European Group of the
IFSA International Farming Systems Association

6th European Symposium on
Farming and Rural Systems Research and Extension
Vila Real, Portugal, 3-8 April, 2004

European Farming and Society in search of a new social contract
Learning to manage change

Pre-symposium site .. Aknowledgements (word doc) .. Photo gallery

start over

The Results of the 2004 IFSA Symposium Evaluation

The IFSA symposium generated 36 evaluations. The sample of the evaluations might give us a general idea about the profile of the participants and their opinions concerning the IFSA symposium in Vila Real. The majority of pariticpants are Europeans (92%) with a minority coming from outside Europe (8%). Forty-eight per cent of the participants were female. Researchers (61%) were the dominate profession at the conference, while professors/lecturers (17%) the next highest, and the rest were extensionist, subject-matter specialist, students and farmers.

The manner in which the participants were informed about the symposium were personal contacts (33%), university contacts (28%), the brochure (25%) and the rest discovered by accident or other sources. Interestingly, the majority of the respondents (54%) chose more than one of the responses as the reasons for attending the symposium. The responses available were the theme, new contacts and the exchange of experiences. The highest singular reason for attending was the exchange of experiences among the participants (17%). The theme (11%) and new contacts (14%) were also important to the participants.

Only two of the respondents believed that the organizers needed to adjust some aspects of the announcement process. The suggestions that followed were: 1) general information about IFSA history and philosophy with an overview about the networks of IFSA and 2) a more detailed program to download prior to arrival.

The questionnaire had nine closed questions that allowed the participant to rate the quality of a variety of items concerning the IFSA symmposium in Vila Real. The items were concerned about the announcement, organization, facilities etc. The response averages to the likert-type scale ranging from poor=1 to excellent=5 were the following for each question:

The workshops and parallel sessions were, by the written comments, both positive and in some respects negative. The positve aspects by the participants involved the presentations, exchanges and sharing of experiences. These aspects assisted the participant to make mental comparisons with their own situation. The interactions, discussions and debates were cited as important and should continue to be a part of these sessions. However, in some workshops and parallel sessions, there was no synthesis at the end of the session and some pariticipants felt controlled and were not permitted to intervene sufficiently. The future IFSA symposium must control the size of the workshops or sub-workshops (25 to 30 people in each workshop or sub-workshop). Time must be made available for closure of each of the sessions and creation of “breakout” areas. It was suggested with a shorter lunch time, additional time could be found for synthesis.

Thirty-four of the participants rated the field trips with a likert-type scale ranging from 1=less interesting, 2=interesting and 3=especially interesting. The average rating of these participants for this question was 2.5. Field trip 1 (35%), field trip 2 (21%) and field trip 3 (44%) had these percentages of the total participants, who responded to the evaluation. The field trips were organized by buses that had about 45 to 50 passengers. The groups were quite large.

The open question responses concerning the field trips were informative. And still, in general, the written comments about the field trips were positve in regard to the following: effort by translators, variety of farming systems visited, lunch, distances to drive, time for information exchange and socialization between colleagues and the general organization of the trip. However, there was a belief that the number of translators was not sufficient for the size of each group. In addition, we must always be concerned about the translation process. The translators and guides must always translate the responses to questions by the group and let the group interpret, analyse, synthesize and form their own conclusions. Only at the end of the process should the translators and guides intervene to synthesize or explain, if there exists doubts.

The general perspective for 76% of the participants was that the symposium lived up to their expectations and 15% felt that it “did and did not” live up to their expectations, while 9% said it did not. These participants took the time to fill out the questionnaire and write down their comments on the following open questions. In closing, a short selection of the pertinent comments for future planning has been presented:

“We still need to do more to reach out to the EU accession countries”

“Time to restructure the whole symposium? Need a more dynamic intechange between all participants through a process that alternates between plenary and small working groups.”

“Selection of a reasonable number of papers/WS”

“Have good venues and breakout rooms for large thematic groups”

“Position of the posters. Put them up from day 1 in a place that is visible and accessible”

“Need very good facilitators to take care of the entire process in the workshops”

“Workshop style should be more participatory and action learning oriented”

Pre-symposium site .. Aknowledgements (word doc) .. Photo gallery

last updated: 27.09.2004
Pedro Ferrão
pferrao@utad.pt