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This paper relays the process the authors used to develop a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework in the emergency services team at Australian Red Cross. The paper aims to provide useful information and guidance to support others to build and improve their M&E frameworks, which are fundamental for guiding achievement of department or organisational goals.

This paper uses a case study to describe the participatory agile methodology applied to develop the framework. The completed framework includes indicators mined from pre-existing literature and highlights the benefits of using an agile and participatory approach to cultivate user buy-in, enhance operational relevance and create timely results.

Development of the M&E framework streamlined measurement across the team, improved programmatic strategic alignment, identified gaps in data collection and promoted utilisation of evaluative information. Additionally, it was an exercise in evaluation capacity building, with many process uses, which positively influenced the implementation stage.

There are very few scholarly papers that outline the process taken to develop M&E frameworks, and none in the humanitarian, emergency services field. Additionally, this paper offers an innovative use of agile in facilitating a collaborative, sustainable and meaningful framework.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the impact of peer mentoring on mentors working with university students with a disability. Research questions focused on how undergraduate student mentors evaluated their experience as a mentor, in what ways they benefited, the challenges they experienced and how these challenges could be addressed.

Quantitative and qualitative data examined the experiences, benefits and challenges experienced by the mentors across seven separate cohorts. Self-report measures were collected in a pre-post design, and qualitative analysis was conducted on focus groups at the end of the program. The paper also outlines the program model including training and support mechanisms, and the program curriculum implemented by mentors.

Responses on the measures showed that student mentors saw mentoring as a positive experience, and they felt more committed to their university after participating. Qualitative content analysis of focus groups supported this and also highlighted some of the unique challenges faced by mentors working with students with a disability. These included communication difficulties, trouble building rapport, not knowing how to help their mentee and feeling over-protective.

While the findings are preliminary, results indicated that serving as a mentor to freshmen university students with a disability had an important impact on the personal growth and skills development of the mentors. In addition, similar program models should recognize that careful attention is needed to ensure mentors are fully supported in their role. Findings also highlight areas for improvement of the program such as examining longer term outcomes, including a comparison group, and seeking the perspectives of the mentees. Limitations included limited standardized assessment tools to assess impact more broadly.

The study is original in its focus on improving current understanding of outcomes for student mentors who are working with incoming university students with a disability status.

This research paper aims to better understand the network structure of higher education in North America. It draws on a relationally networked dataset of 1,292 degree-granting colleges and universities in North America to develop a modularity class approach to categorizing colleges and universities based on their own self-defined peer networks and assesses the utility of the modularity class approach as well as several measures of network centrality for predicting offerings of new curricular fields. Results show that not all measures of network centrality equally predict organizational change outcomes, with hub/authority position being most important. Additionally, results show that an empirically derived modularity class approach to categorizing organizations has important strengths in relation to more typical approaches based on prestige or perceived organizational characteristics. The approaches detailed in this paper will be useful for future analysts seeking to explain the spread of innovations and behavior across the higher education institutional field, as well as those seeking to understand clustering and organizational divergence.