Hello evaluators! I am Steven Putansu, an assistant director and methodologist in the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Applied Research & Methods team. GAO follows federal dollars everywhere they are spent, which provides many opportunities to apply evaluation across a wide variety of contexts. I have worked across the agency, including work on education, defense, immigration, …
Hello. I’m Robert Picciotto from the University of Auckland. I recently joined the organising committee of the International Evaluation Academy, a global movement of volunteers committed to evaluation policy influence, professionalism, and transformative impact across borders. This initiative is much needed at a time when science is under attack, public confidence in institutions is at …
Evaluation science and the rise of artificial intelligence by Robert Picciotto Read More »
Hi, my name is Tom Archibald, Associate Professor at Virginia Tech and board member of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society (EERS). I’ve been thinking a lot about recent calls to transform evaluation. For example, we have: Blue Marble Evaluation’s Transformational Alignment Principle based on the premise of transforming evaluation to evaluate transformation The Equitable Evaluation …
Capacity, Complexity, and Collaboration to Transform Evaluation by Tom Archibald Read More »
Hello! I am Brandon Coffee-Borden and I served as Program Co-Chair of the Systems in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (SETIG) during 2015 to 2018. This blog post will describe how I have used the Principles for Effective Use of Systems Thinking in Evaluation to support my practice around data interpretation and analysis in a systems-informed …
I am Michael Quinn Patton, founder and director of Utilization-Focused Evaluation, and author of Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use. As an independent consultant I make my living doing evaluation. In order to engage stakeholders in evaluation processes, I have to be able to explain important concepts like complexity and systems …
Hi, I’m Patricia Moore Shaffer, Deputy Director, Research & Analysis, at the National Endowment for the Arts and Board Member of the Eastern Evaluation Research Society. The National Endowment for the Arts is the independent federal agency whose funding and support gives Americans the opportunity to participate in the arts, exercise their imaginations, and develop their …
EERS Week: Evaluating in the Midst of Complexity by Patricia Moore Shaffer Read More »
We are Frances Lawrenz and Amy Grack Nelson, University of Minnesota, and Marjorie Bequette, Science Museum of Minnesota (where Amy works, too). We are members of the Complex Adaptive Systems as a Model for Network Evaluations (CASNET) research team. When we started this project, complexity theory seemed exciting, but daunting. What is complexity theory, you …
We’re Jean King and Frances Lawrenz (University of Minnesota) and Elizabeth Kunz Kollmann (Museum of Science, Boston), members of a research team studying the use of concepts from complexity theory to understand evaluation capacity building (ECB) in networks. We purposefully designed the Complex Adaptive Systems as a Model for Network Evaluations (CASNET) case study research …
This is Jean King and Gayra Ostegaard Eliou, from the University of Minnesota, members of the Complex Adaptive Systems as a Model for Network Evaluations (CASNET) research team. NSF funded CASNET to provide insights on (1) the implications of complexity theory for designing evaluation systems that “promote widespread and systemic use of evaluation within a …
I’m Kate McKegg, Director of The Knowledge Institute Ltd a member of the Kinnect Group with Nan Wehipeihana. We want to share what we have learned about explaining developmental evaluation (DE). Evaluation isn’t something that our clients or our communities fully understand and it can create anxiety. So, when we suggest that a client or …
