NCGS-M009 — Environmental education session and knowledge assessment
- Code: NCGS-M009
- Version: NCGS-2026-09-24
- Approval status: Approved
Recording and counting environmental education sessions: each session at a host site covering one or more sites, with the curriculum elements taught, attendance counted by audience type from the signed register, accountable adult attendees recorded as agent roles, and an optional before-and-after knowledge check reported as session-level means. From conformant sessions the methodology counts sessions held and attendees.
underlying principles and assumptions
A session is what happened and was evidenced, not what was planned: it exists only with at least one curriculum element, attendance above zero, a signed register and a photograph. Names stay in the register; the graph carries counts, content addresses and agent identifiers with roles (ADR-0007). A taught skill is a curriculum element, so that practice can later be compared to teaching as data. Every planted site is covered by a session, at the site or at a regional workshop its stewards attended.
methods and procedures
Plan the session: host site, covered sites, date, facilitator, curriculum elements. Deliver it; have attendees sign the register; count attendance by audience type; record stewards, owners and site managers who will look after trees as agent roles; optionally run the same knowledge items before and after and record items asked and the two mean scores; photograph the session; anchor the register and the photograph; submit the session record.
data requirements and inputs
A conformant education session record (the NCGS education data requirement); the curriculum-elements and audience-types schemes; for the coverage rule, the site register and its planting records.
calculation and transformation rules
Sessions held = count of conformant session records; a session covering several sites is one session, at its host. Attendees = sum of attendee counts over the sessions’ audience counts; the same person at two sessions counts twice. Roll-up over sites and census places sums counts. The curriculum-element axis is a multi-valued slice: a session appears under every element it taught, so slices by element do not sum to sessions held and are never rolled up across elements. Knowledge score change per session = mean score after minus mean score before, an indicator value per session sliced by curriculum element, site and census place; never per person, and never averaged across sessions: a slice lists its sessions’ values.
outputs and units of measure
Environmental education sessions held (count, NUM); attendees at environmental education sessions (count, NUM); knowledge score change per session (difference of means, UNITLESS).
validation and verification approach
A session is verified by its anchored attendance register and photograph: the register’s content address resolves and its counts agree with the audience counts. Sessions are not reviewed one by one; they enter the validation sample of the project design. The coverage rule is checked on every planted site.
limitations and applicability boundaries
Counts attendance, not learning: the knowledge check is optional and aggregated, and says nothing about behaviour. Whether a taught skill is practised is the stewardship methodology’s question. Regional workshops attribute coverage to sites through attendees’ roles, not through learners.
rationale
The proposal commits Nova to at least one workshop per region; KIA-Adapt found that households who attended training mulched and watered more. Recording sessions with a register and curriculum elements makes both the commitment and the later comparison checkable without naming a child.
Applicability
- NCGS-M009: a session enters the counts only with at least one curriculum element from the scheme, a signed attendance register and a photograph.
- NCGS-M009: a knowledge check reports items asked and both means, or nothing.
- NCGS-M009: attendance summed over audience types is above zero.
Indicators it serves
Activity types
- Environmental education
Knowledge domains a reviewer needs
- Community engagement and environmental education
- Field survey and data capture
Variables
| Variable | Role | Unit | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Attendees (N) | DerivedOutput | NUM | N = sum of n_{s,t} over sessions and audience types. |
| Knowledge score change (k_after - k_before) | DerivedOutput | UNITLESS | The difference of the mean scores after and before the session over the same knowledge items. |
| Sessions held (|S|) | DerivedOutput | NUM | |S| = count of conformant session records. |
| Attendee count by audience type (n_{s,t}) | MeasuredInput | NUM | |
| Covered site (c_s) | MeasuredInput | UNITLESS | A site the session counts for; the coverage rule reads it. |
| Curriculum element taught (e_s) | MeasuredInput | UNITLESS | |
| Mean knowledge score after (k_after) | MeasuredInput | UNITLESS | |
| Mean knowledge score before (k_before) | MeasuredInput | UNITLESS |
Monitoring requirements
- Verified by the anchored register: A session is verified by its anchored attendance register and photograph; it is not monitored afterwards and enters the validation sample of the project design.