Engaging the Learning Community
Course
How: Goals, Action Steps, & Evaluation [5:04]
Now we're going to talk about another aspect of how we put a community of learners into action.
Here we're going to concentrate on those latter steps: goals, action steps and evaluation. Once you've merged your vision for the community of learners with the needs and interests of your potential participants, you're ready to shape your goals or objectives from these sets of details, priorities and perspectives.
Some example goals might be things like—here's example one: introduce parents and caregivers to the library maker space. Maybe from there you'll build, build a community of family of experts and learners to participate in maker space learning. A separate example: a goal might be to cultivate service learning opportunities with community members and organizations.
Another goal might be to build a community reading culture. You may consider an approach that has you making broad goals and then from those designing more specific, measurable objectives. In school library literature, you'll see both designs for program planning. Just to illustrate an objective, building from that first goal that I mentioned about parents and maker spaces, might be something more specific like: Parents and caregivers of primary grade students will identify and practice concepts and skills afforded by the maker space by participating in a learning experience on-site. You might even add a target participation number. And so, you can see the difference there, that the first one was kind of a broad level, we were just introducing parents and caregivers to the maker space and then the objective was something that I can observe and see and even measure. However you write your goals or objectives, make certain that they line up with the rationale and then from there working in a forward motion we're going to identify action steps or strategies that serve the goals.
Working with those same three examples: an action step for the Parents and caregivers and maker space might be to invite the parents and caregivers to participate in the maker space learning experience. That's an action step. For community of volunteerism you might plan a community discussion session to identify areas of interest that match curricular topics. On the reading culture, an action step might be to work with the classroom teacher or teachers to design online book discussions and a virtual author visit.
Once we've established the goals and the action steps, we're just about ready to put the plan in action, but before we do that, the last planning piece is setting up how we're going to assess or evaluate the activities related to the community of learners.
Assessment is a key part of this cycle of planning, executing, assessing or evaluating and then planning again. This helps us know if we're reaching the goals and if we're satisfying the needs that we've identified.
Some example forms of evaluation in evidence are: field notes or observations and this could happen in actual notes or maybe video-audio segments, participant surveys or exit tickets, student learning products or maybe even adult learners learning products, group dialogues or focus groups or depending on what you're working with, maybe online app or website traffic or participation data.
After you assess and evaluate, you revisit those goals and action steps. You might keep moving forward if the needs have been met or as appropriate, you might need to plan a new approach if those goals weren't met yet. And finding out that you haven't met the goals is still an okay outcome, this just means you may need to shift course and try a different way of meeting the need.
All along the way here, keep your vision and values in mind about this community of learners. Remember that we're modeling lifelong learning, we're tapping into expert knowledge, we're providing authentic contexts for learning and of course we're extending our collaborative approach and principles outside the library space.
In separate lessons in this workshop coming up, we'll talk about some specific ideas for programs and events.
Planning for goals, action steps, and evaluation formalizes the vision and context shaped by information gathered in your concept map, environmental scan, and needs assessment. Goals are typically broad in nature, comprised of more specific, measurable objectives. Action steps put goals in motion through communications, activities or events, or other means, such as instruction, outreach, or collaboration. Evaluations or assessments determine effectiveness of the actions and inform next steps.
Once you've merged your vision for the community of learners with the needs and interests of your potential participants, you're ready to shape your goals or objectives from these sets of details, priorities, and perspectives.
Using the ideas provided in the document, "Sample Goals for Engaging the Community of Learners" found in the Resources below, draft a list of 2–3 goals for your learning community.
To support assessment of your goals and objectives, you might add such details as target participation or attendance numbers, volunteer opportunities offered and filled, views/comments/traffic to a website or curated digital collection, circulation of materials, or grant funding applied for and/or awarded.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Engaging the Learning Community: Develop Goals." School Library Connection, November 2024, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2018654?learningModuleId=2018650&topicCenterId=2247902.
Entry ID: 2122862
Additional Resources
About the Author
Email: rmorris@schoollibraryconnection.com
Twitter: @rebeccajm87.
MLA Citation
Morris, Rebecca J. "Engaging the Learning Community. How: Goals, Action Steps, & Evaluation [5:04]." School Library Connection, ABC-CLIO, June 2016, schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2018654?learningModuleId=2018650&topicCenterId=2247902.
https://schoollibraryconnection.com/Content/Course/2018654?learningModuleId=2018650&topicCenterId=2247902
Entry ID: 2018654