We’re Chris Lovato, Professor in the School of Population & Public Health at the University of British Columbia, and Kylie Hutchinson, independent consultant and author of A Short Primer on Innovative Evaluation Reporting.
To date, most evaluation capacity-building has tended to focus on program-level managers and staff, ignoring the key role that senior leaders also play in using evaluation for making better decisions. However, informed decision-making and evidence-informed practice depends on senior decision-makers having a full understanding and appreciation of evaluation. Managers are constantly looking for ways to work smarter and more effectively in their leadership role, but management has never been more complex and challenging. We believe that managers who are savvy users of evaluation are more likely to be more effective leaders and decision-makers. But it’s a significant challenge to capture the attention of these extremely busy individuals.
Rad Resource: Evaluation for Leaders is an innovative and interactive mobile learning course that managers can access on their laptop, tablet, or phone, anywhere and anytime, free of charge. The course is designed to quickly increase leaders’ understanding of evaluation through seven stand-alone units each taking five to ten minutes to complete. Each unit contains practical information and just-in-time tips for how to use evaluation to do things differently. The intent of the course is not to teach managers how to do evaluation, but rather how to better use evaluation in their day-to-day decision making and organization overall. At the end of the course managers have a greater appreciation for how they can better support evaluation in their organization so it can better support them.
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