Extension Education Evaluation TIG Week: Motivating Practitioners to Conduct Program Evaluations by Sarah Baughman

Date: Thursday, March 6, 2025

Hi! I’m Sarah Baughman, Associate Director of Learning and Organizational Development for Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE). VCE is a partnership between Virginia’s land grant institutions, Virginia State University and Virginia Tech. We advance the well-being of Virginia by empowering its people, stewarding its resources, and shaping its future.

My passion is program development and evaluation, and today I’d like to explore ideas for motivating practitioners to conduct program evaluations. In Cooperative Extension, our boots-on-the-ground educators are community-based with expertise in specific subject matters such as agriculture, horticulture, community development, health and well-being, and youth development. These locally based educators deliver research-based programs that meet identified community needs. They are also responsible for conducting program evaluations and reporting programmatic outcomes and impacts. Research and experience tell us that practitioners often view program evaluation as an afterthought or “extra” work.

In my almost 20 years of building evaluation capacity in Cooperative Extension, I’ve learned a few techniques and tips that improve educators’ interest in and ability to evaluate their own programs.

Hot Tips

• Honor their expertise and community knowledge. Local educators know their communities and bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to their evaluation work even if they are not formally trained evaluators.
• Provide evaluation tools and instruments that are customizable. For example, allow space for practitioners to add a few questions that provide information they need.
• Provide templates for visualizations or infographics that can easily be shared with local stakeholders.
• Provide guidance on prioritizing what to evaluate. Educators should prioritize evaluating one or two major programs a year.
• Guide them to focus evaluation efforts on major programs rather than activities.
• Provide resources to help them understand the difference between feedback and program evaluation.
• Ensure they have access to their own data.
• Ensure they have the tools and information to compare their data to larger program data, such as regional or statewide data.

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Extension Education Evaluation TIG Week with our colleagues in the Extension Education Evaluation Topical Interest Group. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our EEE TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.