Evidencing the Impact

Evidencing the Impact builds on the “Explaining the Difference” pack, published by Learning Link Scotland in 2009.  It responds to calls from the voluntary sector for user-friendly guidance on how to evidence clearly the impact of adult[1] learning on individuals, on communities and on life chances.  In several sections we have used information from the original pack and we acknowledge the work that went into its production.

This resource is designed to provide organisations with:

• an understanding of the key national policy drivers to provide context for any evaluation
• an opportunity to learn about and reflect on the terminology we use to talk about evaluation (such as “output” and “outcome”)
• information about the range of evaluation tools that are available, such as the Logic Model or Return on Investment Framework, outlining their structure and where to find them
• information about the various quality frameworks that voluntary sector adult learning providers may need to respond to, such as How Good is our Third Sector Organisation? and How Good is Our Community Learning and Development?
• signposting to further information and guidance about evaluation and evidencing impact.

How did the resource come about?

Who is Evidencing the Impact for?

The process

The resource contains guidance and tools for evaluation.  It contains five sections:

• Understanding evaluation
• Evaluating adult learning
• Components of evaluation
• Evaluation tools
• What to do with your evidence

We aim to provide organisations with:

• an understanding of the key national policy drivers to provide context for any evaluation
• an opportunity to learn about and reflect on the terminology we use to talk about evaluation (such as “output” and “outcome”)
• information about the range of evaluation tools that are available, such as the Logic Model or Return on Investment Framework, outlining their structure and where to find them
• information about the various quality frameworks that voluntary sector adult learning providers may need to respond to, such as How Good is our Third Sector Organisation?
• signposting to further information and guidance about evaluation and evidencing impact.

A couple of models we used

• Logic Model
• Return on Investment Model

Illustrations of ways people have used Evidencing the Impact:

Mini case study 1 (Scottish Language Dictionaries)

Mini case study 2 (A local authority adult learning service)

What we learned

More the about measuring impact and the policy context can be found at Outcomes and Indicators

The membership form is available as a Word document. The form is very brief and won't take much time at all.