Me with a Program Evaluation Book. Lots of reading this week!

This week I met with a professor I am working with to discuss program evaluation tools for Ogallala Commons. According to Wikipedia, program evaluation is a systematic method for collecting, analyzing, and using information to answer questions about a program’s effectiveness. My main goal as an intern is to develop instruments, or surveys. The information obtained from the surveys will be useful for improving the programs and they will give insights for how effective programs are.

Since Ogallala Commons works with a variety of groups for different programming, I will have to make a few individualized instruments. Each of the instruments, however, will include information related to knowledge acquisition, change in attitude, and intentions to change behavior. The first evaluation will be for producers who will be attending a conference in Nazareth at the end of the month. Next, I will develop two instruments to evaluate how much students and teachers are impacted by playa festivals. Finally, I will develop a tool to evaluate the experience of people that visit the out door classroom.
One of the challenges for this project are that playa festivals are catered to each school, and as such, change slightly. This could be a problem since true replication is needed for exact answers. We will bypass this problem by focusing on the material that is taught at every session. This will be a learning experience for all of us. At the end of the semester, however, we should have some really great surveys!