Evaluation Webinars
In order to provide educators with more information on evaluation methods and strategies, a series of webinars will share technical information for conducting evaluations.The webinars will provide a venue for sharing information, ideas and experience from both evaluators and other beginning farmer organization staff.
Upcoming Webinars
Join the GREW listserv to receive announcements regarding upcoming webinars.
Past Webinars
Are They Still Farming?
Insights into conducting long-term evaluation of a beginning farmer training program
How many of your farmer training program graduates go on to operate their own farm businesses? The number of new farm businesses generated is arguably the most important metric for “success” among beginning farmer training programs. While the question itself is straightforward, coming up with an answer that addresses long-term program outcomes is not. In this webinar, presenters will describe the process by which New Entry Sustainable Farming Project conducted an evaluation of its incubator program going back 15 years. In attempting to answer fundamental questions about the extent to which the program has achieved its desired outcomes, we hope to improve the incubator experience and inform the field of beginning farmer training.
The webinar will cover topics relevant to program evaluation and farmer training such as:
- Preparation, participant tracking, and database management
- Evaluation methods and data collection
- Presentation of preliminary findings
- Reflection on program goals and outcomes to inform future program design
Presenters:
- Kevin Cody – Farmer Training Program Manager, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project/Tufts University; Beverly, MA
- Jennifer Hashley – Director, New Entry Sustainable Farming Project/Tufts University; Beverly, MA
Self-Assessment for Evaluation and Enhanced Learning: Using and Adapting the Business Health Assessment and the Refugee & Immigrant Participatory Benchmarking Tool
Self-assessment is one strategy for identifying learning gains and helping participants further improve their learning process. This webinar will explore two different assessment instruments that can be used by or modified to fit the needs of individual organizations.
Gary Matteson from the Farm Credit Council will share about the Business Health Assessment (BHA). The BHA has been developed specifically to help beginning farmers identify their strengths, as well as learning needs, to help them stay in business. He’ll share about how the instrument was developed, how it has been used, and how it can be adapted or used in your organization.
Elizabeth Moore of Trees for the Future will share about the development and use of the International Rescue Committee’s Participatory Benchmarking Tool, a self-assessment process specifically developed for working with immigrant and refugee beginning farmers from a variety of cultures and in different languages. She will share how the instrument is implemented, analyzed, and used for learning and evaluation reporting.
The goal of this webinar is that you’ll leave with practical ideas for doing your own self-assessment. In this one hour webinar the presenters will provide an overview of:
- Their program and why they decided to do a self-assessment
- Self-assessment development, implementation, and data analysis
- Ways it is used and how it has been useful
- Challenges encountered – and how they have been addressed
- Cost and timing of the process
Click here to view the full 60 minute webinar
Click here to download the webinar slides
Documenting Past Participant Outcomes: Beginning Farmer and Rancher Training Organizations Share Their Experience
Interested in different ways to track participants’ outcomes after they leave your program? Want to learn about different kinds of methods and practices others use and how they deal with the challenges they experience? Hear from staff of two different beginning farmer and rancher training programs who discuss how they track farmer and rancher outcomes over time. The goal is to showcase a couple of different practical ideas for you to draw from for your own follow-up evaluation.
The presenters provide an overview of:
- Outcomes addressed in their follow-up evaluation
- Methods and processes they used
- How the results were used and how they benefited the organization, farmers, and other stakeholders
- Estimated costs – in dollars, time, etc.
- Challenges encountered and how they were addressed
Presenters:
- Amy Bacigalupo – Land Stewardship Project Co-Managing Director and Co-Director of Farm Beginnings, Land Stewardship Project; Montevideo, MN
- Leah Ricci – New Agrarian Program Director, Quivira Coalition; Santa Fe, NM
Click here to view the full 90 minute webinar.
Click here to download the webinar slides.
Click here to downlad the New Agrarian Program Evaluation Report.
Click here to downlad the Farm Beginnings Collaborative's Primary Outcomes and Questions document.
Alternative Outcome Development & Data Collection Strategies: Most Significant Change (MSC) and Photovoice (PV)
Are you interested in a more participant-driven way of identifying outcomes? Curious about examples of participatory evaluation strategies? Do you want to learn about using data collection methods with non-English speaking audiences?
Join us for a webinar exploring two participatory and qualitative evaluation methods: The Most Significant Change (MSC) method and Photovoice (PV) method. These methods provide a way of telling success stories, allow program outcomes to be identified by participants, offer a structure for conducting a participatory evaluation, and can be particularly useful for non-English speakers.
Eugenia Gusev, Technical Advisor at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), will share her experience and expertise using these methods. She’ll cover the following items:
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The basics for doing MSC and Photovoice – with any audience, and specifically with non-English speakers
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How these methods were used at IRC, including how they worked, the resources they required, and how they were useful to the organization and participants
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Additional guidance for creating data collection instruments with non-English speakers
Presenter: Eugenia Gusev (Eugenia.gusev@rescue.org) works as a Technical Advisor for Food Security and Agriculture programs for the International Rescue Committee. Her focus is on the design and implementation of programs that focus on refugee food security and agriculture in the United States. She also focuses on developing staff capacity on monitoring and evaluation methods specifically around common metrics and participatory evaluation. Additionally, she provides evaluation consulting to other organizations.
Click here to view the full 1-hour webinar.
Click here to download the webinar slides.
The Development and Use of Outcomes to Evaluate Beginning Farmer and Rancher Training Programs
Identifying and tracking outcomes is a key piece of evaluating the impact of a program, and is almost always required by funding agencies. Beginning farmer and rancher (BFR) training staff have frequently requested more assistance with developing and using outcomes. The goal of this webinar is to provide some of this assistance.
The webinar covers:
- Different methods for identifying outcomes using theory of change models, educational
theory, evaluation frameworks, GREW tools, etc. - Examples of outcomes and measures for different types of BFR programs
- The value of using outcomes for strategic program development, program improvement,
and continual learning – not just accountability
Presenter: Thomas Archibald – Associate Professor and Extension Evaluation Specialist in the Agricultural,
Leadership, and Community Education Department at Virginia Tech
Click here to view the full 1-hour webinar.
Click here to download the webinar slides.
Evaluation 101: The Basics of Program Evaluation for Beginning Farmer and Rancher Programs
The goal of this webinar is to orient or remind viewers of the basic steps of evaluation, and help them identify needed resources to support their evaluation efforts. This webinar will give background on the GREW project and why evaluation is important for BFR educational programs. This session will also explore the four basic steps for doing an evaluation including preparing for an evaluation, designing an evaluation, collecting and analyzing data, and reporting and using an evaluation. We will also provide resources for each step of the way.
