Meta-evaluation to improve learning, evaluation capacity development and sustainability : Findings from a participatory evaluation project in Nepal

Recent studies suggest that meta-evaluation can be valuable in developing new approaches to evaluation, building evaluation capacities, and enhancing organizational learning. These new extensions of the concept of meta-evaluation are significant, given the growing emphasis on improving the quality and effectiveness of evaluation practices in the South Asian region. Following a review of the literature, this paper presents a case study of the use of concurrent meta-evaluation in the four-year project Assessing Communication for Social Change which developed and trialled a participatory impact assessment methodology in collaboration with a development communication Non-government organization (NGO) in Nepal. Key objectives of the meta-evaluation included to: continuously develop, adapt and improve the impact assessment methodology, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and process and other project activities; identify impacts of the project; and build capacities in critical reflection and review. Our analysis indicates that this meta-evaluation was essential to understanding various constraints related to the organizational context that affected the success of the project and the development of improved M&E systems and capacities within the NGO. We identified several limitations of our meta-evaluation methods, which were balanced by the strengths of other methods. Our case study suggests that as well as assessing the quality, credibility and value of evaluation practices, meta-evaluations need to focus on important contextual issues that can have significant impacts on the outcomes of participatory evaluation projects. They include hierarchical organizational cultures, communication barriers, power/knowledge relations, and the time and resources available. Meta-evaluations also need to consider wider issues such as the sustainability of evaluation systems and approaches.

A Nobel Prize for governance and institutions : Oliver Williamson and Elinor Ostrom

This paper reviews the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics jointly awarded to Oliver Williamson for his work on governance in organizations and the boundaries of the firm, and to Elinor Ostrom for her work on the governance of common pool resources. We review the careers and the research contributions of Williamson and Ostrom to the theory and analysis of economic institutions of governance. Both winners of this Prize for 'economic governance' are thoroughly deserved, yet like the Hayek- Myrdal Prize of 1974 their respective approaches, methods and findings are almost diametrically opposed. Williamson offers a top-down contracts-based solution to the incentive problems of opportunism in corporate governance, whereas Ostrom offers a bottom-up communication-based solution to the governance opportunities of community resources. We offer some critical comments on Williamson's analytic work and discussion of the potential for further application of Ostrom's case-study based experimental methodology. We conclude with a suggested third nominee to make better sense of how these two great scholars' works fit together, namely George Richardson'

Creative industries after the first decade of debate

It has now been over a decade since the concept of creative industries was first put into the public domain by the Blair Labour government’s Creative Industries Mapping Documents in Britain. The concept has gained traction globally, but it has also been understood and developed in different ways in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, as well as through international bodies such as UNCTAD and UNESCO. A review of the policy literature reveals that although questions and issues remain around definitional coherence, there is some degree of consensus emerging about the size, scope, and significance of the sectors in question in both advanced and developing economies. At the same time, debate about the concept remains highly animated in media, communication, and cultural studies, with its critics dismissing the concept outright as a harbinger of neoliberal ideology in the cultural sphere. This article couches such critiques in light of recent debates surrounding the intellectual coherence of the concept of neoliberalism, arguing that this term itself possesses problems when taken outside of the Anglo-American context in which it originated. It is argued that issues surrounding the nature of participatory media culture, the relationship between cultural production and economic innovation, and the future role of public cultural institutions can be developed from within a creative industries framework and that writing off such arguments as a priori ideological and flawed does little to advance debates about twentieth-century information and media culture.

Innovative approaches to teaching engineering drawing at tertiary institutions

This paper arises from our concern for the level of teaching of engineering drawing at tertiary institutions in Australia. Little attention is paid to teaching hand drawing and tolerancing. Teaching of engineering drawing is usually limited to computer-aided design (CAD) using AutoCAD or one of the solid-modelling packages. As a result, many engineering graduates have diffi culties in understanding how views are produced in different projection angles, are unable to produce engineering drawings of professional quality, or read engineering drawings, and unable to select fits and limits or surface roughness. In the Faculty of Built Environment and Engineering at the Queensland University of Technology new approaches to teaching engineering drawing have been introduced. In this paper the results of these innovative approaches are examined through surveys and other research methods.

