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Funded Project |
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Funding Program:
IPM Partnership Grants |
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Project Title:
An Evaluation of the IPM in Multi-Family Housing Course |
Project Director (PD):
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Lead State: MD Lead Organization: National Center for Healthy Housing |
| Undesignated Funding: $29,946 |
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Start Date: Apr-01-2012 End Date: Feb-28-2013 |
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No-Cost Extension Date: Aug-31-2013 |
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Summary:
Over the past five years, the National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) and the National Healthy Homes Training Center and Network (Training Center) have offered the IPM in Multi-family Housing course 49 times to more than 1,000 students. The challenge with any training is to determine if the course has the desired impact on the students. For this course, the desired impact is that students are able to implement IPM in the housing developments they manage. If they are unable to implement IPM, it is important to understand the barriers. To achieve this, NCHH will: evaluate the impact of the IPM in Multi-family Housing course to determine if property managers who attend the course successfully implement IPM, and provide results of evaluation to interested stakeholders. NCHH will interview two groups of students using a retrospective approach for one group and a prospective approach for the other. Based on the results, NCHH will recommend changes to the IPM course -- either by adding information or revising the current information. NCHH will develop two case studies based on interviews with property managers and owners, pest management professionals, and residents at two housing developments that best illustrate the results of the data analysis. We will draft a report on the results of the data analysis and any recommendations for action and provide the report to contacts at HUD, CDC, and EPA. NCHH will disseminate the findings of this project through conference presentations and via conference calls and webinars with interested stakeholders including Healthy Homes Training Center partners, other IPM trainers, and any other stakeholders interested in the results of the survey. Objectives:
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Final Report: |
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Impacts Impact and process evaluations for training courses are important to help course developers and instructors determine whether training courses are achieving their objectives. Training programs have to evaluate their impacts to show that investing resources into training is yielding the intended result and whether investing in training rather than another activity is prudent. This evaluation project revealed several important findings. Most importantly, although the course was designed to be delivered at a property level, with significant pre and postdelivery involvement from the trainer, few training partners delivered it in that format. This happened despite the procedures being communicated to them when the course was first approved in the fall of 2006 and through the instructor guide. We found a number of reasons why Training Center partners did not follow this approach: First, partners have insufficient funding to conduct the pre or postcourse work with PHA staff. Second, partners tend to publicize courses and then deliver them without significant contact with students before or after the course. For the IPM course, they also may not have existing relationships with lowincome properties. Third, not all training partners have the same level of technical expertise in IPM. Only a few training partners have worked directly on properties and/or are pest management professionals. The second important finding of the evaluation is that the widespread demand for the course from audiences outside of affordable housing management gave course developers and trainers the sense that the course was successful. Indeed the evaluations of the courses were very positive but it is clear that these evaluations are helpful at determining whether the audience found the training valuable and effective. They are not helpful to determine whether the courses are achieving their overarching objectives. Providing basic knowledge of IPM would appear to fill an awarenessraising need. There are numerous professionals working within healthy homes who need to know the basics of IPM and provide that information to others. They are important stakeholders in mainstreaming IPM. However, if the course continues to serve as awarenessraising, its design and content should be revaluated to ensure alignment between the content, target audiences, and course objectives. Furthermore, the original purpose of the IPM course remains an important priority. The course for property management and residents is intended to reduce or eliminate pests, reduce pesticide use and reduce the impacts of pests and pesticide exposure among the residents of affordable housing. To achieve this goal, the course delivery should more closely follow the original delivery protocol. Next Steps As a result of this evaluation, NCHH will take the following steps: 1. Regularly evaluate partner deliveries to ensure that course objectives are being met by: a. Enhancing our course audit system to include observations related to course objectives. Training Center staff already have a system of periodic onsite course observations to evaluate trainer performance we will add a component to the system to collect information on whether courses, as delivered, are meeting course objectives. 2. Procure funding to develop the capacity of Training Center partners to act as consultants for StopPests. If funded, identify and develop partners as consultants by: a. Inviting partners to apply to become a StopPests consultant. b. Selecting five to eight partners based on their past IPM experience and their ability to commit the time to developing as a consultant and taking on a caseload of housing providers through StopPests process. c. Developing partner capacity by taking them through an IPM trainthetrainer course (to be developed) and by developing their familiarity with key IPM references. 3. Overview of IPM Course a. Work with StopPests to review the IPM course and determine how it could be changed and possibly shortened to meet the need for an overview course. b. Submit Overview course proposal to Training Centers Curriculum Committee for approval. c. Make revisions as approved by Curriculum Committee. d. Once approved, provide course information and materials to Training Center partners. |
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Outcomes Please see the attached PDF for outcomes. Most of the Outcomes section consists of tables that do not show properly in this text format. The Outcomes section starts on page 4 of the report. |
Report Appendices
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