If you’ve taken enough sociology classes you likely had this assignment at some point, “go somewhere and watch.” And if it’s a grad class you might get asked to go back to the same place several times. Looking back today, these were some of my most memorable academic moments and something I’ve definitely carried with me over the […]
Articles
Summative, Formative and Developmental
Over the years I’ve noticed that many of the most influential thinkers carry with them some great metaphors to help describe their work. It also makes for great cartoon fodder. Today’s cartoon inspired by Michael Quinn Patton from his book on Developmental Evaluation: Distinguished evaluation theorist and practitioner Bob Stake has explained, “When the cook tastes the soup, […]
Human Side of Data
There is this tendency to get wrapped up in tech. If only we had that cool new dashboard or visual. Then we could really take advantage of our data. Of course the actual tech part is not everything. Not anywhere close. Sure, the tech stuff can be neat, but the human side is the […]
Eleanor Chelimsky on who evaluators are
After posting his guest post two weeks ago on the 4 missing ps in evaluation, Rakesh Mohan received a comment via email from Eleanor Chelimsky. For the non evaluators, Eleanor Chelimsky has been incredibly influential to the field in both words and practice, having directed the Program Evaluation and Methodology Division of the U.S. Government Accountability Office […]
Baby’s first logic model
Evaluation power couple, and conference friends, David and Amy Shellard are expecting a little one this year. One of their close friend’s reached out to me looking for a cartoon to go on a onesie. I happily responded with this one. Dave sent out a tweet the other day and I quickly had a few […]
Minimum Viable Explanation – cartoon flashback
Today’s cartoon flashback comes from a big Q&A post on blogging I pulled together a couple of years ago. Specifically from Nathan Yau‘s response when asked about his biggest blogging challenge. The biggest challenge with FlowingData is probably maintaining the right balance between academic and casual. If I get too technical, I confuse a lot […]