Higher Education for Development
Knowledge, Partnerships, Results
______
Collaborative Partnership Program
Semi-Annual Progress Report
Report Period
October 1, 2010 – March 31, 2011
Due April 30, 2011
INTRODUCTION
The information partnerships provide form the basis of HED’s dissemination of partnership results to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), other donor organizations, and the higher education community. USAID uses the material partners provide to report development results to the United States Congress. Your contribution of information is critical to Congress’ understanding of development and the future funding of such programs.
PARTNERSHIP INFORMATION
Partnership Title: AHEED: Albania-Hawaii Higher Education and Economic Development Partnership: Increasing Institutional Capacity in Agricultural Economics
Development Area: Agriculture/Agribusiness/Animal Science; Economic Growth & Trade
U.S. Institution(s): University of Hawaii at Manoa
U.S. Partnership Director(s):
Name: Prof.Catherine Chan-Halbrendt
Telephone: 808-956-7530
E-mail:
Host-Country Institution(s): Agricultural University of Tirana (AUT) Tirana, Albania
Host-CountryPartnership Director(s):
Name: Dr. Engjell Skreli
Telephone: 00355 6840 38941
E-mail:
USAID/Host-Country Contact: XXX
Partnership Web Site (if any):
Mail or e-mail the completed report to your primary contact at:
Higher Education for Development
One Dupont Circle NW, Suite 420
Washington, DC20036
INSTRUCTIONS
Both the U.S. and host country partners should be involved in writing progress reports. It is the U.S.institution’s responsibility to submit these reports to HEDby the due date. It is also the U.S. institution’s responsibility to translate responses to English, as necessary.
- Carefully review the attached Glossary of Terms for key definitions to assist you in completing the report accurately.
- Please include as much information as necessary to answer the questions completely. Enter zeros when necessary. If any spaces are left blank, the report will be returned for completion.
- The U.S. institutional partner is required to enter information about all training activities for host country nationals that take place in the United States, the host country, or a third country into USAID’s TraiNet system. The results of these progress reports will be compared with data the partnership has entered into TraiNet. For more information regarding TraiNet, please contact or 703-879-8611.
OVERVIEW OF PARTNERSHIP REPORTING REQUIREMENTS
Report NamePeriod CoveredDue Date
1st Semi-Annual Progress ReportOctober 1-March 31April 30
2nd Semi-Annual Progress ReportApril 1-September 30October 31
Final ReportEntire Award Period30 days after sub-agreement end date
I.QUALITATIVE PROGRAM INFORMATION FOR October 1, 2010 – March 31, 2011
- Describe in bullet form the major activities for this partnership during the past six months(10/1/2010 – 3/31/2011).
- For each of the above activities, describe the results/outcomes for each activity. Answer in bullet form if appropriate.
If helpful, you may use the following chart for reporting the activities and outcomes associated with specific partnership objectives. Please feel free to insert additional lines as needed.
The following are the three main objectives of this project. The activities in the table are organized in accordance withtheir place within these overall objectives.
Objective 1: Develop state-of-the-art graduate courses and instruction in agricultural economics, making the MS graduate curriculum in FEA more relevant and more responsive to changing market conditions and increasing agricultural competitiveness.
Objective 2— Strengthen applied research and policy analysis capacity of the Faculty in providing higher quality and effective training and consultation to the Ministry of Agriculture and private businesses.
Objective 3 – Co-develop and teach training modules and materials to extension agents and businesses on topics such as information collection and dissemination approaches, farm management, and market and trade policy analysis.
ACTIVITY / RESULTS/OUTCOME1e. Revise courses and co-teach 3-5 key courses (trade, farm management, policy etc.)
The proposal for the New MSc.II course was approved by the Albanian Council of Ministers in December 2010. Three M.Sc. II courses were selected for co-teaching January-April of 2011. Each course is one of the Core I classes which all Master’s students in the program are required to complete. The aim of this phase of the project is to co-teach the modules of the Master course. To this end, Faculty of Economy and Agribusiness (FEA) instructors have based their teaching on the corresponding previous lectures of University of Hawaii (UH) professors. These three classes have been translated into Albanian in order to facilitate student learning and are being taught by Albanian instructors. All lectures are published in their English version on the AHEED project website:
All classes are being evaluated in order to assess student learning outcomes as well as to compare the content of the translated class with the original one. / The MSc.II course has enrolled 65 students to date, divided across three specializations: Enterprise Management (20 students-- 3male, 17 female), Economy and Agrarian Policy (14 students -- 5 male, 9 female) and Financial Management (31 students --4 male, 27 female). The first co-taught course, “Applied Economics” was taught by Dr. Irma Tabaku from February 7 – February 11, 2011 and the final exam was given on March 7. Student evaluations were strong, with average ratings falling somewhere between agreeing to strongly agreeing to all 19 positive evaluation criteria statements. A selection of important specific results is listed below.
The second course, “Research Methodology” was taught by Prof.As. Engjell Skreli from March 7 – March 11, 2011 and the final exam were given on April 11. Again, student evaluations were strong, with average ratings falling somewhere between agreeing to strongly agreeing to all 19 positive evaluation criteria statements and on average self-assessing student learning outcomes somewhere between the best possible outcome and one scale point below . A selection of important specific results is listed below.
