Pre-Conference Workshops
2-day workshop, Monday and Tuesday, March 26th and 27th
“Introduction to Program Evaluation”
Presenter: Stacey Stockdill
Date: Two days, Monday March 26-Tuesday March 27, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $300
Description: Are you a relative newcomer to the field of evaluation? Do you want to brush up on your evaluation skills? This special two-day workshop will cover the basics of program evaluation including developing evaluation plans, collecting the information you need through a variety of data collection methods, analyzing qualitative and quantitative data, and putting your findings to good use.
1- day workshops, Monday, March 26th
“Utilization-Focused Evaluation”
Presenter: Michael Quinn Patton
Date: One day, Monday March 26, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: Utilization-Focused Evaluation begins with the premise that evaluations should be judged by their utility and actual use; therefore, evaluators should facilitate the evaluation process and design any evaluation with careful consideration of how everything that is done, from beginning to end, will affect use. Use concerns how real people in the real world apply evaluation findings and experience the evaluation process. In this workshop, participants will learn: key factors in doing useful evaluations, common barriers to use, and how to overcome those barriers; implications of focusing an evaluation on intended use by intended users; options for evaluation design and methods based on situational responsiveness, adaptability and creativity; ways of building evaluation into the programming process to increase use.
“Evaluation and Public Health/ Evaluating Public Health Initiatives Focused on
Population Health Improvement”
Presenter: Tom Griffin
Date: One day, Monday March 26, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: This session will explore ways that evaluations of public health initiatives can be designed and conducted to provide timely and useful feedback to public health staff and other stakeholders, including reviewing the Centers for Disease Control’s Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health and discussing examples of recently completed and ongoing evaluations of public health initiatives.
“Mainstreaming Evaluation in Organizations”
Presenter: Amy Gullickson
Date: One day, Monday March 26, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: Mainstreaming evaluation means integrating evaluative thinking and practices into the everyday life of organizations. In this one day workshop, the presenter will demonstrate a framework for understanding the current and desired levels of evaluative integration in any organization. You will have the opportunity to try out the framework yourself on example organizations; use the framework to analyze an organization you work with; learn about ideas for increasing integration of evaluative thinking and practices; and design strategies to move your organization toward mainstreaming evaluation.
1- day workshops, Tuesday, March 27th
“Developmental Evaluation”
Presenter: Michael Quinn Patton
Date: One day, Tuesday March 27, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: Developmental evaluation (DE) is especially appropriate for innovative initiatives or organizations in dynamic and complex environments where participants, conditions, interventions, and context are turbulent, pathways for achieving desired outcomes are uncertain, and conflicts about what to do are high. Evaluation use in such environments focuses on continuous and ongoing adaptation, intensive reflective practice, and rapid, real-time feedback. The purpose of DE is to help develop and adapt the intervention (different from improving a model). This evaluation approach involves partnering relationships between social innovators and evaluators in which the evaluator’s role focuses on helping innovators embed evaluative thinking into their decision-making processes as part of their ongoing design and implementation initiatives. DE can apply to any complex change effort anywhere in the world. Through lecture, discussion, and small-group practice exercises, this workshop will position DE as an important option for evaluation in contrast to formative and summative evaluations as well as other approaches to evaluation.
“Facilitation Skills for Evaluators”
Presenter: Jean A. King
Date: One day, Tuesday March 27, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: In all of its many forms, evaluation practice requires evaluators to be skilled facilitators of interpersonal interactions. Whether you are completely in charge, working collaboratively with program staff, or coaching individuals conducting their own study, you need to interact with people throughout the course of an evaluation. This workshop will provide theoretical grounding practical frameworks for analyzing and extending facilitation skills. Through presentations, discussion, reflection, and case study, participants will learn and experience strategies to enhance involvement and foster positive interaction in evaluation. Participants are encouraged to bring examples of challenges faced in their own practice to this workshop.
“Overturning Immunity to Change”
Presenter: Amy Gullickson, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, Western Michigan University and Independent Consultant
Date: One day, Tuesday March 27, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: Do you have a personal or professional change that you’ve been trying to make but it has proved resistant to your thoughtful plans and heartfelt intentions? Not being able to change doesn’t mean we’re lazy, stubborn, or weak. Our best-laid plans often fail for smart, ingeniously self-protective reasons: hidden assumptions that create immunity to change. In this one day workshop, the presenter will guide you through a framework to surface your immunity to change and help you take the first steps to overturning it. As evaluators, this framework may also help you learn to perceive the hidden assumptions influencing the individuals and organizations with which you work. This session is based the research of Drs. Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, Founding Partners of Minds At Work®, and faculty members at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Post-Conference Workshops
Half-day workshop, Friday, March 30
“Critical Systems Heuristics: A systems-based approach to addressing power dynamics in evaluation”
Presenter: Mary A. McEathron, Ph.D., Director, The Evaluation Group at the Institute on Community Integration, University of Minnesota; Vidhya Shanker
Date: Half-day, Friday afternoon, March 30, 2012 (1:00pm-4:15pm)
Cost: $80
Description: Evaluators have long known, discussed and written about power imbalances, due to race, class, gender, and culture, evident in decisions made about how programs are funded, implemented, and evaluated. In this interactive session, participants will learn about a systems based approach –Critical Systems Heuristic — that can be used to investigate questions of power relations and boundary judgments. A local community organization will demonstrate the heuristic via a moderated discussion. Participants will then have the opportunity to practice using CSH in small groups. The session will end in a large group discussion about how incorporate CSH in an evaluation practice.
“Survey Workshop”
Presenter: Delia Kundin, PhD, Research Associate, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), University of Minnesota; Beverly J. Dretzke, PhD, Research Associate, Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI), University of Minnesota
Date: Half-day, Friday afternoon, March 30, 2012 (1:00pm-4:15pm)
Cost: $80
Description: Organizations often seek feedback from stakeholders to help guide program development and to gauge the effectiveness of their work. Administering surveys is a common method of information gathering used to learn about stakeholders’ experiences with programs/services. This half day interactive workshop will offer participants tips on how to design (or improve) a survey and introduce practical approaches to analyzing results. The session presenters will provide information and hands-on opportunities for participants to apply what they learn. Participants will learn practical tips on how to: write “good” survey questions; create response categories (e.g., Likert-type scales); analyze data using Microsoft Excel; report findings to multiple audiences; and avoid common mistakes.
1- day workshop, Saturday, March 31st
“Conflict Management in Evaluation”
Presenter: Jeanne Zimmer, Executive Director, Dispute Resolution Center, St. Paul, MN
Date: One day, Saturday March 31, 2012 (8:45am-4:15pm)
Cost: $160
Description: Unacknowledged and unresolved conflict can undermine even the most skilled evaluators, if they are unprepared to address the underlying issues and are untrained in conflict-resolution skills. In this workshop, participants will learn the practical applications of conflict resolution theory as they apply to conflict situations in program evaluation through a hands-on, experiential approach using real-life examples from program evaluation. This training will cover: problem-solving skills; personal conflict styles; communication, listening, and facilitation skills, and will introduce you to a streamlined process of conflict resolution that may be used with clients and stakeholders.