2023 eeEvaluation in a Box
Environmental and outdoor learning has a powerful story to be told, but traditional ways of doing so have often fallen short of demonstrating individual and community impact.
The Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education and Point b(e) Strategies will be offering a technical assistance program for outcome evaluation support for environmental and outdoor learning organizations providing environmental education programming to youth throughout the state of Colorado.
This program intends to provide participating organizations with the tools and support to measure key indicators of the impact areas listed above at a lower cost by using shared resources to create customized evaluation tools.
Goals of the Program:
- Provide low-cost evaluation support to Colorado outdoor and environmental learning organizations
- Increase the capacity of environmental and outdoor learning organizations to conduct meaningful evaluations
- Provide semi-customized surveys to build support for your programs using questions developed from the Colorado Collective Outcomes
- Contribute data to a collective EE evaluation to build support for environmental and outdoor learning
Expectations
Selected Organizations
- Participate in one-three-hour training to align your organization’s programming with the Colorado Collective Outcomes and develop or modify your evaluation plan on August 25th, 2023 from 9am-12pm
- Develop Program Logic Model based on Training
- Commit to participation by 1-2 members of your team
- Collect data according to customized evaluation plan from September 2023-May 2024. Submit data in May 2024
- Demonstrate commitment of Leadership to contribution of data to collective report
Collective Outcomes Team Support:
- Work with your team to develop semi-customized survey tools that can be used by your organization
- Facilitate Evaluation Training Workshop
- Offer up to 6 hours of Evaluation Coaching and Support with Logic Model, Evaluation Plan, Data Collection
- Analyze Data Collected in June 2024
- Develop Customized Evaluation Report for your Organization in June 2024
- Provide Final Collective Report on the Outcomes in June 2024
Program Activities and Timeline
May 26th, 2023: Applications for Participation Due
August 25th, 2023 from 9am-noon: Point b(e) Strategies will onboard organizations through a three-hour virtual training which will provide participants with an overview of the collective outcomes. This training will also teach participants how to develop a logic model and an evaluation plan for their organizations. Participants will be expected to complete a logic model and evaluation plan for the programs they would like to evaluate as part of the technical assistance.
September-November 2023. Point b(e) Strategies will provide up to four (4) hours of individualized support for each organization. Point b(e) Strategies will meet with each organization to understand their programming, identify which program outcomes align with COCO, and determine the best data collection tools for the organization to utilize. Within the framework of Evaluation in a Box, Point b(e) Strategies will support participants to develop a data tracking log as well as customize a quantitative survey for the organization to administer. The survey will be created based on a pre-set series of questions that Point b(e) Strategies and the participating organization can select from that align with the program’s outcomes. Point b(e) Strategies can also support the organization in identifying whether other forms of data collection, such as qualitative interviews and focus groups, would be beneficial to the evaluation. Point b(e) Strategies can provide recommendations for what the organization can include in these tools. However, Point b(e) Strategies will not develop the qualitative tools, nor analyze the qualitative data as part of Evaluation in a Box.
September 2023- May 2024: Organizations participating in Evaluation in a Box will conduct data collection by administering the survey to program participants. Participating organizations are responsible for administering the surveys, collecting data, and entering the data in a format that can be analyzed by Point b(e) Strategies. Point b(e) Strategies will provide up to two (2) hours of individualized support for each organization during the data collection phase.
June 2024: Point b(e) will analyze data and create one individualized report for each participating organization based on their respective data.
June 2024: Point b(e) Strategies will analyze the data and prepare a collective report based on data from all participating organizations.
Target Audience and Other Considerations
Evaluation in a Box is a low-cost evaluation option for organizations looking to build their capacity and skills in evaluation. This program seeks to engage participants with a basic level of knowledge of evaluation and who are looking to increase their skills and capacity to conduct outcome evaluations for their organization. Similarly, it seeks to engage organizations that are small in staff and budget and who would benefit from a templatized approach to evaluation.
The cost to participate in Evaluation in a Box is $2,500. Participating organizations agree to allow CAEE and Point b(e) Strategies to use the data for collective outcomes evaluation reports. All data will be deidentified and results will be reported out in aggregate (with all other participating organizations).
To Apply
Please fill out the application for your organization to participate by May 26th, 2023. Programs will be notified of acceptance into the program in June 2023.