Based on comparisons of both competed classes, it appears that the translated materials highly reflect (100%) the original courses taught by J. Yanagida October 10 to October 18, 2009 and Carl Evensen from November 2 to November 11, 2009. The third course, “Application of Quantitative Analysis” will start on April 11-May 15, 2011 and will be taught by Dr. Majlinda Belegu and MSc. Edmira Ozuni.
The overall outcome of these classes is that new, higher quality MSc.IIcourses have been introduced to the AUT/FEA curriculum, as has alternative teaching strategies. This has resulted in improved faculty teaching, increased learning capacity of faculty and students, and the introduction of new agribusiness techniques and knowledge.
1g. Prepare workshops on faculty professional development in teaching methods, grant writing workshops and research ethics.
Several professional improvement workshops/courses were held. In January 2011 a multipart workshop covering the use of conjoint choice analysis in consumer preference studies was held by project director, Catherine Chan-Halbrendt in Tirana, Albania. The aim of these workshops was to introduce new methodologies to the AUT/FEA researchers. To this end, the workshop covered the theory, advantages and disadvantages of conjoint analysis, practical directions and information on how to do the analysis and to use its associated software and a hands-on demonstration on the analysis in action. This technique is of particular importance to several of the projects financed by the AHEED and USAID/AAC mini-grants program.
For those wishing to learn more advanced techniques of conjoint choice analysis and gain an understand of how to analyze preference classes, an “Introduction to Latent Class Modeling” course was taught by Will Barkerfrom January 7 - February 4, 2011 and funded by AHEED PI Dr. Catherine Chan-Halbrendt. The 4 week course coveredthe background of latent class modeling and its applications through a tutorial of the software, assigned practice exercises.Students were able to communicate online with the instructor in order to enrich their leaning through discussions, ask questions of the instructor, and exchange experiences.
In addition to this formalized form of professional development, the project has assisted two lecturers from AUT who are concurrently enrolled as PhD students at University of Bologna, Italy. Drini Imami and Edvin Zhllima have had their dissertation research supported by the project as well as benefited from dissertation advice and editing by project staff. / The conjoint choice analysis workshop was attended by 13 AUT faculty members (6 male, 7 female). Nine of theseare currently participating in AHEED project sponsoredconsumer preference studies. The other participants were interested in learning the new methodology to apply to future studies.
The data from an AHEED-financed research project, “Milk market segmentation: Study on the consumers’ preferences in urban Albania(Ana Kapaj, PI) was used to demonstrate the use of SSI. In addition, three of the attendees were able to immediately use the techniques they had learned to analyze and obtain results for their AHEED mini-grant funded research projects. These included: Consumers’ preferences for apple fruits in Tirana market using a conjoint analysis (Engjell Skreli, PI),
Consumer Preference for Table Olives in Albania (Arben Vercuni, PI), and Milk market segmentation: Study on the consumers preferences in urban Albania (Ana Kapaj, PI).
The “Introduction to Latent Class Modeling” course had 4 participants (2 male, 2 female; 3 AUT faculty members, 1UH graduate student). All had a special interest in cluster analysis, market segmentation and consumer preferences and will use the information and skills gained in future research focused on these topics. Course evaluations indicate that participants were interested in the course due to their interest in market segmentation studies and that they felt this was a great opportunity for them to learn a new technique to conduct research, though one student felt the course needed to be longer to better understand the topics covered.
The AHEED project supported lecturers/graduate students both submitted their dissertations to their university in March 2011, and are expected to defend them this year.
Through the culmination of all these activities, AUT/FEA faculty and staff have become more familiar with current, cutting edge consumer preference research techniques and methodologies (conjoint choice analysis, latent class modeling) and many have already used them in research studies they will be presenting at the 2011 IFAMA conference and pursing publication.
In addition, the project has supported young lecturers in their professional development, thereby building capacity of the AUT FEA faculty.
1h. Prepare baseline surveys; collect data on partnership’s impact on program delivery.
Evaluations have been developed by AHEED project assistants and administered after each workshop/course supported by the project during this reporting period. This includes evaluations of: the workshop “Research at AUT/FEA supported by AHEED project and USAID” in order to assess the impact of AUT’s research on Ministry of Agriculture officials and extension agents; each of the MScII courses taught this period: the on-line Latent Class Analysis Course; and the workshops on SSI and the design and analysis of consumer preference studies Each of the last programs was assessed in order to assess the learning outcomes and achievements of objectives. / Evaluations of the workshop for MOA and extension officials indicate the workshop was successful. Evaluations indicate that 70% of attendees found the workshop very interesting and all (100%) were very much interested in attending workshops like this in the future. Preferred future topics included: consumer production, price analysis, and policy analysis and value chain.
The majority of the students who attended the first MScII course evaluated it as a positive experience in which they leaned new and interesting material.The majority “strongly agreed” they had a good instructor.
