Lessons learned from a collective evaluation and community of practice focused on evidence-based learning

While it is clear that nonformal education organizations can benefit from program evaluation in many ways, internal capacity to conduct evaluations is a challenge for many organizations. This paper describes a facilitated evidence-based learning network (EBLN) with 32 nonformal education program providers associated with the U.S. National Park Service. The EBLN combined elements of collective evaluation with a community of practice to build evaluation capacity, foster collaboration, and promote adaptive management and programmatic improvement. Network participants demonstrated gains within each cycle of value creation identified in the CoP literature: immediate, potential, applied, realized, and reframing value. They gained capacity in evaluation and adaptive management, ideas for programmatic improvement, evidence associated with the application of new practices, and new ideas about what is possible to achieve within their programming. We describe the design of the EBLN and discuss lessons learned to improve similar efforts in the future.