Monitoring and evaluation of university-community impact in driving transformation agenda

Abstract

As part of the national transformation agenda, university-community impact is critical to HEIs for efficient delivery of community engagement (CE). Although CE is given due consideration in HEIs, there have been almost no attempts to develop evaluation tools that are useful for understanding the dynamics of engaging with communities at a micro and detailed level. HEIs tend to turn a blind eye on the micro dynamics of evaluating community engagement. Moreover, the tools for monitoring and evaluating CE are not standardized across all HEIs. This article reviews literature on monitoring and evaluation to draw conclusions and make recommendations. Findings of the literature review indicate that monitoring and evaluation remain a challenge in HEIs. As a recommendation, HEIs should be open to criticism regarding the quality of monitoring and evaluating CE and allow communities to evaluate them for improvements.