Figuring out how to evaluate our own work is something we don’t get a chance to practice often and, as a result, we’re usually not very good at it. If you don’t have good criteria, you can’t evaluate your project and can’t know if you are successful.
Your criteria are standards you set for the success of your project. They must be:
Specific
Measurable
Challenging
Achievable
Let’s clarify each of these aspects using some examples.
Specificity is important because we want to set goals for ourselves that we can strive for without being confused. Why set a goal if you don’t know when you’ve reached it? Using the rather silly example of throwing a party for a child, we’d obviously want our event to be well attended and could easily create a criterion like: People will come to the party.
While this is certainly a goal, it doesn’t give us a specific standard we’re striving for. A much better criterion would be: At least four friends will attend the party
Creating a criterion for success as precise as the one above gives us a goal we can plan for.
Criteria are only useful if we can assess our project against them and we can only assess a project against criteria that are measurable. When appropriate, criteria should include some kind of quantity (5 chapters, drills for 4 different skills, playing 6 chords fluidly). Often, however, criteria will be qualitative and won’t include numbers, but they can still be measurable. For example, a student writing a book might create this criterion: All characters will be interesting.
Setting goals based on this criterion might be too difficult. How do you measure interesting? Goal-setting might be easier if we alter the criterion to something like: All characters will be involved in stories that open, have action, and have closure.
With this criterion, the student can analyze the characters in her book to make sure that each one is involved in these three aspects of the story.
One way to make sure your goal is appropriately challenging is to create criteria for success that will push you outside of your comfort zone (a little or a lot). Let’s say Sasha wants to make a film for her project, but has made films in the past. She could create a criterion like: My film will be 3 minutes long.
This criterion is certainly specific and measurable, but might not be challenging enough when we consider her past experience. She might revise it to: My film will be 10 minutes long.
While we want you to create a goal and criteria that are interesting and challenging, we don’t want you to back yourself into a corner with specifications that are completely unachievable. A student planting a garden, for example, could decide on the following criterion: I will harvest 300 pounds of strawberries.
After a bit of research, the student would hopefully determine that he cannot possibly complete this undertaking by himself and revise his criterion to: I will harvest 5 pounds of strawberries.
We want you to put serious thought and do some preliminary research before deciding on your criteria for success, but we know that projects change as we learn new things. Once your project is approved, you can alter your criteria in consultation with your supervisor. He or she will make sure your revisions are based on a newer, better understanding of how your project is developing and not on a desire to simply make it easier.