Hello! Sheila B. Robinson here, aea365’s Lead Curator and sometimes Saturday contributor. I originally composed this post in May of 2013, but feel it deserves another go as I’m feverishly queuing up some fabulous sponsored weeks for summer. Keep up with aea365 through weekly Headlines and Resources, the new and improved AEA website, and AEA newsletters.
I work in PK12 education at Greece Central School District, and in higher education at the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education. As aea365’s current Lead Curator, I’ve had the pleasure of working with a number of groups – American Evaluation Association Topical Interest Groups (AEA TIGs), AEA Affiliates, and other groups that are united by evaluation practice in various contexts.
Hot Tip: Leave no stone unturned! In other words, don’t skip entire weeks. You can learn a lot even when a sponsored week’s group name doesn’t resonate with you. During sponsored weeks, you can read about how evaluators in different contexts from your own have grappled with evaluation challenges, learned something from working in diverse communities, or tried new technologies to enhance their evaluation practice and are now willing to share their experiences with all of us.
Hot Tip: Dig for enticing artifacts! Look for posts with content that transcends the focus of the sponsored week. For example, while I am not an environmental program evaluator, nor do I evaluate extension education programs, I found these two gems during sponsored weeks:
- In this post, Sara El Choufi shared resources for learning Excel during the Environmental Program Evaluation (EPE TIG) sponsored week.
- In this post, Melissa Cater shared information on creating a Community of Practice during Extension Education Evaluation (EEE TIG) week.
Lesson Learned: While our sponsored week authors may share evaluation foci with each other, they offer Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Lessons Learned, and Rad Resources that appeal to and can be educative for a broad range of evaluators.
Cool Trick: Get your hands dirty! Sift through the archive and unearth your own gems in sponsored (and non-sponsored!) weeks.
Lesson Learned: Many sponsored weeks have themes that cut across evaluation contexts. In addition to TIG-sponsored weeks,we’ve hosted Cultural Competence Week, Innovative #Eval Week, Video in #Eval Week, AEA affiliate weeks, Bloggers Series Weeks, and Local Area Working Group Weeks, among others.
Rad Resource: History in the making: Check out aea365 and our archive for a list of over 1000 nuggets of evaluation wisdom from hundreds of authors. With about 70 sponsored weeks on aea365, there’s a lot to learn! So, get into comfortable clothes, get your virtual trowel, sieve, and brush and get your read on!
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.