Evaluation Roundup - April 2021

May 2, 2021 Kristy Madsen

Welcome to our monthly roundup of new and noteworthy evaluation news and resources – here is the latest.

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New and Noteworthy — Reads

Shifting the Evaluation Paradigm: The Equitable Evaluation Framework

Hot of the press! The Equitable Evaluation Initiative in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations just released a new publication called Shifting the Evaluation Paradigm: The Equitable Evaluation Framework. This new joint publication provides an overview of the Equitable Evaluation Framework (EEF) and the early steps of engagement with foundation partners. The publication highlights insights in mindset shifts and tensions that are occurring behind the curtains of six foundation practice partners.

Increasing the Value of Foundation Evaluation

Engage R+D partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to apply a creative, participatory technique – known as a design charrette - to engage a broad variety of stakeholders in collaboratively designing a summative evaluation of one of the Foundation’s signature K-12 investments. Through this case study a learning brief was developed that explores “what can happen when more voices are included in the process of evaluation design.”

How to Teach Evaluation

The Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation recently released a special issue on how evaluation can be taught and learned. The issue curates the Practice Notes of evaluation educators from diverse backgrounds. If you are looking for evaluation teaching techniques, then definitely check out this volume from the Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation.

Real-Time Evaluation – Your Time Has Arrived!

Patricia Rogers of BetterEvaluation wrote a working paper on what can be learned from previous Real-time evaluations (RTE) practiced over the past 20 years. Our world is changing quickly, and people are looking for evaluation approaches that will meet the needs of rapidly changing initiatives. For an overview of why we need more real-time evaluation, read her most recent article on BetterEvaluation.