Want to improve your report design? Or get outside of your comfort zone and build some kind of new-fangled, social media friendly, engaging, visual, or interactive report? But you don’t have a lot of time or money to make this happen.

Join us for our quarterly meeting as Chris Lysy walks us through a set of creative shortcuts and simple web-based tools you can use to bring improve your reporting without the need to invest a lot more time or money. Expect to learn some new tricks and bring questions along with your everyday creative challenges.

Lunch will be provided and we will have extra time for you to ask questions of and network with Chris and the group.

Chris is a member of RTPE, and an evaluator turned fractional creative officer and cartoonist at freshspectrum.com. You can also find his data design workshop at diydatadesign.com

When: Friday, August 18, 2017 at 11am

Where: The Fusion room at the Frontier, RTP

(800 Park Offices Drive, Durham, NC 27703, http://www.rtp.org/about-us/the-frontier/about-us/)

Meeting Agenda:
11:00am – 11:10am Announcements and Introduction, with lunch provided. This meeting has been designed to provide plenty of time for us to network with and learn alongside one another. Salads, sandwiches and drinks will be provided for lunch so that we can nibble along the way.

11:10am – 12:00pm Chris Lysy!!

12:00pm – ?? Discussion and Networking. For those who can stay for the extra time, we will open the discussion to the group. Have questions or challenges related to data, reporting, and the like? Bring them to ask of your peers! This time may or may not be moderated, depending on the needs and interests of those who are able to stay.

Notices:
RSVP to Nina Sperber (RTPE Secretary) at evaluatorsrtp@gmail.com required for this meeting. We will be providing lunch and so need an accurate head count.

You must respond by August 14.

We hope to see you then!

Next quarterly meeting
• November 17, quarterly meeting

You shared your feedback and we listened! In our most recent meetings and in the annual needs assessment survey, members shared an interest in learning from each other in more interactive ways AND in having more time to network. As the result, we are trying something new for our next RTPE meeting and we hope you can join us.

The Research Triangle Park Evaluators’ (RTPE) next meeting will be held on Friday, February 17, 2017 at The Frontier (800 Park Offices Drive, Durham, NC 27703) beginning at 11 am.

Meeting Agenda:

11:00am – 11:10am Announcements and Introduction, with lunch provided. This meeting has been designed to provide plenty of time for us to network with and learn alongside one another. Salads, sandwiches and drinks will be provided for lunch so that we can nibble along the way.

11:10am – 12:00pm Data Visualization Show & Tell. We have focused our annual professional development meeting on the topic of data visualization for the past two years, but members still want more. We think it is time to learn from each other. If you are like us, you have had some successes with data viz in the past couple of years and there are still things you are figuring out. For this Show & Tell, members will share an example from their work with the group (see more details below)

12:00pm – 1:00pm Data Visualization Discussion and Networking. For those who can stay for the extra time, we will continue our discussion about the trials and tribulations of data visualization. This time may or may not be moderated, depending on the needs and interests of those who are able to stay. This time might be used to learn a new trick from the Show & Tell that you want to learn more about. It would also be an ideal time to ask your colleagues for help and suggestions if you have a challenge that you haven’t been able to figure out.

About the Presentation: Bring one (or more!) artifact(s) from your own practice to share with the group: no preparation necessary. We are particularly interested in examples of data viz that your clients have loved AND examples of things that did not go as well as you thought they would. Please come with your artifact in hand, as well as a quick story about it that you can share with the group as part of an informal discussion. We will get to know each other better and learn from each other’s experiences. If you do not have anything to share, please come anyway to participate in the discussion.

Notices:

RSVP to Nina Sperber (RTPE Secretary) at evaluatorsrtp@gmail.com required for this meeting. We will be providing lunch and so need an accurate head count. You must respond by February 10.

If you haven’t paid dues for 2017, please be prepared to fill out a membership form and provide payment at the meeting.

Meetings:
• May Professional Development (date TBD)
• August 18, quarterly meeting
• November 17, quarterly meeting

We invite you to add your 2016 AEA sessions/session to the list of presentations by RTPE members. This is a good way to learn about and support the work of RTPE members. If you have questions, please contact Nina Sperber at nina.sperber@duke.edu.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GC7AqqA_S4TxoUu_MqyJjE_Duz8JmAm94IaKG1vK7FY/edit?usp=sharing

Meeting Agenda:
11:00am – 11:10am Announcements and Introduction
11:10am – 12:00pm Panel, “Engaging Stakeholders and Promoting Evaluation Use”
12:00pm – 1:00pm Optional networking lunch (snacks and drinks provided; bring your lunch or purchase from the Food Truck Rodeo)

About the Presentation: Come learn from a panel of your peers (and their stakeholders!) during a moderated discussion led by Nina Sperber, RTPE Secretary.

