Discussion Board Posts
Three crucial things to be included in an evaluation:
1. Regular, brief meetings about progress and action-points/deliverables -- ongoing communication throughout process
2. Well-crafted and varied data collection instruments and, similarly, transparent and easy-to-interpret results
3. Suggestions of areas for improvement based specifically on data results that are unique to our program (not just canned, generic responses)
One critical job skill: Organization (of people, resources, and time)
I would set up the evaluation to include:
- thoughts/ideas from all stakeholders at the very beginning (cast the net wide)
- an evaluation team internal to the company that helps work directly with the evaluator (but is a voice/go-between of the relevant stakeholders)
- early planning stages to include the evaluator
- the development of clear objectives tied to clear activities tied to clear evaluation measures/questions
- many avenues and formats for data collection
- A lot of time spent on careful data analysis
- A well-crafted report with a lot of visuals to make the relationships/patterns among the data very clear
- Several formative evaluation processes before a summative evaluation
- Transparency and communication as much as possible to encourage trust and a spirit of joint ownership
Reply to a peer:
Yes, gap analysis was also a big takeaway for me. Taking stock of present and future and concrete steps to bridge the two seems like a straightforward way to design a program with the "end" in mind. The vision of the future would help build the backbone for the program objectives, which would then be aligned with evaluation questions/tasks. Being detail-oriented as an evaluator would help the program staff ensure none of these steps were left out in the process. It's also helpful that the evaluator is focused exclusively on these kinds of details instead of a bunch of other tasks/duties within the organization (which prevent one from seeing the "big picture").
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