While running the project

In our example "Just Imagine" course, the team chose to make use of this resource in cooperation with their researcher Briana and the participants both before and during the course by:

• taking results of pre-course questionnaires and targeted interviews into account when preparing the course
• Using participants' expectations, their own observations, intersit groups and selected interviews to check how the training course was going and amaking consequent changes in emphasis in the programme.

"Just Imagine" is an example of how a team works in a one-week course - the evaluation opportunities and choices to be made increase dramatically when considering a long-term training course.  This is an existing trend in European level courses lasting around six to nine months and are often based on the model:

1. introductory seminar (residential);
2. participants leave with an action plan to work on projects related to the theme of the course;
3. evaluation and deepening the theme seminar (also residential).

There are also more extensive efforts such as ATTE (Advance Training for Trainers in Europe) which lasted for two years.

Whatever the length of the course, using on-going evaluation results can be most helpful in finding out what is going on - metaphorically - both above and below the water: