EvaluLand

Thank you to everyone who participated in the call-in to share their own reflections about the 2020 AEA virtual experience! After the conference, please sure your own thoughts and reflections by calling in. It's very similar to leaving a voicemail!

In this episode, I start with my own reflection about the conference, how I'm going to make the most of the conference, and what I am personally excited about. Then, we get to hear from nine other evaluators (in no particular order):

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week, Chari Smith joins me to talk about nonprofit evaluation, how to build a culture of evaluation, the relationship between music and evaluation, and the AEA conference.

Chari Smith wrote a book! Nonprofit Program Evaluation Made Simple: Get your Data. Show your Impact. Improve your Programs. Sign up for the mailing list to learn more about the book, including the launch date.

Chari Smith believes evaluation should be accessible, practical and usable. She founded Evaluation into Action, located in Portland, Oregon, to help nonprofit professionals create realistic and meaningful program evaluation processes. She has taught several workshops helping nonprofit professionals understand the value and use of program evaluation. Her book comes out fall 2020: Nonprofit Program Evaluation Made Simple: Get Your Data. Show Your Impact. Improve Your Programs.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week I am joined by David Keyes. We talked about R, why evaluators should learn R, tips for teaching courses, and more!

Interested in getting started with R? Check out David's free course!

Interested in learning how to do inferential statistics in R? Check our our new course!

Blog posts

Other resources

Some packages: tidyverse, beepr, praise, janitor, gt, gtsummary, lavaan, ggplot, rstatix, papaja

David Keyes is the founder of R for the Rest of Us. Through online courses and custom trainings, he helps people and organizations learn R, the most powerful tool for data analysis and visualization (which also happens to be free).

In addition to training folks to use R, David does consulting work with research and evaluation organizations, foundations, and others. David's creates high-quality data visualization, helps organizations to use R to improve their workflow, and much more.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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ThisThis week I am joined by Ann K. Emery about her journeys in evaluation and entrepreneurship. Ann K. Emery is an internationally-acclaimed speaker who equips organizations to get their data out of dusty spreadsheets and into real-world conversations. She now runs Depict Data Studio.

If you’d rather watch this talk, you can do so on YouTube here.

Ann K. Emery is an internationally-acclaimed speaker who equips organizations to get their data out of dusty spreadsheets and into real-world conversations.

Each year, she delivers over 50 keynotes, workshops, and webinars with the aim of equipping organizations to visualize data more effectively.

She has been invited to speak in more than 30 states and 10 countries; more than 3,200 people have enrolled in her online training academy; and she has consulted to more than 150 organizations, including the United Nations, Centers for Disease Control, and Harvard University.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and a Master’s degree from George Mason University.

Ann resides in Florida along with her husband and two daughters.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week, we’re chatting with AnnJanette, or Anjie, Rosga about objectivity, trust and numbers, truth and power, and more.

AnnJanette (Anjie) Rosga, PhD, co-directs the small, Berkeley-based consulting firm Informing Change which works to support strategic learning initiatives in the social sector. Most of Anjie’s projects involve facilitating strategy development, promoting equity and participatory research, and leading evaluation for hard-to-measure initiatives that cross disciplines, sectors, geographies, and/or cultures.

This episode centers around Anjie's 3-part Medium series on Trust & Numbers. Read the 3-part series here: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

AnnJanette (Anjie) Rosga, co-directs the small, Berkeley-based consulting firm Informing Change which foregrounds strategic learning for equity, participatory research, and complex systems change. Most of Anjie’s projects involve facilitating strategy development and leading evaluation for hard-to-measure initiatives that cross disciplines, sectors, geographies, and/or cultures. In her prior professional lives, she worked as an independent consultant to human rights NGOs and United Nations agencies, as an advocate for international women, peace & security, and as an academic: first at Knox College in Illinois, and later the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her independent research began with an ethnography of anti-hate crime groups and the police in the US and later evolved into a multinational study of human rights training for police in emerging democracies. She holds a PhD in the History of Consciousness, an interdisciplinary program combining humanities and social sciences. She grew up in Minneapolis, MN, and Louisville, KY and makes her home in Oakland, CA.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week I discuss some of the latest Research on Evaluation (RoE) articles that have come out in 2020.

EvaluLand: Website & Twitter (@EvaluLand)

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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“If you are someone who is interested in bringing change, or making the world a better place, or if you would like the results of your work to get used, evaluation is something that you might be interested in.”

