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| How to Apply | ||
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Evaluation If clear questions are articulated and the right information is gathered, evaluation need not wait until the end of the project and look only backward at what has or has not been accomplished. Evaluation can be on-going through the entire duration of the project. Projects should culminate with a careful assessment of what they have done, to be sure. But, it can then be most helpful to put that in the context of what they, and others, might do differently in the future. Kept always in that context, evaluation is less about passing judgment and more about learning. It is about contributing to a growing body of knowledge, and in many cases, leads toward contributions to a growing literature. See the article by Craig Dykstra of Lilly Endowment Inc.,  "Evaluation
as
Collaborative Inquiry"Evaluation design and data collection should be commensurate with the scale of the project. Grants made for small, one-time meetings need not be encumbered with complicated evaluation strategies so long as they are able to make the link between strategies and outcomes. In the case of a classroom experiment or a seminar, the traditional method of soliciting written comments or administering a brief questionnaire might make the most sense. Any plan for Evaluation should attend to the essential elements of all good evaluations, as found in Kathleen Cahalan’s Projects That Matter: Successful Planning and Evaluation for Religious Organizations. * Focus: Who is the audience for the evaluation and what are the key questions? * Design: How can those evaluation questions best be answered? * Data Collection: How is the information actually gathered? * Analysis and Interpretation: What does it mean and what can we learn? * Report: How do we explain what we learned to the evaluation’s audiences? * Revision: How can we use the evaluation to improve our efforts or the efforts of those who follow us? The evaluation’s key questions should be drawn directly from the Statement of Goals. They should provide answers that will be useful to other scholars in the same field, but also to students, administrators, and teaching colleagues from other areas. Remember that the Wabash Center, and indeed all the stakeholders, understand from the outset that no project results in total success or failure. Some strategies work better than hoped, others do not. But both the project and its evaluation move the field forward when they provide lessons that will improve future efforts. All sincere efforts-even failures-can make valuable contributions to the body of knowledge being built through these grants and conversation about them. Were negative outcomes influenced by specific factors that might be avoided in the future, or were they endemic to the process? Were positive outcomes tied to the particular individuals involved, or could they be repeated in other times and places? Examples of Evaluation: Evaluation Example #1 Evaluation Example #2 |
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Required Format for Grant Proposals 
Title
Abstract
Student Learning
Goals
Rationale
Outline and Design
Evaluation
Plans for Dissemination
Line Item Budget
Budget Narrative
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