Susan Kistler on the Top 10 aea365 Posts of 2011

I’m Susan Kistler, the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director and intrepid aea365 Saturday contributor. As 2011 drew to a close, we took the opportunity to look back over the year and see what represented the most-read posts on aea365. Here’s a chance to catch up on some of the hottest content if you missed it the first time – and thanks and congratulations to those who made the top 10 list!

Drum roll please….

Hot Tips: The following represent the top 10 most read non-staff articles, according to our feedburner statistics:

• December 4 – Naomi Walsh on a Must-Have Free Timeline Maker: With over 3500 subscriber views in 2011, this post introducing a nifty, free tool for use in reporting was tops for 2011.
• September 20 – Penny Black on Comparing Prezi and PowerPoint: A free, dynamic, alternative to PowerPoint? Lots of readers felt it was worth a look and we saw a number of presenters trying it out at the annual conference.
• June 2 – John Colon on Nine Tech  Tools That Make Life Easier: John shares free tools for organizing, learning, visualizing, quickening, and remembering. Check out the comments for additional suggestions.
• Dec 9 – Phil Levine on Humor for the Chart-Lover: Worth a peek for the cake metaphor alone illustrating the difference among data, information, presentation, and knowledge.
• Nov 14 – Sonny Hines on F4 and F5 Transcription Software: Continuing the love for free software, Sonny gives a quick review of F4/F5 that helps you to navigate through recorded content while transcribing.
• Aug 1 – Sona Madison on More Free Photo Sites: Sona looks at two photo sharing site that each offer something extra beyond great, free, photos for illustrating your reports.
• Dec 6 – Robin Kipke on Resources for Evaluating Social Media: Taking on this hot topic, Robin links to useful guides with example templates.
• Mar 10 – ROE Week: Anne Heberger Marino on a field experiment to increase survey response rates: Anne builds on social science theory to conduct research on evaluation methods in a real world context.
• Dec 8 – Harold Sharpman on Learning About Evaluation and Grantmaking: Resources from Grantcraft, the Council on Foundations and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations for those evaluating grantmaking programs.
• Oct 20 – Scott Chaplowe on Fun and Games in M&E Trainings: Ideas and resources for trainers working internationally in Monitoring and Evaluation.

I can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!

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.