Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
We are AEA’s Student Evaluation Case Competition Working Group: Dana Linnell – Chair, Asma Ali, Brianna Crumly, Carolina De La Rosa Mateo, Rana Gautam, Meg Johnson, Gabriel Keney, Jonny Morell, Steve Mumford, Julian Nyamupachitu, Elena Polush, and Jennifer Yessis. Last year, we held the inaugural US Student Evaluation Case Competition, which we shared in a previous blog post on AEA365. In this year’s update, we announce the winning team and talk about how you can connect and be involved in this work going forward.
2024 Competition Results
A total of 12 teams—46 undergraduate and graduate students supported by 14 coaches—competed in the second AEA evaluation case competition on Saturday, April 13, 2024. It was a jam-packed day during which students spent seven hours reviewing the case and developing an evaluation proposal for the case organization. The case organization this year was Caldera, and the case focused on their youth program. Caldera was selected for its location and relevance for the upcoming AEA conference in Portland, OR and its theme of amplifying and empowering (youth creative) voices in evaluation.
We are pleased to announce that the team Evalu8ors Ensemble (pictured below) from the University of Arizona won the competition! The entire team received free registration for this year’s conference, as well as their choice of estudy or one year of free AEA membership. Their submission, as well as that of the runner up ScholarQuest (Ohio University) and third place team BrightPath Consulting (Claremont Graduate University), can be found on the SCC website.
Rad Resource:
Join us at the 2024 AEA conference in Portland, OR on Thursday at 3:45pm in B117-119 for a round table discussion on “Navigating the Role of Hosting Student Evaluation Case Competitions: Learning from the Experience,” in which we will have a conversation on case competitions and celebrate the winning teams!
Hot Tips: Connect with the Case Competition!
There are so many ways you can be involved in the case competition! Below we share options depending on your interests, including whether you want to compete, judge, sponsor, or serve on the competition committee! See the SCC website for the most up-to-date information as it becomes available.
Teams: Teams consist of undergraduate and graduate students attending accredited institutions of higher education in the United States, as well as 1-2 coaches helping guide student teams through preparing for the competition. Registration will open around January 2025.
Judges: Judges have expertise in evaluation and review team submissions against an evaluation rubric to help determine the winning teams. Judge registration will open around January 2025.
Sponsor & Donations: We are seeking sponsors or individual donations to help contribute to team awards, including helping support teams with attending the conference and receiving eStudies and AEA membership. Email us at scc@eval.org and we will send you more details about sponsorship or individual donations!
Working group members: Volunteers on the working group meet 2-4 times per month to ensure a successful case competition. We are about to start preparing for the 2025 competition, so please email us at scc@eval.org by November 1, 2024, and we will send you the application details.
Case Organizations: New for the 2025 competition, we put out an application for participating as the competition’s case organization. Although the deadline has passed, please consider participating in future years. Past organizations have expressed great usefulness of the team submissions for their evaluation efforts and organizational learning. If your or another organization might be interested in participating as a future case organization for the competition, email us at scc@eval.org. More information about case organization requirements and commitment can be found on the SCC website.
Lesson Learned:
According to evaluation surveys gathered from student, coach, and judge participants in the competition, most participants were satisfied with the overall experience. As one student said, “The competition was such a great experience! . . . It was a fun and exciting way to engage with a real-world case in a meaningful way. It never felt like this was a hypothetical evaluation but something that we carefully and thoughtfully wanted to evaluate.”
We hope you get involved next year as we support our young and emerging evaluators! Contact us at scc@eval.org if you have any questions or comments.
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. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.