Evaluating the NISE Network: Reflections from the Evaluation Workgroup

At the end of the NISE Network’s 10th year, the Evaluation workgroup created a reflection document to describe how we managed the evaluation of the NISE Network, one of the largest informal education networks ever formed. This document goes into specifics of how we set up our team, what impacts we decided to measure, and what methods we used to collect data on a national scale. It also talks about ethical considerations we took into account and how we shared our work with multiple audiences. This reflection document is not meant to be a prescriptive "how-to" manual, but an example of one approach to the messy work of network-wide and multi-site evaluation. This document is specifically intended for colleagues who are involved in evaluating, or are planning to evaluate, informal education networks and multi-site projects. In addition, educators and other practitioners working on these kinds of projects may find this reflection document useful when engaging in conversations about evaluation with project evaluators or project leadership.