Hi! I’m Kirsten Rewey, the Senior Evaluation Associate at ACET, Inc. I have been blogging for just under 2 years on the ACET, Inc. Blog.
Rad Resource – ACET, Inc. Blog: The ACET, Inc. Blog is one way I am able to connect with members of the greater ‘evaluation community.’ And not just other evaluators, but also consumers – those who use evaluation. Through the ACET, Inc. Blog I am able to cover a wide range of evaluation-related topics like capacity building, partnerships, resources (especially free ones), funding opportunities, and evaluation events. The ACET, Inc. Blog also gives me an opportunity to share community events, news about our clients, and personal information about myself and the other ACET staff with our readers. In general, the ACET, Inc. Blog is updated once a week and I publish a new post about once a month.
Hot Tips – favorite posts: Here are some of the ACET, Inc. Blog posts that I’ve found most memorable:
- 4/6/2011 – Top 3 Survey Challenges: I am passionate about developing good surveys that will produce useful data for clients, so in this blog I described the three challenges we most often observe in surveys and how to address each.
- 8/26/2010 – Reviewing Grant Applications, or “What I Learned on my Summer Vacation”: In this article I described three themes I observed while reviewing the evaluation portion of grant applications for the U.S. Department of Education.
- 4/19/2010 – Are Your Goals SMART?: In this article I describe how to develop goals that are SMART – specific, measureable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound.
Lessons Learned – why I blog: My goal with the ACET, Inc. Blog is to reach out to the community so that I can dialog with others about evaluation. Agencies across the U.S. are being challenged to find new and inventive ways to meet evaluation goals and benchmarks with shrinking budgets. I have found that blogging about evaluation topics is one way I can reach out to agencies to help them develop and broaden their evaluation capacity with a minimum investment (the time it takes to read a post).
Lessons Learned: The speed at which I can share information through the ACET, Inc. blog is one of the most appealing features of maintaining a blog. But it can be a challenge to identify a new topic each week.
This winter, we’re running a series highlighting evaluators who blog. 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.