Greetings, AEA365 readers! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. Registration for this year’s conference is officially open, and our local hosts at the Indiana Evaluation Association (IEA) are working with the AEA team to ensure our time in lovely Indianapolis is a fulfilling one. This week’s posts feature the voices of IEA’s members. Happy reading!
Hello! My name is Mindy Hightower King. I am the founder of Limelight Analytics LLC, a measurement and evaluation firm located in Bloomington, Indiana, that conducts research and evaluation on behalf of non-profit organizations, government agencies, and foundations.
Many of our clients are readily embracing opportunities to return to in-person meetings and conferences (we embrace this, too!). We also find there are still some very compelling reasons to engage, learn, and share ideas in online forums. If you find yourself sharing data in online meetings or convenings, and you are interested in creative ways to engage your audience, then this blog post is for you!
Here are some Hot Tips for planning your next online data-sharing meeting:
1. Know your audience. Some, but not all, audiences appreciate opportunities to gather online, especially if it saves them from driving a couple of hours to attend a single meeting for the purpose of reviewing data. People who work in the same office, don’t have the same work schedule, or don’t have consistent access to the internet may not want to engage in an online data meeting.
2. Use effective data visualization strategies to increase understanding of important results. Evaluators tend to be innovators in data visualization, and there are plenty of excellent resources on how to apply data visualization techniques. However, if you are not yet familiar with the cognitive science behind WHY we present data visually and HOW high-quality data visualization increases cognition, then I highly recommend this overview of visual processing theory by Stephanie Evergreen.
3. Give participants the ability to process data at their own speed. We recently convened an advisory committee to review and provide feedback on data collected in support of a statewide needs assessment. Our aim was to encourage members of the committee to synthesize the data and identify needs based on their areas of expertise. After presenting our data to the group, we shared a link to a Google Doc that included copies of all the data visuals they had just seen onscreen. Everyone was given 7-8 additional minutes to review the data on their own and share ideas, questions, and insights.
4. Use background music to stimulate creativity and problem-solving. We like to share a few recognizable, but mellow, songs for background listening while our meeting participants independently review data and provide feedback at their own pace. Research suggests that listening to happy music stimulates creativity, so we choose instrumental covers of popular (and happy) songs available on Apple Music or Spotify. If you are hosting your meeting on Zoom, use the “Share sound” feature that allows you to share your screen and your audio player at the same time.
5. Use online tools strategically to promote engagement and gather feedback. For meetings that include more than 3 or 4 participants, we encourage everyone to share ideas and view each other’s comments by using relatively simple online tools like Poll Everywhere and Google Jamboards. Poll Everywhere offers integration with Powerpoint, and Google Jamboards are our tool of choice when we want to compare, contrast, and engage in appreciative inquiry tasks. These tools are relatively easy to learn and allow you to quickly save and download comments and ideas from meeting participants.
I hope these ideas are helpful to consider as you plan your next opportunity to share ideas around data on an online gathering!
We’re looking forward to the Evaluation 2023 conference all this week with our colleagues in the Local Arrangements Working Group (LAWG). 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 contribute to AEA365? Review the contribution guidelines and send your draft post to AEA365@eval.org. 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.