Evaluating team project-work using triangulation: lessons from communities in northern Ghana Gordon Clark a * and Godfred Seidu Jasaw b a Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK; b Department of Community Development, Faculty of Planning and Land Management, University for Development Studies, PO Box UPW 3, Wa, Ghana (Received 17 July 2013; final version received 9 June 2014) This paper uses triangulation to assess key aspects of a team-based, participatory action research programme for undergraduates in rural communities across northern Ghana. The perceptions of the programme and its effects on the students, staff and host communities are compared, showing areas of agreement and disagreement. The successes of the programme (particularly the students’ development) and areas for improvement (student preparation and follow-up actions) are set out. We consider how this programme might be used in other contexts. Advantages include impact on students and moral value: disadvantages include cost and timetabling. The merits of a triangulation approach to evaluation are discussed. Keywords: projects; evaluation; triangulation; participatory; community; northern Ghana Introduction There are many aims for projects and dissertations in higher education. There are the core aims of inculcating practical and employability skills, classroom learning and its practical application, and assessing academic skills. Additionally, one may add aims of teamwork, work-based learning, problem-based learning and co-researching with communities (Quality Assurance Agency [QAA], 2007, p. 8). Conventionally, students’ written project work is assessed only by staff and only for its academic quality; sometimes, the students will be invited to self-assess directly or via a learning log. Where the project work is in the tradition of participatory action research, a third party is necessarily involved, the host community. For an all-round evaluation of such projects, all three parties – students, staff and communities – need to be involved in the assessment and the focus of their evaluations must be wider than its conventional academic merit and should include consideration of both the personal effects of the project experience on the students (Boyle et al., 2007) and the practical benefits for the communities involved. The evaluation process needs to be structured so that comparisons can be made among the views of the three parties, seeking areas of agreement and disagreement, in order to fully appreciate the programme. Hence in this paper, we have adopted a constructivist approach in order to hear the voices of the three parties. This case study of the use of a triangulation methodology allows the reliability of all the responses to be corroborated (Denzin, 2006, 2012; Rothbauer, 2008). The empirical basis of this research is the Third Trimester Field Practical Programme (“the Programme”) run by the University for Development Studies (UDS) in northern q 2014 Taylor & Francis *Corresponding author. Email: g.clark@lancaster.ac.uk Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2014.936311