AEA365 Contributor, Curated by Elizabeth DiLuzio

Hello! I am Silva Ferretti, an independent consultant working mostly with development and humanitarian organizations. I am keen to understand “how change really happens” – in the practice and in complex setups. I craft my approaches to be learning-focused, participatory, fresh, creative, fun… yet deep!

In yesterday’s post, I shared with you my reflections about the current AI technology and its potential role in the field of M&E. Today, I want to speak to a common concern about AI: if it’s so good at doing our jobs, am I concerned that it will one day replace us completely?

Hello! I am Silva Ferretti, an independent consultant working mostly with development and humanitarian organizations. I am keen to understand “how change really happens” – in the practice and in complex setups. I craft my approaches to be learning-focused, participatory, fresh, creative, fun… yet deep!

By now, you have likely heard of ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence model that interacts in a conversational format. I have been playing with it for some time now. Not only am I amazed by it, I am surprised by the lack of debate regarding AI’s role in development and humanitarian program management. It is a game changer. We as a field should be looking into it NOW.

Happy Thursday, AEA365 community! My name is Liz DiLuzio. When I’m not curating the blog, I can be found teaching anything from one-day workshops to semester-long courses on tons of topics related to data analysis.

A student of mine recently applied to a MEL position where the first round of the selection process was a practical timed exercise in Excel. She wanted to know, based on my experience in the field, what topics I thought she should review before completing this exercise.

How’s that for a fun question?

Here’s what I told her.

My name is Quisha Brown and I am a nonprofit consultant and co-founder of Humanistic Care, LLC, an organization offering culturally responsive solutions to tough challenges faced by nonprofits serving marginalized people. I’m also the Author of “Racial Equity Lens Logic Model & Theory of Change” as well as the newly released short and simple guide “Using the Progressive Outcomes Scale Logic Model to Evaluate Systems Change: A Housing Industry Case Study”. This blog post discusses strategies for how to stop reducing people of color to numbers by focusing evaluation on their real life stories rather than quantitative data.  
Program evaluation is an essential part of providing quality afterschool programming to youth and their families.  Evaluation becomes more powerful and impactful when all of the stakeholders are involved in the evaluation process (O’Donoghue, Kirschner, & McLaughlin, 2003).  But how do organizations providing youth programs involve young people in program planning and evaluation?

Hello! We are Kim Firth Leonard, Leonard Research & Evaluation, LLC, and Oregon Community Foundation, and Sheila B. Robinson, Custom Professional Learning, LLC, co-authors of the text Designing Quality Survey Questions (Sage, 2018). We met on Twitter and now have been writing about survey design together for 10 years via our blogs, working with clients to design surveys, teaching survey design workshops, and presenting about survey design at conferences, including AEA.

Hi! I’m Stephanie Mui, Assistant Director of Program Evaluation and Planning at Good Shepherd Services. For the past seventeen years, I have been the internal evaluation for their afterschool programs. 

Program evaluation is an essential part of providing quality afterschool programming to youth and their families.  Evaluation becomes more powerful and impactful when all of the stakeholders are involved in the evaluation process (O’Donoghue, Kirschner, & McLaughlin, 2003).  But how do organizations providing youth programs involve young people in program planning and evaluation?

Hi! We are representing AEA’s Local Affiliate Collaborative (LAC) as active members of our local affiliates, Gulf Coast Evaluation Network (Steve) and Chicagoland Evaluation Association (Casey and Sheila). Before each AEA conference, the LAC organizes a pre-conference retreat where affiliate leaders come together in community. For many, it’s a conference highlight!

We organized this year’s retreat and want to share our experience. It was hosted in the Greater New Orleans Foundation’s headquarters, where we facilitated roundtables asking how affiliates can prioritize three complementary values: equity, trust, and self-care.

My name is Zachary Grays and I am your Membership and Operations Manager here at the American Evaluation Association! The American Evaluation Association is pleased to share the transition of AEA365 to a new RSS and email service provider, Follow.it. AEA365’s previous email and RSS provider, Feedburner (powered by Google), has quietly been ending their maintenance to the product and its features over the course of 2022. With that, we’ve been working tirelessly behind the scenes to transition to a great new service that would still deliver the features you have come to know and love. Enter Follow.it!

Greetings, AEA365 community! I’m Liz DiLuzio, Lead Curator of AEA365. While I am a bit biased in my belief that AEA365 is a treasure trove of wisdom and communication for evaluators around the world, there are a number of other ways to engage with your fellow evaluators. Why not try something new this year?