Educational Processes to build evaluation capacity in Cooperative Extension

Abstract Information: The formal mission of extension in the United States’ land-grant university has broadened over the decades with a greater focus on the dissemination, application, and use of new knowledge though it remains true to its agricultural and economic roots with a broad focus on youth development, family health and wellbeing, food, natural resources, and programs that support these topics. Much evaluation work is done in Extension, though there are significant educational and capacity needs around topics such as needs assessment, program development, logic modeling, outcome mapping, measurement, analysis, impact assessment, and reporting. The panelists will describe the ways that they and their institutions are working to meet the multifaceted evaluation and capacity needs of Extension. John LaVelle will discuss how University of Minnesota (UMN) Extension developed an evaluation education system for all new Extension employees and is developing a scaffolded system to provide educational support and opportunities across all aspects of evaluation processes. Joe Rand will discuss how UMN Extension is working to intentionally integrate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) into all of their work, and how they are working to evaluate their own efforts. This will be used to frame the importance of interweaving DEI alongside the evaluation efforts to understand programmatic processes and outcomes. Vikram Koundinya will discuss how UC Cooperative Extension (UCCE) developed their current evaluation capacity building program for county extension advisors, community educators, and extension specialists covering the full cycle of extension program development and evaluation. The UCCE ECB team now has seven members consisting of the state level evaluation specialist, UCCE program planning and evaluation unit consisting of five members, and the state 4-H Evaluation Coordinator. Each of the seven members has unique strengths and focused expertise areas related to the 10 training topics offered in the annual statewide evaluation training program and lead or co-lead one or more of the training sessions. The topics for the trainings were identified from a comprehensive mixed-methods needs assessment conducted by the evaluation specialist and through other formal and informal methods by all of the team members. Samuel Pratsch (University of Wisconsin - Madison) will discuss the capacity building approach that his evaluation team has used with the Division of Extension’s Natural Resources Education Program to train their educators while supporting the evaluation needs of the program.