16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

54
16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the United Nations System and Host Country Agencies
completion of their fellowship studies.
177. Ms. Aoki concluded that most respondents were satisfied with the current programme
which had played an important role in sustainable forest management and sustainable
development of the forestry sectors in member countries. Nevertheless, further efforts
were required to better serve the needs of the beneficiaries and expand the programme.
Mechanism should be found to promote the fellowships programme among a wider
population in the member countries. Final reports should be disseminated through
internet or other means. Additional funding through a partnership programme with
other UN agencies, international organizations or private sectors should be considered.
Matching fund mechanisms with other UN agencies or international organizations
for post-graduate programmes should be promoted and a clearing house mechanism
within the United Nations system should be established.
Q. Fellowship Evaluation Mechanisms of Training Institutions,
prepared by Mr. Cesar Mercado, DCAAP
178. In his third paper Mr. Mercado delineated the importance of evaluation mechanisms
which were essential for measuring efficiency and effectiveness of training programmes.
Monitoring measured training efficiency and evaluation measured training effectiveness.
In spite of the great importance of training evaluation mechanisms in attaining
and maintaining quality training, most training institutions in the Philippines had either
weak or no mechanism or structure for the systematic monitoring and evaluation of
training programmes. The generalization had been based on DCAAP’s occasional visits
to training institutions in the country and reports of training staff who took DCAAP’s
course on training evaluation. Although training evaluation mechanisms were widely
absent, some staff in the training institutions had conducted some course evaluation.
Mr. Mercado commented that almost all evaluation instruments available in training
institutions had been designed for reaction evaluation (impressionistic); very few had
been outlined for learning evaluation (objective test). The questionnaires were used to
identify the best-rated and the worst-rated components of each training course, but not
the learning of the participants. Most of the completed evaluation questionnaires were
collected without the benefit of systematic data tabulation, analysis, interpretation,
and reporting because training management did not ask for the report. Many funding
agencies did not ask for a report, either. Mr. Mercado assessed that lack of interest in
evaluation reports among managers was widespread judging from the data presented
in the annual report of training institutions. Almost all of the reports stated only the
number of fellows trained but not what they had learned; a common practice of reporting
quantity, but not quality.
179. Committed to contributing to the strengthening of training monitoring and evaluation
in its fields of competence, DCAAP had continued to develop research-based
social technologies that would encourage training institutions to adopt functional and
strong evaluation mechanisms. Those technologies had been developed without any