Hello, my name is Jennifer Borland, and I am the president of the Indiana Evaluation Association. Founded in 2002, IEA is an organization for evaluators and those interested in evaluation to network, exchange ideas, and share information. Our local affiliate group is proud to meet the professional development and networking needs of more than 100 evaluators in the state of Indiana, as well as a few spots beyond the boundaries of our state. We were also delighted to help welcome many of our friends in the evaluation field to the Hoosier state last year as part of the AEA conference.
We are excited to announce the fact that our first Professional Development session of 2025 will be taking place on January 17th. The session, entitled, ”A Fresh Perspective on AI for Evaluation,” will be presented by Nuno Moniz, an Associate Research Professor at the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society, Director of the Notre Dame-IBM Technology Ethics Lab, and Associate Director of the Data, Inference, Analytics, and Learning (DIAL) Lab. Moniz is an expert on machine learning, investigating challenges such as imbalanced learning, model interpretability, and data privacy, for which he has won multiple awards internationally. This hour-long session will provide an overview of various AI tools and their evaluative applications, in addition to considering the learning curve and potential costs.
This week, IEA is sharing a few new blog posts as well as a few previously shared posts that highlight the diverse skills and interests of our members. The posts include:
- Bringing Evaluation to Life: Autoethnography for Programs and Policy by Jacqueline Singh
- The ‘E’ in Grant Writing Team by Kate Bathon Shufeldt
- Stand Up and Be Counted by Kyle Hannon
- A Dino Did The Trick! The Advantage of Creative Survey Incentives by Jennifer Borland
- Tips and Tools for Engaging with Data in Online Convenings by Mindy Hightower King
- Making Things Work For All Evaluation Participants by Jennifer Borland
Hot Tip: Become a member of your Local Affiliate group! If there’s not a group in your city or state, look for one nearby or consider a spot where you have projects or a desire to work.
On behalf of all of this week’s Indiana Evaluation Association contributors, thank you for checking out our posts!
The American Evaluation Association is hosting Indiana Evaluation Association (IEA) Affiliate Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from IEA members. 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.