Why Serve?   Step by Step Guide Connections to Academic Standards

The evaluation stage is an important part of the process for you, your students, your school, and the community you serve. It can give all stakeholders valuable feedback on student learning as well as the impact of service on those who receive it. It provides a basis for developing and improving the program, and documents a program's effectiveness for administration, parents and the community. But, where do you start? The evaluation process should flow naturally from your curricular objectives. Its form can be quantitative, such as service learning logs, hours of service, number of people served, gains in test scores, or surveys. It also can be qualitative, such as observation, reflection logs, or interviews with key participants. As with all steps of the service learning process, students should be involved in its evaluation. They should be able to articulate the impact service learning has had on them and on those they've served. A thorough evaluation asks all stakeholders to ask themselves whether this process met their goals. Questions can include but not be limited to: Did students do what they planned to do? Did they impact the community need or problem? What impact did the service have on the community and the students? What academic goals or IEP goals were met through the service? What did students learn? What practitioners can do: Think about the best ways to evaluate the success of the program, given your individual student population and community. Determine whether your goals for the program were met and what impact service learning has had on student skills and attitudes. Help students design and implement evaluation strategies that will help them measure the success of their service learning projects. What students can do: Review the part of their action plan in which they determined what success would "look like" for their service learning project. How can they measure this success? Design a survey for stakeholders. Reflect on the success and challenges of their overall service experience.               Student worksheets are available for Steps 1-5. Click here to download them.