Designing Impact Evaluation for Students’ Engagement with Communities in Planning Education

Universities increasingly promote community engagement that involves students. However, very little has been done to evaluate student-community engagement (SCE) for their impact on “the community.” This research innovatively juxtaposes literature on the evaluation of planning and public policy with three different instances of SCE to explore the scope and nature of such impact evaluation within the context of planning education. Results suggest considerable potential of a naturalistic, ongoing, and integrated evaluation approach for and with communities in planning-related SCEs and, by extension, as a practical theory for evaluation design in community planning itself.