The DIAL Group

The most significant impact for the Ntiajteb Koomtes project will be in classrooms and schools. The arts can enhance students' learning of language, culture, and social justice. Researchers have shown that the arts can increase young people's academic achievement and contribute to their positive development. Our project’s measurable outcomes for students and schools are to increase:

1. the number of youth learning Hmong language and culture through the arts (approx.. 80 students for this project period);
2. the diversity of effective and creative teaching materials available to schools that wish to preserve the Hmong language, history, and culture (1 album with 5 music tracks, 5 videos, and music-based curriculum;
3. the amount schools that teach Hmong language and culture using our arts-based curriculum (4 schools this project period).

The DIAL and our project partners will measure and evaluate the outcomes of Ntiajteb Koomtes using three primary evaluation methods:

• Process Evaluation to monitor project activities regarding implementation and timing.
• Summative Evaluation to assess overall effectiveness and achievements.
• Outcome Evaluation to measure the impact of the project.

We will design and implement the evaluation plan and tools with oversight and direction from the DIAL’s executive director David Kang. The DIAL uses best practices to design our evaluations, and uses industry methods and standards to ensure project effectiveness, efficiency and quality. Also, we will measure the literacy of the students with support from their classroom teachers who have been tracking their progress before the implementation of our programming. We plan to have teachers determine the learning level of each student and then in our follow-up evaluations, we will assess the progress of each student after residency.

Taken together, the surveys, interviews, focus groups and other evaluation tools will help measure the extent to which the program outcomes are being achieved, as well as the overall quality of the project. The evaluation results will also help us eliminate or adjust the ineffective parts to Ntiajteb Koomtes for better program outcomes and performance. The DIAL will also share the results of the project to the community through our websites. Lastly, we will present the MN Humanities Center with the finding of our project and evaluations.

Outside of the direct outcomes of the project, we hope that indirectly instructors become facilitators of creative learning and are empowered in their own professional growth. Teachers will feel fulfilled and able to provide a hands-on, arts-based learning environment for their students. The Hmong language and learning curriculum has been a work in progress to fit into learning models in the United States. While living in villages of Asia, the Hmong have naturally learned through arts in our everyday lives as a means of survival whether it be sewing clothing for our families or chanting poetry in the forest as a form of therapy.

In the long-term, the DIAL and our partners will track the number of teachers and schools that implement our arts-based Hmong language curriculum, and the number of students who participate. We will have periodic check-ins beyond the grant period, since this is a long-term and ongoing effort for the organization, artists, and other collaborators.