How to evaluate an EFSD program?

After understanding and learning the process of engaging people in sustainability and also understanding sustainable development itself, we as future practitioners, should be able to design an educational program but also to evaluate its benefits for the social environmental and economical context. The process of bringing about the change for sustainability is a cyclical and continuous process of learning, so the educational programs have to be evaluated and improved on the same context on continuity.
But why should we evaluate educational programs? The department of environment and conservation (NSW) has developed a special guideline on how practitioners could evaluate their own programs and others and also describes the importance of an evaluation process to foster improvements and learning outcomes, it states:

"When you evaluate a program, you can

learn from your experiences and adjust

your program for the future, where needed."

Evaluation also builds clarifications and transparency between practitioners and stakeholders creating trust and ownership from everyone involved in the process.  

The effectiveness of a program depends on three important factors:

1. Impacts
2. Outcomes
3. Outputs

Impact

An impact is an actual or intended change in human development as measured by people’s well-being. An

impact generally captures change in people’s lives. 

Outcome

An outcome is an actual or intended change in development conditions that interventions are seeking to

support. It usually relates to changes in an institution’s ability to work better and fulfil its mandate.

Output

An output is a short-term development result produced by project and non-project activities. It relates to the

completion (rather than the conduct) of activities and is a product and/or service that make achievement of

outcomes possible. 

It also depends if the program has embedded minimum criterias of the Education for Sustainable development steps:

1. Creating a common vision - Envisioning process
2. Critical thinking and reflection
3. Participation in decision making
4. Formation of new partnerships
5. Systemic thinking

And I would also like to add to those factors a really important criteria which will guarantee the long term success of the program: Capacity Building, "the measurement of capacity and specifically the capture of change in capacity are critical to understanding the success of the capacity development process" (UNDP 2008), therefore measuring and analysing the capacity building created by a specific program is essential to evaluate its efficiency and success.
A personal framework will be presented in order to demonstrate our understanding and key ideas about EFSD and also will allow us to create our own vision of a successful educational program.