The year started with floods in Toowoomba and South East Queensland and also brought on a flood of projects in both the extension and evaluation areas. The year saw Jeff in Chile (running extension training for the dairy industry) and New Zealand (looking at evaluating extension and development impact in dairy). Extension training was also undertaken in the grains industry as GRDC funded a project to pilot such training with the private sector.
As 2011 starts, we find that we have a strong focus on the rural and remote areas of South West Queensland - an area that has been hard hit with first drought and now floods. Jeff Coutts is part of a project run by the Centre of Rural and Remote Area Health and funded by the Collaborative Partnership for Farming and Fishing Health Safety (through RIRDC). This project is running workshops in 12 rural and remote areas to see what more can be done for farmers and their communities to build their capacity in the face of climate variability. A related input is facilitating meetings in two centres in the region to look at how Human Services and Volunteers can best coordinate their response to flood recovery within their communities.
Read the full post | Tags: CRRAH, RIRDC, Queensland, Mental Health
There have been some comings and goings at Coutts J&R recently. Ben Coutts has returned from British Columbia and is working as a project officer with us based in Brisbane. Ben brings considerable experience with his knowledge of design and analysis.
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As we enter the new 2010/2011 financial year, there is a lot of activity being undertaken in the rural and agricultural sector in Australia. For example: The Murray Darling Basin Authority is set to release its draft plan for the basin which will have implications for agricultural industries, communities and river health; and the productivity commission (http://www.pc.gov.au/projects/inquiry/rural-research/terms-of-reference) is undertaking a review of the Rural Development Corporation model of delivering R&D in Australia. Both of these events alone are very significant for the sector.
Read the full post | Tags: News, Evaluation, R&D, Rural, Agricultural
There is strong demand for evaluation services at the moment – and Coutts J&R is happily involved in a full range of projects and opportunities across Australia - South Australia’s Eyre’s Peninsula; the Murray Darling Basin; the northern Australian Rivers and top our own back yard in the Condamine Catchment, Southern Queensland (some of these are now included in our projects section). There has also been some opportunity to branch out further into the Pacific Region – all interesting work! I was recently sent a link which highlighted ‘Program Evaluation’ as one of the 13 careers to watch for in the next decade!...One of the baker’s dozen of professions that promise income growth, work-life balance and social impact.
So maybe we are in the right place at the right time!
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Jeff attended the Australasian Pacific Extension Network (APEN) International Conference at Busselton, Western Australia. Having convened the original International Extension Conference at the Gold Coast in 1992, it was incredible seeing the numbers of people from around Australia (and 14 internationals!) who went to the far reaches of the country to talk ‘extension’ – around the theme of ‘shaping change in the community’.
Read the full post | Tags: News, APEN
Although we have been undertaking surveys since we commenced in 2001, they have mostly been done as part of an overall evaluation of a project and program. We have identified that many people who are undertaking such evaluations need to outsource the survey component. This is a role that we are stepping up to take!
Read the full post | Tags: Jeff Coutts, Surveys
In August, the survey workshop is going to be run in Perth for staff from the Department of Agriculture and Food, Western Australia. Although this workshop is not open to other participants, it does show that it is portable and applicable around the country. We have revamped it a little based on our experience in Toowoomba and the feedback from participants and believe that it is even better. If you have a group that could benefit from learning how to better design, run and report on surveys, just let us know!
The survey workshop we ran with Kerry Bell from Bellmetrics in Toowoomba has now been and gone! The 15 participants (across Health; State government; agriculture and post-graduate students) really got into it and shared their experience as well as posing insightful questions. As one participant put it…”What I liked most was actively involving participants so that they integrate the skills from workshop”. Our aim had been what one participant described on the feedback form...”Improved understanding of framework/structure, analysis of data (quantitative and qualitative) - and overall confidence of constructing a survey in future”.
There has been some interest expressed in having us run the workshop elsewhere in Australia and we are considering our options – If you have any ideas or see a need somewhere, please let us know!
Jeff went to Canberra recently to deliver the final report on "Evaluating the Defeating the Weed Menace R&D Program" at Land and Water Australia and DAFF. Despite the shock of the closure of LWA, a number of staff attended the presentation and became involved in a very useful discussion. The evaluation concluded that the program had performed very highly against its ‘objectives, scientific outcomes and performance indicators' and with a strong positive feedback from researchers about the excellent management of the program.