KM in Education: Evaluating an Afterschool Best Practices website

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I recently started volunteering at a school in Oakland to help redesign its afterschool program and wondered how easy it would be to find helpful best practices. I came across a number of sites, citing best practices for afterschool programs, but only one that would truly be useful and easy to use for any afterschool stakeholder.

The Promising Practices in Afterschool website stands head and shoulders above other sites by providing both high content quality and a well-structured design layout and format. The best practices are truly 'best' as they are culled from several different afterschool program networks that identified promising practices and then undergo a multi-step review process. The content is categorized into easily identifiable groups, facilitating searching across key components of afterschool programs: Community & Family Involvement, Programming, Management & Administration, Staffing & Training, Financing, Policy & Advocacy, and Research, Evaluation & Knowledge Base. Each best practice is described both in summary form and in comprehensive detail, and provides users with the ability to quickly review activities, impacts and contact information.

However, as a seeker of afterschool knowledge, I still see opportunities for improvement. At the end of my search process, I was still combing practices in a random alphabetical list. To help me more quickly access the knowledge I need, search capabilities should be extended beyond key components to my key criteria such as the problem I want to resolve (e.g., arts education) or the student group I am targeting (e.g., at-risk kids). Perhaps I am a demanding consumer trained by sites such as eBay and Amazon, as I would also like to see ratings for each practice by other users and/or the review panel or perhaps a quantitative performance impact if possible. Finally, I find it odd that the price of each program is not included in the summary facts. Funding must be a key factor in every afterschool program, and a very effective best practice would demonstrate that in its overall cost. Still, despite these opportunity areas, I see this site as a strong starting point for afterschool best practices and possibly an exemplary best practices site in the education sector.