Learners, who are staff at a community center, have to demonstrate that they have gained knowledge about how to addres issues of inclusion/exclusion in their community, by engaging a group of people who have historically not engaged with their community center. This group of people has a different native language than the one the learners speak, and have a different country of origin, as well as other differences in culture and religion from the learners' group. Ultimately, the staff learners will need to answer two questions: "Why is this community not currently included in our community center?" and "How can we create a program or other solution in order to include them?"

Utilizing a project-based learning approach, they will embark upon a series of activities in order to better research and understand this community and the opportunities for inclusion. As part of this project-based learning approach, they will need to:

1. Explore the issue/s of lack of inclusion of these members through meeting collectively as a staff team.
2. Meeting collectively will allow them the chance to discuss and identify what is already known from various perspectives of staff about this community.
3. Hearing from each other may help staff to begin to define the issues that this community is facing--though the best way to fully understand and define these issues would be to connect with the community itself. Some ways to do this would be through the work of coordinating interviews (group and one-on-one), collaborating with other local organizations, and engaging with leaders in the community.
4. Upon engaging with the community, the staff learners may simultaneously embark upon researching examples through formal research (such as reviewing blogs, news articles, books, etc. on this community and their experiences), to begin to understand what types of programs or experiences are meaningful to these community members. Then they will be able to test and apply these perspectives.
5. Through testing these different types of programs, they may begin to come up with other ways to investigate solutions to the issues defined above.
6. They may decide against a program, or may modify their original program idea as part of developing and organizing a solution to the issues defined.
7. Finally, through feedback and self-reflection, they will review their results and process in order to clarify where errors were made, and seek to improve in future iterations.

They need to design a program, and update some of their processes, practices, and policies, to be more inviting and to engage more people from the new group at their community center. Their goal is to create an engaging program for this new part of their community, and to document their progress throughout via a documentary.

The above learning scenario poses a unique challenge that is often found within the diversity & inclusion space (among others, such as membership, sales, community development, strategic planning, etc.): the need to engage new people, and learn how best to include them in the current environment in order to successfully do so. A formative assessment would be one way to gauge learners' education within this process. A formative assessment is one that includes questions while someone is undergoing the learning and information-gathering, in order to ensure they are "on the right track" and understanding the material meaningfully throughout, rather than just at the end of the assignment.

Assessment Part I: Documentary-Style Film

This assessment could look like a documentary-style film (formative assessment)--wherein students utilize technology to record their interactions, their thought processes, the challenges they faced throughout the process, and their successes. The instructor would, as part of the process, introduce other documentaries relating to effective community engagement or community organizing where a group of people has partnered with another group to solve an issue and improve development. As the course went on, the group would regularly review--via collaboration and discuss questions--effective elements of community engagement demonstrated in the documentaries or films they viewed. Accompanied by the film assignment would be a rubric that is structured based off of steps 1-7 above. It would ensure that students had followed each aspect of the project in order to demonstrate they took the steps needed to engage with the group, along with an added requirement that each step be filmed along the way. During class meetings, the group would share their some of their weekly footage with the instructor to get feedback regularly on the progress of the assignment and to demonstrate how learning took place. The instructor could invite a community leader, or someone involved with other community-based projects, to each class session to review the weekly project and share their feedback and insight as well.

Assessment Part II: Program Launch

At the end of the course, the final product would be the documentary film (for the purposes of the class to share with each other), as well as the community program itself--which would be for the community to demonstrate the results of the project and what the group had learned.

The above assessment is an authentic assessment because it "is one that requires application of what students have learned to a new situation, and that demands judgment to determine what information and skills are relevant and how they should be used" (Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning). It includes a number of necessary components for authentic assessments, which are numbered below and come from Grant Wiggins (1998):

1. "Is Realistic":
   • Asks participants to design a program that can be used in their community center, to the benefit of their community, and in partnership with their community.
   • Assigns meetings and interviews with community leaders and groups of community members to understand their experiences.
2. "Requires Judgment and Innovation":
   • Requests an entirely new program be created through engagement with peers, community leaders, viewing related documentaries, and consulting with experts and the instructor regularly. All of these represent "integrated challenges in which a range of skills and knowledge must be used in coordination" (Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning)
3. "Asks the Student to 'Do' the Subject":
   • Rather than simply discussing various program models, students have to actually embark upon the process of creating a program, in partnership with those for whom the program is designed. Engages in regular class discussion and reflection on progress being made on the project.
4. "Allows Appropriate Opportunities to Rehearse, Practice, Consult Resources, and Get Feedback to Refine Performance/Product":
   • Requires participants share progress weekly via collected video--in order to watch their own work, and get feedback from fellow classmates. This process is also "iterative" and "contain[s] recurring tasks" (Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning)
   • Includes regular check-ins with the instructor, possible More Knowledgeable Others in the class, and regular visits from experts to review progress.
   • Includes required viewing of documentaries on related-topics to strengthen learner perspective on community engagement work.
5. "Assesses Student Ability to Efficiently and Effectively Use a Repertoire of Knowledge and Skills to Negotiate a Complex Task":
   • Utilizes community resources, people, and written resources to be used to create the structure of the program design.

This project also represents a Project-Based Learning Approach, because it is "inquiry-based" and the lesson is being taught "through the project--not teaching and then doing the project" (Miller 2017).

This project is heavily constructivist, through its reliance on More Knowledgeable Others, and scaffolding through engagement of experts and instructor support, and peer learning. It uses what is likely the Zone of Proximal Development with staff at a community center, who are likely primed to learn about community work, through requiring them to engage in regular conversations and design interviews and focus groups with the community to help them learn new perspectives and apply them to their professional work.