Panelists will be asked to describe methods used to engage stakeholders and promote evaluation use with a focus on methods that have been particularly meaningful and useful to their work over the years.

We have a wide range of evaluation sectors represented on the panel. Together with you, the audience, we hope to span the entire life cycle of evaluation work, from evaluation design through reporting.

About the Presenters:
Christie Drew is Chief of the Program Analysis Branch at NIEHS. She oversees evaluation efforts relating to biomedical research grant programs. She will discuss general strategies used by her branch to involve both internal and external stakeholders in every aspect of the evaluation design, implementation and reporting process.

Jan Riggsbee, is a senior faculty member in Duke’s Program in Education and director of Duke’s TeachHouse, a new living/learning community to support and develop early career K-12 educators. Jessica Sperling oversees evaluation at Duke’s Education and Human Development Incubator/Social Science Research Institute, which includes the evaluation of TeachHouse. Together, Jessica and Jan will discuss the role evaluation has played – and is playing – in shaping the TeachHouse’s development and future direction.

Sally Swanson, Chief Program Officer for SHIFT NC, will discuss how she leveraged the evaluation of an adolescent reproductive health demonstration project to both improve services delivered through the demonstration and to inform the development of the next round of initiatives. Joy Sotolongo, Director of Evaluation for SHIFT NC, will engage in a dialogue with Sally to highlight how she participated in the evaluation in her role as the project director.

The Research Triangle Park Evaluators’ (RTPE) next meeting will be held on Friday, February 19, 2016 at The Frontier (800 Park Offices Drive, Durham, NC 27703) beginning at 11 am.

Meeting Agenda:
11:00am – 11:10am Announcements and Introduction

11:10am – 12:00pm Engaging non-traditional stakeholders in an evaluation of a community-based teen pregnancy prevention program

12:00pm – 1:00pm Optional networking lunch (snacks and drinks provided; bring your lunch or purchase from the Food Truck Rodeo)

About the Presentation: Engaging non-traditional stakeholders in an evaluation of a community-based teen pregnancy prevention program
This presentation will describe contributions from an array of multi-disciplinary partners for an evaluation of the President’s Teen Pregnancy Prevention Initiative demonstration project in Gaston County, North Carolina. In addition to the usual suspects (health care staff), unusual suspects (advertising professionals, county planners, faith-based stakeholders) and teens themselves conducted evaluation activities. The presentation will describe the role of each contributor, the type of data they bring to the table, and how their multiple perspectives provide a more complete and interesting picture of the project’s experiences with increasing teen access to health services. Examples of data from the multi-disciplinary perspectives will include social marketing web analytics; detailed census tract maps; pre/post survey results; and depiction of teen experiences in their own voices. The presentation also will include examples of how stakeholders used data in their respective roles as project implementers.

About the Presenter: Joy Sotolongo
Joy Sotolongo is Director of Evaluation for SHIFT NC, a statewide non-profit leading North Carolina to improve adolescent and young adult sexual health. She is currently leading the evaluation for three federally funded and one privately funded teen pregnancy prevention initiatives. She has 20 years’ experience evaluating community-based prevention programs for adolescents and children in the fields of health, education, and workforce preparation.

The Research Triangle Park Evaluators’ (RTPE) next meeting will be held on Friday, November 20, 2015 at The Frontier (800 Park Offices Drive, Durham, NC 27703) beginning at 11 am. Meeting Agenda:

11:00am – 11:10am         Announcements and Introduction
11:10am – 12:00pm        Evaluation Capacity Building: Lessons Learned
12:00pm – 1:00pm          Optional networking lunch (snacks and drinks provided; bring your lunch or purchase from the Food Truck Rodeo)

About the Presentation: Evaluation Capacity Building: Lessons Learned

This year’s theme for RTPE has been Evaluation Capacity Building. In the final meeting of the season, Ben will share experiences with and study results from two recent evaluation capacity building projects. In 2009, Ben helped found the eXtension (online Cooperative Extension network) Evaluation Community of Practice. In 2014 he led an eXtension qualitative study with 40 community-based Extension staff identified by peers as evaluation champions. Ben will share the themes from this work and focus on how to apply the lessons learned through these kinds of projects to other evaluation efforts.

