We (Prof Paul Curzon and Jo Brodie) were recently awarded some funding from QMUL’s Centre for Public Engagement to produce two additional issues of ‘A bit of CS4FN’, an A5 magazine for primary-aged children (9-12 years old) and their teachers. We’d previously received some funding to develop the project with a pilot issue and were delighted to be awarded the follow-on support.

Download the redacted summary of the evaluation here REDACTED VERSION – A bit of CS4FN 2018 – Brodie and Curzon – Large Award Final Report (below is a list of the sections covered).

First is a short list of the key ‘useful things’ we wanted to share with others.

• Working with other teams, building relationships – to write, proofread, print and post copies of our magazine we worked with several internal and external colleagues: design team, colleagues familiar with the primary computing curriculum and able to guide us on language, external mailing house colleagues, being aware of school term times (so that the magazines don’t arrive when everyone’s gone home for their holidays).
  • We have been producing magazines for over a decade so are already well embedded into the university’s procedures and creating a new magazine is probably easier for us than someone starting afresh. When we get in touch with people about a new publication we’re not having to start by explaining things from scratch.
• What intermediaries can link us with our target audience? We want to get the magazines in the hands of primary school teachers and their pupils but while we have school networks in place we also advertised the magazine to QMUL colleagues (many will have children in primary schools that we don’t yet have a relationship with). At public events older teenagers might come by themselves, with their school or parents – they might have younger siblings in the family so we wanted to share the magazines with them as well.
• Keeping a ‘living document’ dump – useful stuff lives in files, emails, Google Forms, other people’s brains. A great deal of time can be spent trying to gather info together (eg for funders / evaluation reports / getting a sense of how things are going) so it’s handy to create a Word doc or Google Doc and use it as a (datestamped) info dump, as an overarching organisation doc.

Table of Contents for the redacted report: EDACTED VERSION – A bit of CS4FN 2018 – Brodie and Curzon – Large Award Final Report

1. Please provide an overall summary of the project. This can include information about numbers reached, evaluation information, comments from participants etc. and will be used on our website, and as case studies. (Max 300 words)

2. Please outline progress against each objective as identified in your initial application, identifying areas where activity deviated from that proposed and justifications.

3. What were the key highlights and achievements of the project?

4. Please outline some key learning points: what did you do well, or wish you had done differently? If you could go back in time, what do you wish you would have known at the beginning of the project? Do you feel that your engagement method was effective?

5. What challenges, issues and risks did you come across? How did you address these? What would you tell someone about to embark on a similar project?

6. Please provide details of all spend on the project as per the budget submitted. Please highlight any significant deviation of spend (even if you had previously agreed this with the CPE).

7. What impact did the project have, and what is the evidence for this? Please provide information on any evaluation or reports. Did you use the evaluation toolkit? How did you find it?

8. What is the legacy from the project? What are the next steps?
Where can any materials, videos, reports etc. be found?

9. Please provide 1-2 images, and any other media (videos etc) that the CPE can use to showcase the project

10. Do you feel you received enough information and support from the CPE to make your project a success? Please let us know if there is anything you think we could offer to support future projects.