Evaluations of the Latent Class Analysis indicate that participants found it very valuable in terms of future possible research and appreciated the opportunity to attend this course, but some were concerned about their limited ability to buy the software.
Evaluations of workshops have helped shape the future of the project and have been used to inform future workshop topics and the techniques for teaching them.
Student evaluations of the co-taught MScII courses will similarly be used to help Albanian instructors improve their teaching methods and styles and help determine future courses beneficial to the students. As baseline data regarding outcomes of the project’s endeavors are collected the data will also serve as a base for the evaluation of the project impact.
1j. Submit 5 research and international travel grant proposals to enhance resource base.
The 2011 IFAMA Conference will be held in Frankfurt, 19-23 June. Ten AUT/FEA faculty members submitted proposals to present at the conference. These were prepared in collaboration with UH staff with the goal of improving the quality of the Albanian proposals,thereby increasing the chances of acceptance to the symposium.
Furthermore oneAHEED project collaborating researcher, Ilir Kapaj has been invited to present a poster to the International Farm Comparison Network (IFCN)conference in Kiel, Germany in June 2011. The poster will be on the milk production of farms in Albania. / All proposals submitted to the 2011 IFAMA conference were accepted for presentation. Seven papers will be presented:
- Milk market segmentation: Study on the consumers preferences in urban Albania
- Evaluation of factors that influence implementation of Quality Management Systems (QMS) in the meat processing industry in Albania
- Alternatives of improving management of value chain for the greenhouse tomatoes production
- Consumers’ preferences for apple fruits inTiranamarket using aconjoint analysis
- Analyzing consumer choices under food safety uncertainty inTirana
- Conjoint analysisof consumer preferences for lamb meat in central and southwest urban Albania
- Consumer preferences for table olives inTirana
- Preferences for lamb versus goat kid meat inAlbania
- Possibilities for partnerships business functioning in rural areas of Albania
- Alternative solutions for efficient use of refused land in Shëngjergj Commune in Albania
The milk poster to be presented in Kiel, Germany will be displayed at an international conference and may lead to a publication through the IFCN’s journal.
Researchers at AUT/FEA are able to gain a wealth of new experience by traveling to these conferences this includes:
- Experience in presenting at an International Conference.
- Getting expert feedback on paper from the audience
- Being exposed to current and cutting edge research in agribusiness and policy.
- The opportunity for networking with experts and fellow researchers in the field of agribusiness and agricultural policy research.
2f. Explore the desirability of an agribusiness certificate.
During the project PI Dr. Chan-Halbrendt’s next visit, she will explore whether there is an interest among extension personnel and faculty for an agribusiness certificate program, as well as identify faculty eligible to provide the required courses, research costs and students’ willingness to pay the required fees, and assess AUT’s interest in issuing such a certificate. / The Agribusiness Certificate Program strives to provide the students with the skills needed in agribusiness management and entrepreneurship.
The courses include:
1. Marketing of Agricultural Products
2. Agribusiness Accounting
3. Agribusiness Decision-Making Tools
4. Enterprise Management
The agribusiness management certificate will enable:
1. To improve economic decision-making ability.
2. To provide with entrepreneurial skills essential for starting and managing a successful, sustainable agricultural business.
3. To give opportunities to gain hands-on experience with modern management science techniques that help agribusiness managers and industry analysts make sound business decisions.
4. To increase proficiency in formulating problems and implementing solutions using a computer model, with emphasis on spreadsheets
5. To offer real-world opportunities to evaluate information from a variety of sources in making crucial business decisions.
6. To contribute to understanding of marketing, management, finance, and how the traditional business-school approach is modified for plant and animal products raised on land or in the water.
2k. Continue engaging faculty in collaborative scholarly research activities relevant to solving agricultural issues.
AHEED project sponsored mini-grants have fostered collaborations between AUT FEA faculty and the Albanian Agriculture Competitiveness (AAC) program. Proposed AUT FEA researched was announced to several potential collaborators. As a result, three of the mini-grants proposed by FEA researchers have been identified by the AAC program as closely aligning with the interests of the program. / Due to the utility of the proposed research to the AAC program’s goal, the program has expressed interest in collaborating on the projects as they progress and financially supporting these projects in the future.
2l. Write and submit grants in collaboration with other disciplines and MOA. (1-2/yr).
In January 2011, AHEED PI Catherine Chan-Halbrendt and project assistant in Albania Ana Kapaj metwith World Learning project director Matty Thimm to discuss the mini-grants World Learning has already financed and to investigate the possibility for future collaboration and sponsoring. Reports on the completed research and financial expenditures of the project were sent to World Learning on the three funded projects.
All faculty members planning on going to the 2011 IFAMA conference in Frankfurt, Germany applied of travel grants from the organization in order to do so. / All three reports have been delivered to World Learning, and according to internal project evaluations, projects were acceptable. WL economic expert, Ermira Shehihas communicated to the AHEED project personnelthat WL has accepted all the reports presented by the FEA researchers. Though the World Learning project is currently slated to end in Spring 2011, staffis hoping to procure a new contract. In this event, project director Matty Thimm has indicated that more such collaborations are likely.