D5.4: Monitoring Toolkit for RFOs and RPOs

The current document, titled “Monitoring Toolkit for RFOs and RPOs”, has been developed within the framework of the TIME4CS project which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 101006201.

This monitoring toolkit is based on the experiences of evaluating institutional changes to promote citizen engagement in science along the four Intervention Areas of “Research”, “Education & Awareness”, “Support Resources & Infrastructure”, and “Policy & Assessment” in four research performing organizations (RPO) - CRG, KTU, UniSR and Tyndall.

It targets representatives of RPOs who wish to trigger changes within their organizations to better support citizen engagement in research as well as to evaluate their activities and progress.

The monitoring package can be used together with the “Reflection Tool for Institutional Changes in Citizen Science”. While the monitoring toolkit helps to identify the current situation of institutional support for Citizen Science and monitor the progress, the Reflection Tool supports the planning phase of defining a roadmap and grounding actions that trigger institutional support for Citizen Science within RPOs.

You will find the following in this toolkit:

• A set of developed indicators that describe institutional support for citizen engagement in RPOs in the four Intervention Areas.
• A self-assessment or stock-taking template which can be used by RPOs to investigate their institutional support for Citizen Science. This stock-taking not only helps to plan grounding actions, but also supports reflecting on the changes within organizations on a regular (e.g., yearly) basis.
• An exemplary evaluation model that links activities that are implemented to support Citizen Science within RPOs, with expected/generated output and outcomes. It is a living document that should be updated on a regular basis and can be used for planning and reflection.
• A concept and detailed agenda of an evaluation workshop that can be organised yearly by members of RPOs who are responsible for implementing institutional support within their organizations and wish to collaboratively reflect on the actions taken and their outcomes so far.
• A set of interview questions for those responsible for driving change within their organizations which they can apply to colleagues who have been involved in some of the actions supporting Citizen Science in RPOs - aiming to collect broader feedback on implemented actions.
• A set of evaluation instruments that can be applied for assessing training and workshops as these are key elements in implementing institutional support for Citizen Science in RPOs.

With all these instruments we hope to provide a set of practical tools that enrich the monitoring of institutional changes supporting Citizen Science in RPOs. A detailed report on how the evaluation instruments of this monitoring toolkit have been applied and what was the outcome of the evaluation and impact assessment of the TIME4CS project can be found in D5.3 Final impact assessment report.

Please note that we present the various elements of this toolkit in one concise document here. However, they can be used stand-alone or in different combinations. Thus, as a reader of this document you may come across some repetitions, such as the indicators for institutional change.