Civic and community engagement impact relates to the benefit higher education makes to society.
Campus Engage offer the following supportive framework for all Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to set about planning, measuring, or collecting information on impact. The purpose is to assist HEIs to set baseline figures, or key performance indicators and is non-prescriptive, just a supportive Guideline.
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Institutional Infrastructure & Architecture
Institutional infrastructure and architecture relates to the strategies, policies, practices, and resources put in place to implement, sustain and and embed civic and community engagement as a core institutional activity.
Evidence and Impact
Quantitative Data:
- Numeric data, figures, percentages, proportions
- Monetary amounts, funds, budgets
- Targets, projections, estimations
- Comparisons, benchmarks
- Data analytics
- Grants, awards
- Participant, audience, visitor involvement
- Test/exam results
- Workload/time allocation
- Attitudinal surveys
Qualitative Data:
- Case studies, including impact
- Contextual information: what, where, why, who and how of engagement
- Demographic details: communities and audiences
- Institutional documentation: strategies, plans, policies, reports
- Partnership agreements/guidelines/compacts
- Resources/materials/toolkits/websites/templates
- Stories of impact from students, staff and communities
- Measures of Esteem/Feedback: Evaluations from students, staff, communities
- Attitudinal surveys
- Interviews/focus groups
- Blogs, video, audio, podcasts
- Awards
- Reports
- Participant stories and narratives
- Process details and charts
- Reflective writings
Possible Metrics
- Institutional leadership / appointment for civic and community engagement
- A governance framework for civic and community engagement
- An institutional Civic and Community Engagement strategy, policy, and/or plan
- An institutional unit/structure for civic and community engagement
- A budget dedicated to civic and community engagement
- Staff employed specifically to drive and foster civic and community engagement activities
- A plan/programme to build institutional understanding of engagement with the wider community as a core higher education activity
- A policy on recruitment and promotion which weights civic and community engagement activity
- Programmes and training offered to build institutional and community capacity
- An institutional system/procedure to capture civic and community engagement data
- A civic and community engagement dimension to Quality Assurance mechanisms
- Institutional awards and honours (e.g. President’s Awards, Teaching and Learning, Student Awards which recognise and celebrate civic and community engagement)
- A workload allocation model which recognises and rewards time invested in community engagement
- A commitment to civic and community engagement through membership and involvement with national and international community engagement networks (e.g. Campus Engage, Talloires Network etc).
