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 …
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 …
Continue Reading about Summative, Formative and Developmental →
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 …
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 …
Continue Reading about Eleanor Chelimsky on who evaluators are →
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 …
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 …
Continue Reading about Minimum Viable Explanation – cartoon flashback →
Professionalizing Evaluation
Like many evaluators I just kind of fell into the field from a career in research (my MA is in sociology). One day I found myself in a non-profit data position doing evaluation work. Then over the …
Too many sustainable development goals or too few
The age-old question, how many goals should we have? I'm not really caught up on the overall discussion regarding the sustainable development goals, but the following sparked today's cartoon. This …
Continue Reading about Too many sustainable development goals or too few →
Ban Powerpoint… or Not
The way I see it, Power Point is not a presentation tool. It is a presentation illustration tool. And Power Point is designed in a way that leads you toward illustrating a presentation using bullet …
Data fluency and the last mile
I think the last mile analogy below will resonate with many of you. Sometimes it seems like we spend so much time planning, collecting and analyzing that the final piece almost becomes an …
Data Science versus Evaluation
Data science vs evaluation is a false dichotomy. Because data science and evaluation (or research) are not mutually exclusive. Both data science and evaluation involve data. Depending on the …
Serious versus Solemn
If the things we want to share with the world are really as important as we think they are, then we should be pulling out all the stops to get them into the hands (and minds) of our intended audience. …