The Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI): An aspirational open-source instrument to assess community-based global learning programs

As community-based global learning (CBGL) programs become more common on college/university campuses and increasingly utilize the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to guide programmatic outcomes, open-access assessment instruments that both benchmark and effectively measure programmatic enhancements over time are needed. The 147-item Community Engagement and Partnership Inventory (CEPI) provides a comprehensive set of aspirational CBGL best-practice statements in an easy-to-use, assessment-friendly format, and the CEPI-SF (short form) offers an abridged 47-item inventory for assessment strategies that do not require the level of detail offered by the full length CEPI. The CEPI/CEPI-SF provides a systematic evaluation of programs, applying the principles of critical global inquiry such that methods of administration and scoring can be flexible and tailored to program and institutional needs. The use of the CEPI/CEPI-SF as a tool for program evaluation, development, and best practice benchmarking is intended to support the development, sustainability, and long-term growth of CBGL activities that stress reciprocity, equity, and justice.