Critical conversation about public value

Extension Network Literacy
Listen in on a thought-provoking conversation about “The role of evaluation in determining the public value of Extension” with this eXtension Network Literacy Critical Conversation video. Participants are Nancy Franz (Iowa State University), Mary Arnold (Oregon State University), and Sarah Baughman (Virginia Tech), and the host is Bob Bertsch (North Dakota State University).

The participants make a number of interesting points about where Extension program evaluation has been and is headed. Several of my own take-aways from the video influenced my recent presentations at the 2013 AAEA Annual conference and the APLU meeting on Measuring Excellence in Extension. I’ve paraphrased three of those insights below.

==Nancy Franz: Extension should work toward changing the unit of program evaluation analysis from the individual to the system.

==Mary Arnold: Extension is still too often limiting evaluation to private value and isolated efforts. We need to move closer to systems-level evaluation.

==Sarah Baughman: We need to do more program evaluation for program improvement, not only evaluation for accountability.

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