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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Public Engagement & Involvement
Public engagement and involvement captures the broad range of initiatives, activities and events which combine to create a culture of societal engagement with higher education. Public engagement is about the institution facing outwards and connecting as widely as possible to communicate the value of learning and research and to leverage institutional knowledge and resources for social good.
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 resources provided as outreach to the community and utilised by members of the public and civil society organisations (e.g. campus facilities, sports amenities, library, archives, museums, IT services, lifelong learning programmes)
- Connections to, and/or partnerships with, public agencies, cultural organisations, professional bodies, civic and civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations and charitable bodies which are mutually beneficial
- Educational programmes which foster, on a sustained basis, relationships with primary and secondary schools and their communities to widen participation
- Initiatives designed to support widening participation of students, their families and
communities - Number and impact of public intellectual activities (e.g. contribution of staff to public debate)
- Number and impact of staff who serve on local, community and charitable organisation committees
- Number of staff who act as consultants or advisors to community and voluntary bodies, public agencies and civil society organisations
- Number of staff who volunteer in community groups, organisations, civil society organisations, and NGOs
- Actions and activities which assist with community capacity building
- Involvement of community representatives in governance and advisory structures
- Initiatives to promote sustainability actions (e.g. green campus initiatives)
- Number and impact of public events (e.g. learning festivals/events, Science Galleries, Festival of Social Science, Festival of the Mind, Science/Poetry Bus, Images of Research, Thesis in Three, SciComm, public talks and lecture series)
- Number attending institutional public events and evaluations, if applicable
- Open access resources (e.g. free MOOCs, podcasts, web materials, blogs, video, archives, museum collections)
- Number of school visits and talks
- Number of campus tours
- Social media metrics (e.g. analysis of social media discussions and impression).