About the Presenter: Ben Silliman

Ben Silliman, Professor and Extension Specialist at North Carolina State University, is another evaluator ‘kidnapped’ from another field. He received his PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from Kansas State University, and taught for six years at Louisiana Tech University before beginning his career with Extension at the University of Wyoming. He continued work in youth development with 4-H at NC State in 2001. In the process of helping 4-H agents plan and evaluate programs in youth development statewide and nationally, he began evaluating, then building evaluation capacity.

Notices:

If you haven’t paid dues for 2015, please be prepared to fill out a membership form and provide payment at the meeting.

About the Presentation: Collaborative Evaluation
Dr. Rita O’Sullivan will introduce collaborative evaluation as an approach in the context of other evaluation options and then contrast it with other stakeholder-based approaches (i.e., Empowerment, Participatory, and Utilization-Focused).  She will share specific collaborative evaluation strategies and then using an example show how collaborative evaluation can promote capacity building.

Rita will engage participants in a discussion of the merits and disadvantages of collaborative evaluation. Her presentation will last approximately 25 minutes followed by engaged discussion and Q&A with the audience.

About the Presenter: Dr. Rita O’Sullivan
Dr. Rita O’Sullivan is Associate Professor of Evaluation and Assessment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she teaches graduate courses in Educational Program Evaluation, Case Study Methods, Research Design, Measurement, and Statistics.  She also is Director of Evaluation, Assessment, and Policy Connections (EvAP), a unit she founded within the UNC School of Education that conducts local, state, national, and international evaluations.  Dr. O’Sullivan specializes in developing collaborative evaluation techniques that enhance evaluation capacity and utilization among educators and public service providers.  She has successfully used collaborative evaluation approaches with museum, education, community development, and family support programs in North Carolina, non-profit organizations in the southeastern states, as well as national program initiatives in education and community development.  She authored Practicing Evaluation:  A Collaborative Approach (Sage, 2004) and is senior author of Programs for At-Risk Student: A Guide to Evaluation (Corwin Press, 1993). Dr. O’Sullivan has traveled to Kazakhstan, Russia, Brazil, Guinea, Southern Sudan, Uganda, Barbados, Puerto Rico, Thailand, and the U.S. Virgin Islands to make presentations and conduct evaluation trainings.  In addition to her scholarly contributions to the field of evaluation via articles and presentations, Dr. O’Sullivan served as Director of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) Graduate Education Diversity Internship Program (2010-12) and AEA Secretary/Treasurer from 1992-1997. In 2001 she was presented the first lifetime Distinguished Service Award from the North Carolina Association for Research in Education, and in 2002 received the Ingle Service award from the American Evaluation Association.

For a quick tour of everything that Ann has to offer, visit this page of her web site: http://annkemery.com/visualization/

About the Presentation: Evaluation Capacity Building: An Overview and Discussion of Strategies
Sally L. Bond, President of The Program Evaluation Group, LLC, will provide an overview of what is meant by “evaluation capacity building,” review recent developments in the evaluation literature, and lead a discussion of members’ opportunities to build the capacity of their clients to conduct or use evaluation.

About the Presenter: Sally L. Bond
Sally L. Bond is an independent consultant with more than 25 years of experience in program evaluation.  Her company, The Program Evaluation Group, is a network of consultants that specializes in the evaluation of education and other social programs.  Beginning with the publication of Taking Stock: A Practical Guide to Evaluation Your Own Programs in 1997 (available at http://www.horizon-research.com/publications/stock.pdf), she has provided evaluation capacity building (ECB) services to a variety of clients, primarily in educational institutions and other non-profit, community-based organizations.

Sally earned a Master’s in Sociology from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1998 and is currently working on a doctorate in Workforce and Human Resource Education at NC State University.  For her dissertation research, she is especially interested in studying the transfer of training from ECB activities to clients’ work contexts.

In addition to being the founding president of RTP Evaluators, Sally is also Program Co-Chair of AEA’s Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building Topical Interest Group (TIG) and Program Chair of the Theories of Evaluation TIG.

Real blog posts coming soon!