Evaluator - Tom Prebble

Today we met with Tom Prebble, who has agreed to come on board as the formal evaluator for the project. This was a great opportunity to welcome Tom on board and updated him about the members involved as well as the project progress and schedule of upcoming activities. Tom has kindly agreed to attend the next face to face meeting in October (16th & 17th) and has access to all working documents through dropbox. Some of the key ideas to come from the meeting included:

1. The need to ensure a clarity of understanding amongst all members of the value, direction and objectives of the NATA with specific relevance to them and their association.
2. Recognising the need to ensure progress and successes of the network are clearly articulated to member associations.
3. Need to maintain a level of activity and expectation of involvement that is realistic if the network is to be sustainable beyond the initial 2-year funded period.
4. Adopting an evaluation methodology that is firstly based upon a our own operational understanding of the AKO AOTEAROA Impact Evaluation Framework. This would then provide a means for our own critical evaluation of progress that would be subsequently, reviewed by the formal evaluator.

Tom Prebble - Short Bio

PhD (Alberta), MA (Hons) (Auckland), Dip Tchg (Auckland Coll. of Ed.), Fellow, NZ Ed. Admin. Soc.

Dr. Prebble is an education consultant and Emeritus Professor of Massey University. He spent much of his earlier career at Massey serving most recently as Professor of Higher Education and formerly as Principal (Extramural and International), Director of Extramural Studies, and Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Educational Administration.

Tom has undertaken a range of consultancies, both national and international, in programme evaluation, distance education, e-learning and international education. He has also undertaken a number of recent research studies on the impact of academic development and support services on student learning outcomes.