Resilience by design: A participatory approach to designing an interactive digital application for promoting children's resilience

The promotion of resilience (the capacity of an individual or community to bounce back and recover from adversity) has become an important area of public health. In recent years it has expanded into the digital domain, and many online applications have been developed to promote children's resilience. In this study, it is argued that the majority of existing applications are limited because they take a didactic approach, and conceive of interaction as providing navigational choices. Because they simply provide information about resilience or replicate offline, scenario-based strategies, the understanding of resilience they provide is confined to a few, predetermined factors. In this study I propose a new, experiential approach to promoting resilience digitally. I define resilience as an emergent, situated and context-specific phenomenon. Using a Participatory Design model in combination with a salutogenic (strength-based) health methodology, this project has involved approximately 50 children as co-designers and co-researchers over two years. The children have contributed to the design of a new set of interactive resilience tools, which facilitate resilience promotion through dialogic and experiential learning. The major outcomes of this study include a new methodology for developing digital resilience tools, a new set of tools that have been developed and evaluated in collaboration with children and a set of design principles to guide future development. Beyond these initial and tangible outcomes, this study has also established that the benefits of introducing Participatory Design into a health promoting model rests primarily in the change of the role of children from "users" of technology and education to co-designers, where they assume a leadership role in both designing the tools and in directing their resilience learning.

Collaborative tagging in participatory webs : the death of information organisation?

Many organisations, companies and libraries started to use participatory webs to extend their services and engage more users. However, some librarians are still hesitated to implement participatory webs in their libraries, particularly in developing countries. This paper explores the advantages and disadvantages of participatory webs focusing on collaborative tagging. This paper draws from the literature of published articles discussing topics but not limited to participatory webs, participatory libraries, collaborative tagging, folksonomy and taxonomy. The advantages of implementation of the participatory webs in the library outweigh the disadvantages of it. Participatory webs do not necessarily mean the death of information organisation but it can supplement and improves information organisation in the library. This paper may help to broaden knowledge of LIS professionals in the implementation of participatory webs in the library.

Participatory content creation and collective intelligence in Rio de Janeiro's favelas [Virtual presentation]

This proposal combines ethnographic techniques and discourse studies to investigating a collective of people engaged with audiovisual productions who collaborate in Curta Favela’s workshops in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. ‘Favela’ is often translated simply as ‘slum’ or ‘shantytown’, but these terms connote negative characteristics such as shortage, poverty, and deprivation referring to favelas which end up stigmatizing these low income suburbs. Curta Favela (Favela Shorts) is an independent project which all participants join to use photography and participatory audiovisual production as a tool for social change and raising consciousness. As cameras are not affordable for favelas dwellers, Curta Favela’s volunteers teach favela residents how they can use their mobile phones and compact cameras to take pictures and make movies, and afterwards, how they can edit the data using free editing video software programs and publish it on the Internet. To record audio, they use their mp3 or mobile phones. The main aim of this study is to shed light not only on how this project operates, but also to highlight how collective intelligence can be used as a way of fighting against the lack of basic resources.

Participatory content creation and collective intelligence in Rio de Janeiro's favelas

This proposal combines ethnographic techniques and discourse studies to investigate a collective of people engaged with audiovisual productions who collaborate in Curta Favela’s workshops in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. ‘Favela’ is often translated simply as ‘slum’ or ‘shantytown’, but these terms connote negative characteristics such as shortage, poverty, and deprivation which end up stigmatizing these low income suburbs. Curta Favela (Favela Shorts) is an independent project in which all participants join to use photography and participatory audiovisual production as tools for social change and to raise consciousness. As cameras are not affordable for favela dwellers, Curta Favela’s volunteers teach favela residents how they can use their mobile phones and compact cameras to take pictures and make movies, and afterwards, how they can edit the data using free editing video software programs and publish it on the Internet. To record audio, they use their mp3 or mobile phones. The main aim of this study is to shed light not only on how this project operates, but also to highlight how collective intelligence can be used as a way of fighting against a lack of basic resources.

