Literacy Outcomes of Community Intervention

Storytellers Foundation
Hazelton, BC

Activities
August - December 2008

Tool Development

Objective

Develop tools to measure and track informal learning that happens in a community setting. We intend to use these tools with learners, practitioners and funders to better capture significant learning within our programming.
  • Gathered and reviewed existing literacy measurement tools (including Benchmarks, those created by BC literacy practitioners through From the Ground Up project, and tools used by Storytellers Foundation).
  • Decided that no one tool captured what outcomes we want to measure. Chose ideas from existing tools to incorporate into our tool.
  • Created a rubric to break down and describe the outcomes we want to measure (4 drafts of rubric created)
  • Created 2 drafts of a tool for learners (to accompany the rubric). This is a fun, hands-on user-friendly tool.
  • Created 1 draft tracking tool for gathering data from learners.
  • Solicited feedback/edits from the team throughout these activities.

Write Discussion Paper

Objective

The discussion paper will help us to collectively articulate the learning outcomes in a community setting that we want to measure in the project. We will develop the paper together to identify what we already know and to identify hunches that we want to test through the research.

The paper will help us articulate:
What are people learning (in community settings)?
What is the advantage of this learning? How can we tell?
  • Developed 4 drafts of the background discussion paper (to articulate learning outcomes we want to measure, to outline the research problem, and to give context to the project).
  • Met as a team to edit and respond to drafts.

ExamineTeam Learning

Objective

We are researching the tool development and testing process so that, as a team we will learn more about the tensions, challenges and opportunities in trying to capture and measure informal learning. As we refine, develop and test measurement tools, we are interested in also capturing our learning as practitioners.
  • Met 11 times as a project team (through teleconferencing, face-to-face meetings in Hazelton with part of the team and one face-to-face meeting in Vancouver)
  • Documented meeting by taking minutes and sharing them with all involved.
  • Defined our research problem and question.
  • Planned data collection methodology.
  • Started to collect data (by recording team learning from tool development process to date).
  • Kept track of team learning and challenges during the tool development process.
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