomes.

For student learning outcomes, we draw on the work of the VALUE Initiative (Valid Assessment of Learning in Undergraduate Education) of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.  Sixteen rubrics were developed by teams of faculty and practitioners.  The Bonner Foundation was involved in the development of the Civic Engagement Rubric through the involvement of Ariane Hoy in that team.  These rubrics have been vetted and modified through the inclusion of colleges and universities across the United States.  They are often tied to authentic assessment, using e-portfolios, internships, and capstones.  

Visit the AAC&U VALUE Initiative to learn more or download rubrics or publications:  http://www.aacu.org/value/index.cfm 

We are finding, so far, that four rubrics are particularly helpful for program design.  These may be modified by teams to integrate with the high-impact projects that they are planning:

• Civic Engagement Rubric: Civic engagement is "working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes."  In addition, civic engagement encompasses actions wherein individuals participate in activities of personal and public concern that are both individually life enriching and socially beneficial to the community.  Learning indicators include:

• Diversity of communities and cultures
• Analysis of knowledge
• Civic identity and commitment
• Civic communication
• Civic action and reflection
• Civic contexts and structures
   
• Integrative Learning Rubric:  Integrative learning is an understanding and a disposition that a student builds across the curriculum and co-curriculum, from making simple connections among ideas and experiences to synthesizing and transferring learning to new, complex situations within and beyond the campus.  Learning indicators include:

• Connections to experience
• Connections to discipline
• Transfer
• Integrated communication
• Reflection and self-assessment 

• Creative Thinking Rubric:  Creative thinking is both the capacity to combine or synthesize existing ideas, images, or expertise in original ways and the experience of thinking, reacting, and working in an imaginative way characterized by a high degree of innovation, divergent thinking, and risk taking.  Learning indicators include:

• Acquiring competencies
• Taking risks
• Solving problems
• Embracing contradictions
• Innovative thinking
• Connecting, synthesizing, transforming 

Community Capacity Building Outcomes: 

To develop these, we are drawing from the metrics articulated by the Corporation for National and Community Service, which provides funding and support to thousands of civic engagement and service programs through AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps VISTA, and Senior Corps.  These were developed through years of evaluation and strategic planning.

Achievement Areas fall into three areas: (1) Efficiency / Efficacy; (2) Scale / Reach and (3) Leverage. These are defined as:

• Efficiency / Efficacy: Improved outcomes with the same level of resources or improved or consistent quality of services with fewer resources;
• Scale/Reach: Number of new people served, new populations served, and/or new or expanded services;
• Leverage: Additional resources or assets garnered through capacity-building activities such as funding, volunteers, in-kind support, and partnerships.

The Bonner Foundation has developed a form and recommended process for use in articulating campus-community partnerships. We can provide you a copy.  If you are interested in learning more about or obtaining samples of the planning frameworks, please contact Ariane Hoy at ahoy@bonner.org.

Additional Resources

• Foundation Strategy Group: Collective Impact — Large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination, yet the social sector remains focused on the isolated intervention of individual organizations. Substantially greater progress could be made in alleviating many of our most serious and complex social problems if nonprofits, governments, businesses, and the public were brought together around a common agenda to create collective impact. Published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011.

• McKinsey Learning Driven Assessment —  A Learning Driven Assessment identifies what works and why. It considers unintended consequences (both positive and negative) and environmental influences that enhance or undermine a program’s success. It asks "does the community support it?" and "what do the intended beneficiaries think about it?" A Learning Driven Assessment captures critical information at all stages and in real-time—as programs are conceived, while they are being designed, and during their execution—and captures knowledge from expectation “failures” as well as successes.

• Foundation Center Tools and Resources for Assessing Social Impact — Find ready-to-use tools and learn what leading nonprofits, foundations, and others are using to measure their impact.  Connect with a network of peers and experts engaged in assessment.