S. Kay Rockwell

An Interdisciplinary and Interagency Evaluation Team: Benefits for Other-Discipline Specialists

Abstract Agriculturists are agricultural scientists who use basic agricultural research techniques derived from physical and biological sciences as they seek new knowledge to improve the food and fiber system. This empirically based knowledge is the major source of information that the Cooperative Extension service communicates to people in agriculturally related occupations. To facilitate such communication, programs are developed as vehicles for communicating and applying agricultural research findings to improve agricultural practices. Cooperative Extension System program evaluators strive to ascertain how effective and useful these programs are by using empirical evaluation processes grounded in the social sciences. Consequently, while agriculturalists and extension program evaluators are both committed to empiricism, their research orientations are as different as are the social and the biological/physical sciences. This article reports how—notwithstanding this difference—14 agriculturalists were benefitted as they performed an evaluators role on a team that examined eight water quality demonstration projects. This study suggests that collaborative efforts between evaluators and agriculturalists strengthen study recommendations, are beneficial to the organization, and are personally rewarding to the participating specialists.

Using Targeting Outcomes of Programs as a Framework to Target Photographic Events in Nonformal Educational Programs

Targeting Outcomes of Programs (TOP) is a seven-step hierarchical programming model in which the program development and performance sides are mirror images of each other. It served as a framework to identify a simple method for targeting photographic events in nonformal education programs, indicating why, when, and how photographs would be useful to inform other evaluation strategies. In two case studies, photographs enhanced the formative story of a geoscience project being developed and tested, and contributed to the outcome narrative of a 10-year partnership project between two universities. In both cases, TOP proved to be an efficient and easy-to-use framework. Using TOP in this fashion has the potential to help evaluators address challenges posed by the subjectivity of photography and possible biases of the photographer in the research process.