DE Week: Randi Ilyse Roth on Evaluation Flash Cards

Greetings to the aea365 community.  I am Randi Ilyse Roth, Executive Director of Philanthropy for the Otto Bremer Foundation, based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, with the mission of assisting people in achieving full economic, civic and social participation in and for the betterment of their communities in places where there are Bremer Banks.

Not long ago trustees and staff of the Otto Bremer Foundation engaged in a series of learning seminars on evaluation. In order to make the core concepts easily accessible and retrievable, we asked Michael Quinn Patton, who led these seminars, to create a set of basic reference cards. These became the Evaluation Flash Cards presented here, with the idea that a core concept can be revisited in a flash. Thus, each is a single page. Illustrations of the concepts are drawn from Otto Bremer Foundation grants. We hope this resource is useful to other organizations committed to understanding and improving the results of the programs they support.

Rad Resource: There are 25 Evaluation Flash Cards.  Here are examples of the subjects addressed.

1. Evaluative Thinking

2. Evaluation Questions

5. Evaluation vs. Research

12. Qualitative Evaluation

18. Developmental Evaluation

19. TheITQuestion

20. Fidelity or Adaptation

24. Utilization-Focused Evaluation

25. Distinguish Different Kinds of Evidence

The full set of flash cards is available here.

Hot Tip:  The Foundation’s Trustees and Staff were involved in the evaluation seminars that led to the evaluation flash cards. So, everyone in the Foundation understands, values, and uses the evaluation flash cards.

Hot Tip:We are not evaluators and we don’t have an evaluation position on our staff.  But we need to think evaluatively.  Evaluation textbooks are not a useable resource for quick reference when an evaluation issue arises. The flash cards provide rapid access to core evaluation ideas and reinforce our commitment to evaluative thinking, the very first flash card in the set.

Cool Trick:We have posted the Evaluation Flash Cards on our website so that others, including our grantees and partners, can share concepts and language as we work together and think evaluatively in our collaborations. 

Rad Resource:  We invite you to use the Evaluation Flash Cards and let us know how you use them.

Here’s the blog post that launched the flash cards.

This week, we’re diving into issues of Developmental Evaluation (DE) with contributions from DE practitioners and authors. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.

2 thoughts on “DE Week: Randi Ilyse Roth on Evaluation Flash Cards”

  1. Jeanne Hubelbank

    Thank you! The Flashcards are not only a good review for me, but also will be an excellent resource for clients. A good starting point for evaluation discussions!

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