Teaching Tips Week: Bonnie Stabile on Making the Most of the AEA Annual Conference

My name is Bonnie Stabile, and I teach Program Evaluation in the MPP and MPA programs at George Mason University. This year, I am serving as co-chair of the Topical Interest Group (TIG) on the Teaching of Evaluation. All this week, we’ll be hearing from colleagues who will be presenting as part of a special session at AEA’s annual conference focusing on Teaching Tips for Evaluators.

As I anticipate the AEA Annual Conference in Anaheim, the first week in November, my tip to fellow evaluators is to get involved! I joined AEA with a particular interest in learning from evaluation practitioners to expand my knowledge of the field and to enhance my students’ classroom experience. The AEA Annual Conference is a great venue for accomplishing these goals.

Hot Tip: Attend! Whether you choose to wander casually from session to session or strategically plot an agenda tailored to your well-defined interests, attending the conference will afford you an invaluable opportunity to expand your evaluation knowledge and meet others with whom to network. Attending sessions this fall may also help you hone your thoughts for a future presentation of your own.

Rad Resource: Check the AEA Conference Program in Advance: The online AEA conference program at http://www.eval.org/search11/search.asp is searchable by topic, presenter, or TIG. It includes all of the presentation abstracts, which aren’t included in the on-site hardcopy version of the program. Be sure to check in particular for the Teaching of Evaluation TIG sessions!

Hot Tip: Present/Chair/Discuss! Whether presenting a paper or poster, or acting as panel chair or discussant, preparing to share your ideas with colleagues will push you to sharpen your analyses and provide you with feedback to refine your ideas.

Hot Tip: Get involved in your TIG: Consider a Leadership Role! Acting as chair or co-chair of a topical interest group gives you the chance to work with others in crafting a program uniquely suited to exploring evaluation through the lens of a particular thematic area.

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. Want to learn more teaching tips from Bonnie and colleagues? Attend session 116, A Method to Our Madness: Program Evaluation Teaching Techniques, on Wednesday, November 2 at AEA’s Annual Conference.

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