K-12 Outreach Evaluation Toolkit

Classroom presentations engage educators and students in learning about other countries, cultures, and international current events. While such K-12 International Outreach Programs are very popular, the evaluation of these presentations has not received adequate attention. With support from the U.S. Department of Education, we have developed an Evaluation Tool Kit and an accompanying manual that can be used to determine the extent to which these K-12 International Outreach Programs achieve their desired outcomes and meet the expectations of teachers, students, presenters, and program administrators.

Using this Evaluation Tool Kit, outreach programs are able to:

• better understand the components of evaluation and develop or clarify evaluation questions
  
• complete a logic model to plan and guide the evaluation
  
• organize, conduct, and manage data collection
  
• summarize the collected data
  
• write evaluation reports
  
• use evaluation findings for program improvement

The Evaluation Tool Kit consists of instruments for both data management and data gathering. To help you use these instruments, we have also produced an Evaluation Manual.

All of these products are free to download.

The Evaluation Tool Kit and Manual were developed over a three year period in a collaborative project between the Center for Global Initiatives, and Evaluation, Assessment, and Policy Connections (EvAP), both at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In developing this product, we worked not only with the Center for Global Initiatives Carolina Navigators Program, but with state and national university-based K-12 International Outreach Programs at Appalachian State University, Western Carolina University, UNC-Charlotte, Elizabeth City State University, UNC-Wilmington, University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, Ohio State University, University of Texas; we thank them all for their valuable input.

This project was made possible with a grant from the International Research and Studies Program in the US Department of Education. We welcome all comments and questions regarding these products and are constantly looking for ways to improve them. Please send your thoughts to Dr. Niklaus Steiner, Project Director at nsteiner@unc.edu.