Local Tremors, National Impact: Creating a Shared Assessment Toolkit

Speaker:  John Whitmer

Assessment is critical to successfully conducting education, outreach and training (EOT) activities. How could you create a set of shared assessment activities and tools for 15 experimental facilities, each of which conducts EOT activities, but has distinct laboratory equipment, staff resources, and learning outcomes? Moreover, how could you create a set of tools that could measure systemwide impact, yet provide meaningful local data?

The Network of Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) is a shared national network of 15 experimental facilities conducting next-generation research. These facilities conduct EOT activities, but a need for shared assessment tools has emerged, and a working group with national experts and local facility staff is currently creating a shared assessment toolkit. In this presentation, we will discuss the process for creating the toolkit, including the identification of common learning objectives that are based in current activities and shared goals. We will also present the first assessment instruments which are currently being field tested. We will also discuss the research questions built into the assessment, how flexibility was built into the tools, lessons learned and challenges faced.

Questions or comments about this site? Contact: webmaster@fanda.ucar.edu

©2007 UCAR