TEAGLE CONSORTIUM OF

LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES

AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF

THE CBL SCORECARD

Kathleen S. Flowers, Director, Center for

Community Engagement & Service-Learning

Agenda:

1. Introductions (Facilitators and Attendees)

2. Story of the Teagle Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges and

development of Community Based Learning Scorecard

• Student scorecard

• Community partner scorecard

• Faculty scorecard

3. Implementation (what worked, and what didn’t!?)

4. Q and A

5. Small group discussions

• What does CBL assessment look like on your campus?

• If and how the CBL scorecards might assist in your efforts

Aim: “to build a replicable process for assessing community-base learning courses and programs”

Systematically assess the value added of CBL programming on student

learning and civic engagement, using the CBL Scorecard we developed for measuring CBL

course/program effectiveness;

Close the assessment loop by developing a process for applying Scorecard results to

course/program improvement and by broadly disseminating and encouraging the use of the protocol and

collected data institutionally, regionally and nationally and;

Expand and sustain a consortium of liberal arts colleges committed to

establishing and sharing effective practices for the assessment of community-based learning. Two sub-

goals for the consortium are to:

Disseminate information about the impact of CBL on student cognitive learning and

Create a culture of assessment on the campuses of participating institutions.

TEAGLE CONSORTIUM OF LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE

AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CBL SCORECARD

The two primary elements of our plan for achieving these goals are

(1)a fully-developed, tested and replicable assessment protocol that can be

broadly disseminated (both the instruments and the data collected); and

(2)the creation of a community of practice for liberal arts colleges to implement

the protocol on their campuses and share data and best practices about

community-based learning. (from Report to the Teagle Foundation 2008)

CBL Scorecard is based in already-existing research studies of practices that

promote learning in community-based learning courses and programs.

TEAGLE CONSORTIUM OF LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE

AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CBL SCORECARD

Refinement of instrument: Vanderbilt

University consultants Drs. John Braxton

and Willis Jones (now at the University of

Kentucky) undertook an extensive literature

review on community based learning and

the development of best practices for CBL

programs in higher education. They grouped

these best practices into 4 overarching

“domains of practice”:

(1) placement quality

(2) application and connection to academic

learning

(3) reflection

(4) quality of community partnerships.

Braxton and Jones sent factors to national

service-learning experts and, applying their

weightings, further refined the instrument.

Consortium administered CBL

Scorecard across member

institutions and multiple

disciplines over several years.

We believe that our approach

is valuable in both its focus on

the course or program as the

unit of analysis and its

foundation in existing research

on effective service learning

practice.

Domain Observat

ions

Mean SD Min Max

Applica 114 67.10658 11.52938 32.15 84.8

ComPart 99 63.00253 9.33377 38.5 77

PlaceQual 114 80.41886 10.33977 55 96

Reflect 107 70.8972 10.23941 44.75 90

Total 90 281.7683 35.85141 197.15 347.8

Summary Stats per Domain: Students only (Fall

2010 / 148 students / 14 classes @ 5 institutions)

Placement QualityApplication &

ConnectionReflection Community Partners

3=strongly disagree 3.54=strongly disagree 2.5=strongly disagree 3.85=strongly disagree

6=disagree 7.08=disagree 5=disagree 7.70=disagree

9=agree 10.62=agree 7.5=agree 11.55=agree

12=strongly agree 14.16=strongly agree 10=strongly agree 15.40=strongly agree

Summary Stats per Institution, HWS Example:

85 students – 4 classes

“CBL Scorecard

2.0”

Analysis evolved

with input from

consortium

members

Community of Practice…

and indirect by tangible and positive outcome!

Dr. Susan Dicklitch, Franklin & Marshall

College. Gov. 425 - Human Rights + Human

Wrongs

Campus Conversation: Survey

submissions and analysis; “Self-

assessment Instrument for Service-

Learning Sustainability”

Our goal was to make the

instrument useful as a

classroom diagnostic tool

that can be readily used by

instructors without

professional interpretation.

• Student scorecard

• Community partner

scorecard

• Faculty scorecard

“I mean it’s been extremely beneficial, absolutely. It’s helpful on the front end about how you think about

shaping a course to meet those criteria. So knowing that there’s going to be this assessment stuff, it really

does help shape the way you’re thinking about a course, rather than, ‘Oh, my gosh. I gotta get this together” and

it’s a narrow sense. You think more broadly about course design because you have a scorecard as a

framework to operate out of.”

“. . .it helped me realize what I wasn’t doing that I needed to do. I kind of knew what it was. It’s just in order to

do it you really need to invest a lot more time than what I had put in. It was helpful in that way to clarify for me

knowing what the best practices were in the literature and in-the-field that I wasn’t hitting all those best

practices.”

“But how it (the scorecard) had functioned for myself and other faculty here, who were teaching, it

helped you think more comprehensively about what we wanted for our course - how we wanted our course.

So that intentionality really helped.”

What did the

faculty say

about it?

.

What did our community partners say about it?

Community partners selected to

provide feedback on their direct

observations of students (over the

Teagle Scorecard)

Thank you!

Feel free to contact us with questions, or suggestions!

kflowers@hws.edu or mmurphy@hws.edu

1.How might the scorecard assist your campus CBL assessment

efforts?

2.Will it build upon existing successful strategies? If so, how?

3.Please share resources you’ve found helpful.

4.What challenges do you anticipate facing if you choose to

implement the scorecard - and can we collectively brainstorm

a solution?

Small Group Discussion