How long is the long-term?
In the diagram below, I map the outcomes section of the University of Wisconsin Extension logic model to the components of a public value message. In the parlance of the UWEX model, learning outcomes are short-term, behavior changes are medium-term, and condition changes are long-term.
Does public value magnitude matter?
Is it enough for a stakeholder to learn that your program produced public value, or do stakeholders want to know how much value was created? Put another way, is it adequate to demonstrate that a program has a positive return on investment for a community? Or does it have to have a higher return than all the alternative investments the community could have made?
Working Differently in Extension Podcast
Interested in a short introduction to “Building Extension’s Public Value”? Check out this Working Differently in Extension Podcast, featuring a conversation between Bob Bertsch of Agricultural Communication at North Dakota State University and me. If you’d like to actually see us converse, check out the video of the podcast below.
Evaluation and accountability
Last month at the 2013 AAEA Annual Conference, I was one of three presenters in a concurrent session on “Creating and Documenting Extension Programs with Public Value-Level Impacts.” I learned a lot from both of my co-presenters, but here are just two quick ideas I took away from the session: