At the end of the training participants will:

• gain confidence to apply the acquired skills and knowledge to their M&E work
• be able to share and learn from other country experiences to strengthen their M&E systems in agricultural projects.
• have an improved understanding of how M&E can improve the quality of their projects while promoting learning and accountability
• also learn how to be better managers and consumers of evaluations conducted by others

COURSE

What is Monitoring and evaluation?

• Why is M&E important
• M&E and the project cycle management
• Step to implementing M&E in a project/programme in agricultural projects
• Type of evaluations
• Methods and tools for M&E

Trends towards Result Based M&E

• Managing for Development Results (MfDR)
• MfDR core principles
• MfDR and Result based management (RBM)
• Emergence of RBM and its development
• Seven phases of RBM
• Performance measurement, performance indicators and performance monitoring
• Logical framework and results framework

Introduction to Result Based M&E

• Essential actions to build result based M&E
• Result based M&E cycle
• The power of measuring results

• Situation analyses/Needs assessment
• Formative research
• Situation analysis
• Needs assessment
• Tools to conduct a needs assessment
• Illustrative examples of situation analysis and mappings

Designing the M&E system

• The result chain
• Impact path ways
• Logical framework vs Theory of change
• Developing a theory of change
• Components of a theory of change

M&E Frameworks

• Why are M&E frameworks important?
• Considerations when developing an M&E framework
• Results frameworks
• Logical frameworks

Designing indicators and evidence

• What are indicators?
• Characteristics of good indicators
• Process versus result/impact indicators
• Process indicators
• Result indicators
• Output indicators
• Outcome indicators
• Impact indicators
• Developing internationally comparable indicators

M&E Plans

• What does an M&E plan include?
• Important considerations for an M&E plan
• When should M&E be undertaken?
• When monitoring activities should be carried out?
• When should evaluations be conducted?
• Can M&E plans be amended?

Evaluation Techniques

• Evaluation questions
• Steps to developing evaluation questions
• Illustrative examples
• Designing evaluations for stakeholder benefit and use
• Choice and use of qualitative and quantitative collection instruments
• Participatory data analysis
• Communicating findings meaningfully for comprehensive stakeholder learning

Baseline Assessments

• What is baseline data and how is it collected?
• Needs assessment versus baseline study
• Questions to ask about a baseline plan
• What kind of baseline data is necessary, useful and practical to collect?
• Examples of baseline surveys

Data Collection and Analysis

• Quantitative data
• Methods for collecting quantitative data
• Challenges and limitations of quantitative methods
• Qualitative data
• Methods for collecting qualitative data
• Pre/post intervention focus group discussions
• Pre/post intervention interviews
• Illustration and example with selected participatory methods

Communicating M&E information

• Developing a communications strategy based on evaluation findings.
• Communicating findings to bring about change.
• Presenting M&E results using different media.

Use of M&E Results

• Different uses of M&E results
• To whom to give feedback
• When to give feedback
• How to give feed back
• Embedding learning for personal and organizational benefit
• Becoming change agents for M&E.
• Becoming an M&E champion

TRAINING METHODOLOGY

The training methodology combines lectures, discussions, group exercises and illustrations. Participants will gain both theoretical and practical knowledge of the topics. The emphasis is on the practical application of the topics and as a result participant will go back to the workplace with both the ability and the confidence to apply the techniques learned to their duties.

This course is available in the following locations:
Nigeria - $3000
Ghana    - $6000
Rwanda - $7000
UK - $8000
USA - $8000