After a long and well-deserved summer break, the MUST-a-Lab team in Mechelen came together for the kick-off of the micro experiments. The five teams shared their plans and received constructive feedback from the group. The main challenge? How to evaluate the experiments. The evaluation of the experiments will be the basis for making policy recommendations so in that sense, the evaluation should be thorough and provide strong enough arguments to persuade policy-makers to implement the recommendations and scale up the experiments. On the other hand, the evaluation needs to be practically feasible for the team members and should not be time-consuming. The very productive discussion during the kick-off lead to several conclusions:
- The experiment leaders should make their expectations explicit – what changes do they expect to see during and after the experiment?
- Keeping these expectations in mind, the observed changes should be recorded. In this regards, all target groups should be included (e.g. pupils, teachers, parents…).
- The evaluation results don’t necessarily need to be quantifiable. A more qualitative approach (e.g. collecting success stories) is also acceptable.
The next task for the policy lab group is to implement the experiment and to develop evaluation instruments.
We’re curious too see the results in November!