Appraising HEI-community Partnerships: Assessing Performance, Monitoring Progress, and Evaluating Impacts

Abstract

Momentum of the creation of partnerships between higher education institutions (HEIs) and communities is strong. As their significance intensifies, the question of how to judge their value is garnering increasing attention. In this perspective article, we develop a framework for comprehensively appraising HEI-community partnerships. Constituent parts of the framework are unpacked, and application of the framework is then discussed. The appraisal framework provides a mechanism to document evidence of worth, and most importantly contributes to the continuous improvement and learning imperative of HEI-community partnerships.

Keywords

• appraisal; continuous improvement; evaluation; HEI-community partnerships; monitoring; performance assessment