0 Assessment in K-12 & university outreach

While I've implemented TLI for several years and included assessment - there is always more ways to assess the impact of your outreach efforts. One of the primary challenges I've faced is time to complete outreach, in addition to my academic and professional responsibilities. Assessment is a time consuming task (if done correctly). Then, we have to consider that most outreach is done with minimal resources....

The following are some notes from our intimate discussion:

Greg - there is a school with 500 CS students (out of 3200) in Texas; but the school/teacher does not know what percentage of these students actually go on to CS? (Texas does have an IT requirement for graduation.

Ali - I offer free of charge classes for middle school students; students are sent from the school; half of the students must be female; must be 5th - 8th grade.

I posed the question, "How do we assess the impact of outreach program on the community, education... ?"

The discussion went somewhat astray, but we generated some useful dialogue about implementing outreach programs. What I think is most useful is that when you design these programs, you have assessment in mind - meaning that you outline your strategic and programmatic goals and align them to the actual programs. It makes your life much easier ....