Public Engagement Evaluation Course | Self-paced
Learn cutting edge methods without the time pressure.
About This Course
Would you like to know if your public engagement is effective? This course introduces you to the process of public engagement evaluation, available tools and practical guidance about how to gather accurate evaluation data.
You'll learn how to translate your goals public engagement goals into clear outcome statements and develop your evaluation plans. You'll be equipped with practical tools and guidance to meaningfully understand and measure the quality of experience and impacts.
This course was organized to be completed at your own pace, with each Module comprising 5-10 hours of learning tasks and activities.
Module 1: How to identify outcomes and develop an evaluation plan
By the end of this module, you will:
- Have a basic understanding of key concepts in public engagement evaluation, including defining ‘impact’ in this context.
- Be capable of translating your public engagement goals into clear, measurable outcomes that can be evaluated.
- Be able to develop a preliminary evaluation plan based on available time and resources, as well as the evaluation goals.
- Make an informed decision about which type of evaluation approach and tool is most likely to be appropriate for evaluating the intended public engagement outcomes.
Module 2: How to design a qualitative evaluation for your public engagement activity
By the end of this module, you will:
- Have a basic understanding of ways of accurately measuring public engagement outcomes using qualitative methods.
- Develop introductory knowledge of the range of qualitative evaluation tools that you can use to assess public engagement outcomes, including interviews, focus groups and ethnographic methods.
- Understand basic principles of designing qualitative evaluation using interviews, focus groups and ethnographic methods.
- Gain an introductory understanding of how you gather a representative sample of participants in qualitative evaluation.
- Learn how to develop a interview and focus group questions.
- Be able to avoid some of the common pitfalls in designing effective qualitative public engagement evaluations.
Module 3: How to design a quantitative evaluation for your public engagement activity
By the end of this module, you will:
- Have a basic understanding of ways of accurately measuring public engagement outcomes using quantitative methods.
- Be able to avoid some of the common pitfalls when designing effective quantitative public engagement evaluations.
- Develop introductory knowledge of the range of quantitative evaluation tools that you can use to assess public engagement outcomes.
- Develop an understanding of the types of quantitative sampling and their implications for the evaluation claims you can make.
Module 4 – How to design a questionnaire to evaluate your public engagement activity
By the end of this module, you will:
- Understand basic principles of survey design to help you create good survey questions to evaluate public engagement outcomes.
- Develop capability to identify problematic survey questions relating to public engagement evaluation.
- Prepare survey questions to measure public engagement outcomes that avoid the most obvious sources of bias.
- Gain an introductory understanding of how to use questionnaires to evaluate public engagement impact.
- Develop a basic understanding of how you can quantify open-ended questionnaire data in a systematic way.
We also provide a Module 0: Course Introduction to help you prepare for the course, so you can learn about the course, introduce yourself, and proceed with confidence.
Dr. Eric Jensen
Dr. Eric Jensen is an internationally-recognised social scientist specializing in innovative methods of conducting impact evaluation research in informal learning and public engagement contexts.
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Dr Eric A. Jensen is a social scientist with a PhD from the University of Cambridge in sociology. Author of Doing Real Research: A Practical Guide to Social Research (SAGE), Dr Jensen brings extensive methodological expertise in quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods social research and evaluation. Jensen has been working in science communication research and practice since 2001, beginning with a National Science Foundation-funded project on International Ethics and Equity Issues Relating to Biotechnology. ensen has delivered hundreds of training workshops on evaluation methods and evidence-based science communication, as well as leading and consulting on projects large and small on public engagement with research, impact evaluation, socially responsible research and environmental communication. Jensen’s latest book is Science Communication: An introduction. He works on the Responsible Research and Innovation Networking Globally social research project as a Senior Research Fellow at ICoRSA. He is part-time professor at the University of Warwick and visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Psychological Research of Sigmund Freud University. |
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Participation notes
This course is designed to be highly practical, distilling a lot of methods and underpinning theory into clear, pragmatic guidance. Depending on how extensively the reading and supplementary material is explored it is expected to offer 24-40 hours of training. However, it is flexible since the course is aimed towards people who need to vary the amount of time they put into the course from week to week.
How To Reserve Your Place
This course is designed to be ‘self-paced’ and ‘self-completed’, therefore there are no strict limitations on course capacity.
| Standard, including businesses info_outline | €499 |
| University/College staff info_outline | €399 |
| Charities & unaffiliated individuals info_outline | €299 |
| Concessionary (student & unemployed) info_outline | €149 |
Dr. Eric Jensen is an internationally-recognised social scientist specializing in innovative methods of conducting impact evaluation research in informal learning and public engagement contexts.