Global Focus Aotearoa Community Youth Image Fiona Beals

"One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results."
(Milton Friedman)

This topic should take you two weeks to complete - you should dedicate at least 12 hours each week to reading, engaging with Moodle content and starting on assessments. 

You are focusing on the following Learning Outcome/s:

LO1: Students will be able to describe and assess methods used to evaluate youth development initiatives .

At the end of this topic you should have:

1) Worked your way through the introductory videos
2) Completed the readings
3) Completed the first case study quiz
4) Talked with your agency about your assessment needs.

Lesson 1: Getting Your Mind into the Evaluation and Research Zone

You will find that an absolute key for demonstrating the success of any initiative or programme is producing sound evidence based on clear results and outcomes. This is where evaluation comes in. Well to be honest - Monitoring and Evaluation. You have probably seen these two words (or even M&E) for many of us, these words can be threatening. But in this course, you will find that they don't have to be.

In this lesson, you will get a small taste of Monitoring and Evaluation. So instead of throwing you into the deep end we have a few videos for you to watch. The first is a short five minute video from Jane Bertrand looking at Monitoring and Evaluation in Family Planning. Jane asks some basic questions about where M&E fits into programme development, when should you start thinking about it and why should you do it?

This 30 minute video will show you (if you have been involved in developing and delivering programmes and initiatives) that you actually know how to do evaluation. In 6206, you will learn that the next step is to shift your thinking from 'collecting information for enhancing the lives of young people' to 'embedding your practice into sound research and learning reserach principles.'

 

 If you have any questions at all, you can use the course Question & Answer Forum or you can email Fiona .

Last modified: Tuesday, 2 July 2013, 3:55 AM