Ideal's in action

You can use a radar of skills and competences to help participants to define their learning expectations and to assess to which extend they reach them.

When the Tour starts, ask participants to take 15 to 20 minutes to examine what their expectations in terms of skills and competences development are.

• 1. What kind of skills do you expect to learn or improve during the Heterotopia Tour?
• 2. Identify how strong is your expectations to learn or improve each of them and set an indicator for each.

For example, participant “A” could write: “I really expect to learn about some eco-construction techniques during the Tour” and sets an indicator of 7 out of 10, corresponding to his/her expectations in terms of learning about those techniques. Likewise, they would also like to improve their English speaking skills, but their expectations are lower than for eco-construction ; he/she sets an indicator of 5 out of 10.

Ask participants the same question at the end of the Tour and compare the answer. What did they expect to learn at the very beginning, and where are they at now that it's the end of the Tour? Does it match or not? Are there huge differences? Are those either positive or negative? That way you can evaluate how well the journey meets the participants' expectations.

As facilitators, if you find the time for it and you are eager to re-adapt the Tour on the go, it might be interesting to do an intermediate assessment (that can take the shape of a Sharing Circle, as described previously, for example) and see to which extend the Tour answers to the participants' expectations. Even though it is very challenging to modify the content of the Tour, it might be possible to some extend to adapt the animation or the facilitation, for example, by focusing more either on theory or practice depending on the participants' needs.