community work, responsive evaluation, software

Community work emphasises the development of a mobilized community. Its performance puts high demands on the learning and self-reflection of community workers. One of the instruments to support these processes is a responsive and participative evaluation. Currently, there are no instruments for responsive evaluation of community work. It seems desirable to develop an original instrument in cooperation with the target group, in the case of software development, using the so-called agile methodology. The research aims to find out expectations of community workers as regards the software for responsive evaluation of community work. The aim of this article is to identify and analyse the expectations of community workers associated with support of their learning and self-reflection. The research was carried out using the method of Constructivist Grounded Theory, while for the data collection we used the technique of semi-structured focus groups. In 2018, there were 6 focus groups consisting of 48 community workers. When formulating the expectations, community workers described the characteristics of evaluation software in terms of its purpose, design, and functions. They defined what results, processes, and methods should be evaluated in order to contribute to the development of the workers’ self-reflection, the ability to identify successes and failures, as well as the factors leading to them.