DEL in Between (PR): Evaluating Community-Academic Partnerships

What is DEL in Between (PR)?

DEL in Between (PR) is a monthly peer-reviewed webinar series exploring emerging topics in art and design higher education. It is organised by DEL Conference, a collective of colleagues across Parsons School of Design, Penn State, Texas State University, University of the Arts London.

Learn more about DEL.

What's on this month?

Accountability needed: how we evaluate the experience and impact of community-academic partnerships

Presenters:

• Cambey Mikush, Assistant Professor, Capstone Coordinator (Duke University)
• Liz Chen, PhD, MPH, Associate Professor and Design Thinking Lead (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
• Megan Madonna, PhD, Assistant Research Professor (Duke University)

Across disciplines, community-academic partnerships (CAPs) for project-based courses can improve learning and self-efficacy by engaging students in solving authentic, real-world problems (Krsmanovic, 2021). Using human-centered design to structure these community-based courses helps students consider diverse perspectives while developing stronger communication, problem-solving, critical thinking, and teamwork skills. Despite the benefits of project-based courses for students, projects' quality, applicability, and impact on community partners can vary tremendously. Little research has emerged identifying metrics to monitor and evaluate the experience of the community collaborators that play vital roles in these partnerships. This panel presentation will explore emerging measurements, including two new survey evaluation tools, and strategies that can be used to evaluate the experience and outcomes of community partners engaging in projects with higher education students. Panelists include three design educators from two nationally ranked higher education institutions with Public Health, Occupational Therapy, and Biomedical Engineering backgrounds. The discussion will highlight the panelists' experiences measuring the benefits of CAPs for design-explicit courses, particularly from the perspectives of community collaborators.

Reference: Krsmanovic, M. (2021). Course redesign: implementing project-based learning to improve student self-efficacy. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 21(2):93-106.

What's on next?

Explore the rest of the DEL in Between (PR) collection to sign up upcoming sessions.

Do you have any questions?

Email us at delconference@arts.ac.uk