Collaborative capacity-building for collective evaluation: a case study with informal science education centers

ABSTRACT

This paper reports on the results of a research-practice partnership that included a U.S. university research team and a state-funded grants program that supports informal science education. The goal of the 2-year partnership was to develop an empirically-tested model for collaboration and capacity-building (CCB) in support of collective evaluation. The model was implemented with 23 informal science education (ISE) organizations across one U.S. state. A comparison of pre and post-surveys indicate that the goals of the CCB model were attained. Participants reported an (1) increased perception of a common agenda, (2) increased capacity for conducting evaluation, and (3) increased peer-peer engagement. Participants also highlighted ongoing barriers to collective evaluation and suggested specific supports to overcome these barriers. This collaborative capacity-building model, although tested with ISE providers, is generalizable to other collective evaluation efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Evaluation
• collective impact
• informal science education

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the participating ISE educators and institutions, who so enthusiastically engaged in evaluation with us and each other.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics statement

The study design was approved by the North Carolina State University Institutional Review Board (IRB Protocol #20486). Only those who consented to participate are included in this study. Participants were informed that their data would be used for research purposes and for publication. Participant identity is confidential.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported with a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services [grant number MG-70-19-0019-19].