Reflective questions, templates and self-assessement

So far you have learned:

- what evaluation means and why it is helpful and important for citizen science projects

- which dimensions and indicators can be considered when evaluating a citizen science project

- how two citizen science projects approached the evaluation of their outcomes differently according to their context and objectives

- which instruments can be used for evaluation in citizen science

- what challenges need to be considered in evaluation and impact assessment of citizen science projects

Reflection:

At the end of this module we prepared for you a short reflection activity which allows you to record your thoughts or check your understanding. We do not want to test your knowledge. So you will not find a quiz here, but we want to give you some time and space to reflect on what we have been presenting by asking you some trigger questions for your own reflection. 

Here are just a few questions you may want to consider at the very start of drafting a citizen science project or initiative:

• What are the expected outputs, intermediate and long term outcomes of the project/initiative?
  

• Who are all the affected stakeholders of the project/initiative, what do they expect? Are these expectations covered by the outputs and outcomes?
  

• What are possible indicators to keep track of and verify the expected outputs and outcomes?

• Which instruments could the project use to collect the indicators? What are the best time points to use the instruments?

• What resources do we need to collect the evidence?
  
  

Templates:

To support this reflection exercise, we have prepared some templates that can be helpful to plan the evaluation of a citizen science project:

• Template for the: Collection of stakeholder groups, their expectations, evaluation indicators and instruments.
  You can start with this template to collect the most important stakeholder groups of the project and their expectations. As in evaluation the aim will then be to monitor and evaluate if these expectations could be reached.
  

• Template for the: Collection of outputs, intermediate and long-term outcomes on three dimensions
  This template help to define the expected outputs and outcomes of the project. Outputs can often be defined in quantitative terms. Take the examples in this template and start to adapt and amend them with indicators related to your project. As soon as you have indicators, you can start to think which instruments might help you to collect data for the indicators (e.g. interviews, questionnaires -> think of the practical examples that we have given before).
  
  
• Template for the: Creation of an evaluation roadmap that fosters planning of evaluation tasks in parallel to project activities.
  This templates helps to always consider evaluation in your project planning. When you meet and interact with stakeholders, you can use this also for evaluation purposes (e.g. collect expectations, collect feedback, distribute questionnaires etc.)
  
  
• Exemplary time-line to visualise project and evaluation activities
  The timeline is another way of visualising how the project evaluation goes hand-in-hand with other activities taken in the project.
  
  

We also have a more detailed self-assessment survey which helps to define the strengths and weaknesses of your project and which you will find in the next section.