eXtension’s Evaluation Community of Practice (Eval CoP) is a group of Extension evaluation professionals dedicated to helping other Extension professionals improve their ability to conduct meaningful, high quality program evaluations. Eval CoP members recognize there is a high diversity of program purposes, audiences, content, delivery, and expected outcomes among Extension programs, making it challenging for educational professionals to identify, locate, and/or produce appropriate tools to evaluate programs on a specific topic and/ or for their specific audience. The profession and field of evaluation has grown tremendously over the past decade, and Extension research and education professionals often have a steep learning curve to develop skills and recognize appropriate resources to conduct high quality evaluations. The Eval CoP team understands this, and also recognizes the need for easy access to support and resources for a widely dispersed national population of Extension professionals.
As a result, the Eval CoP has a 3-pronged approach to increasing evaluation capacity and quality for Extension to:
- provide Extension professionals with appropriate, high quality, easy to access, easy to use evaluation tools and resources using the web and social media as platforms;
- market resources effectively and highlight quality evaluation work being conducted; and
- identify and recognize evaluation champions within Extension.
Roll-out and initiation of metrics for success is scheduled for Fall of 2013.