2. What are the evaluation measures of this project?
Before starting an electronic field trip I ask learners, in a rather informal assessment, to tell me everything they know or they can think of in a free writing exercise, about that particular subject. The learners did that for the Mars Project. Perhaps the range of things that we, as a group of Americans, know about Mars really might range from Martians have landed to more sophisticated scientific information. So that's done before participation in a project and then again as an informal writing assessment. In adult literacy, individual learners are working on skills at that individual's own particular starting point so that assessment can be very individual. It certainly can be informal. And in this program, many learners are going to have formal assessment measures in terms of, say, taking tests for the GED or also taking tests that are entrance exams for perhaps a community college or any sort of paper-pencil test that a potential employer might require.