This episode is a bit different. I asked three of my students to reflect on their experiences in the MS in Applied Psychology program at University of Wisconsin-Stout, as well as their experiences in the two evaluation courses. Emma, Omar, and Jade share their thoughts and reflections.

Click here to learn more about the MS in Applied Psychology program.

If you have feedback about this episode, any previous episode, or the podcast in general, please email me at [email protected] or go to our website https://evaluland.fireside.fm.

Emma Frenn: My name is Emma Frenn, I am 24 years old and I am originally from Milwaukee Wisconsin (go bucks!) and moved to Eau Claire Wisconsin for my undergrad career. I graduated with a major in a psychology and minor in biology. I currently attend UW-Stout graduate program Applied Psychology. I am the youngest of six and as of recent I picked up on rollerblading as a fun hobby.

Jade: Jade is a student a UW Stout who is majoring in evaluation and I/O psych. She has a passion for creating surveys and reports, and enjoys learning new things from her peers and professors.

Omar Albaraidi: Omar is an M.S. in Applied Psychology graduate student with a primary concentration in Industrial & Organizational Psychology. He is interested in bringing psychology to the workplace to stimulate organizational growth, overcome obstacles, and make data-driven decisions.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week I am joined by Dr. Ayesha Boyce, assistant professor of educational research methodology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, to discuss teaching evaluation and supporting students and colleagues of color.

Dr. Ayesha S. Boyce is an assistant professor of Educational Research Methodology at UNC Greensboro. She is a program evaluation teacher, scholar, and practitioner. Before pursuing her Ph.D., she was an education research associate (evaluator) for the Arizona Department of Education. She is the Co-Director of the UNCG Office of Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Services (OAERS). Her research focuses on attending to value stances and issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, access, cultural responsiveness, and social justice within evaluation—especially multi-site, STEM, and contexts with historically marginalized populations. She also examines teaching, mentoring, and learning in evaluation. She has evaluated over 40 programs funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), US Department of Education, National Institutes of Health, and Spencer and Teagle foundations. She is currently the external evaluator for five NSF funded projects and a Co-Principal Investigator on four NSF funded projects. She is a Co-PI on the recently funded 1 million-dollar NSF grant, Spartans ADVANCE: Adaptations of Practices For Faculty Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at The UNCG. Dr. Boyce is a co-chair of the American Evaluation Association Multiethnic Issues in Evaluation Topic Interest Group, a member of the editorial board for the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation and teaches classes in program evaluation and research methodology where she emphasizes good practice with mindful attentiveness to theoretical roots. She encourages students to develop a strong methodological foundation, conduct studies based on democratic principles, and promote equity, fairness, inclusivity, and diversity. She is a 2019 UNCG School of Education Distinguished Research Scholar Award recipient and a 2019 American Evaluation Association Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Awardee.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week I am joined by Dr. Jennifer Ann Morrow, the program coordinator of the Evaluation Statistics and Measurement doctoral program (soon to be named "Evaluation Statistics and Methodology) at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. We talked about teaching evaluation and data cleaning in evaluation.

Dr. Jennifer Ann Morrow is currently the program coordinator of the Evaluation Statistics and Measurement doctoral program at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Her main areas of research are higher education assessment and evaluation and effective strategies for teaching methodology. She has been teaching evaluation and methodology courses for the past 22 years. She is passionate about evaluation and assessment and regularly tweets on these topics (@evaluationdiva). In her spare time she loves to travel and explore the beautiful towns and mountains of Tennessee.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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This week I am joined by Zach Tilton, a Doctoral Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation Program at Western Michigan University. We discussed research on evaluation and meta-evaluation.

Zach Tilton is a Doctoral Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary PhD in Evaluation Program at Western Michigan University where he is setting and pursuing an agenda for research on peacebuilding evaluation. He holds a BS in Peacebuilding and Business Management from Brigham Young University-Hawaii and an MA in Peace Studies from the University of Bradford. Along with peacebuilding evaluation, he researches technology-enabled evaluation, meta-evaluation, and participatory and collaborative evaluation. He is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, a Rotary Peace Fellow, an Institute for Economics and Peace Ambassador, and has worked as an evaluation practitioner for various international peacebuilding organizations. He is also currently an Evaluation Consultant for the Digital Impact Alliance at the United Nations Foundation, an Associate at Everyday Peace Indicators, and the Co-chair for the Topical Interest Group for Integrating Technology into Evaluation and the EvalYouth representative to the American Evaluation Association.

Music by Matt Ingelson, http://www.mattingelsonmusic.com/

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