Participatory photography and self-empowerment in different nations

Volunteering Qld’s Project Creatives continues to explore the critical role creative disciplines and creative people play in providing new models of engagement and action in social change and community work. This article explores three different non-profit organisations that have used collaborative photography to enable locals to empower themselves. Written by Alice Baroni a volunteer with the Education, Research and Policy Unit of Volunteering Qld. Alice is undertaking a PhD at the Queensland University of Technology, exploring (photo) journalism, participatory content creation and community photography in Brazil’s low income suburbs. She is part of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, and a Brazilian research group ‘Storytellers and Narratives: Contemporary Journalism’. Two of the initiatives explored in this publication are Viva Favela and Imagens do Povo that are ideologically and physically supported by, respectively, Viva Rio and Observatório de Favelas, based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. ‘Favela’ is often translated simply as ‘slum’ or ‘shantytown’, but these terms connote negative characteristics such as shortage, poverty, and deprivation, which end up stigmatising these low-income suburbs. Fotografi Senza Frontiere (FSF) (Photographers Without Borders) is an Italian non-governmental organisation that gathers together a group of photographers who aim to provide youth from extreme regions in Nicaragua, Algeria, Argentina, Panama, Uganda, and Palestine with skills to photograph and document their own reality by establishing permanent photo laboratories. This idea, which is similar to that of Viva Favela and Imagens do Povo, is to enable youth to become professional photographers as a means of self-representation and self-empowerment. Afterwards, students become educators in established photographic labs so as to pass on what they have learnt through FSF’s photographic courses.

Importing Wikipedia principles into the cultural institution of a public service broadcaster : the case of ABC Pool

Web 2.0 technologies have mobilised collaborative peer production and participatory cultures for online content creation. However, not all online communities engaging in these activities are independently facilitated and often operate within the auspices of the cultural institutions that develop and resource them. Borrowing from the principles of Wikipedia that supports collaborative online content creation and online community, ABC Pool (abc.net.au/pool) is one such institutional online community operating with the support of the Australian Public Service Broadcaster (PSB), the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). This paper explores the collaborative, creative, and governance activities of an institutional online community and how the role of the community manager is an intermediary within these arrangements.

Understanding the participatory library through a grounded theory study

Lankes and Silverstein (2006) introduced the “participatory library” and suggested that the nature and form of the library should be explored. In the last several years, some attempts have been made in order to develop contemporary library models that are often known as Library 2.0. However, little research has been based on empirical data and such models have had a strong focus on technical aspects but less focus on participation. The research presented in this paper fills this gap. A grounded theory approach was adopted for this study. Six librarians were involved in in-depth individual interviews. As a preliminary result, five main factors of the participatory library emerged including technological, human, educational, social-economic, and environmental. Five factors influencing the participation in libraries were also identified: finance, technology, education, awareness, and policy. The study’s findings provide a fresh perspective on contemporary library and create a basis for further studies on this area.

Tech-Savvy Youth and Participatory Research in “iScapes”

This chapter provides a theoretically and empirically grounded discussion of participatory research methodologies with respect to investigating the dynamic and evolving phenomenon of young people constructing identities and social relations in “iScapes”. We coin the term iScapes to refer to the online/offline interconnectedness of spaces in the fabric of everyday life. Specifically, we offer a critical analysis of the participatory research methods we used in our own research project to understand the ways in which high school students use new media and information communication technologies (ICTs) to construct identities, form social relations, and engage in creative practices as part of their everyday lives. The chapter concludes with reflexive deliberations on our approach to participatory research that may benefit other researchers who share a similar interest in youth and new media.

Good practice for safeguarding student learning engagement in higher education institutions : Final Report 2012

The project 'Good practice for safeguarding student learning engagement in higher education institutions' commenced in late 2010 as a Competitive Grant with funding provided by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. The project is now overseen by the Office for Learning and Teaching within the Australian Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. The project was completed in December 2012. The project was lead by QUT and comprised of the project team: Professor Karen Nelson, (project leader), Ms Tracy Creagh, (project manager) and Adjunct Professor John Clarke. Commencing in late 2010 the project invited a total of eight institutions across Australia and New Zealand (including QUT) who had either: existing programs and activities that monitored student learning engagement (MSLE); were in the early stages of implementing MSLE programs, or; who were piloting MSLE activities. As well, the project involved an advisory group and project evaluator comprising of academic and professional staff across two additional universities.