What a design-oriented approach to evaluation does is greatly enhance the participant’s sense of the whole, what the needs and desires and fears both parties are dealing with, not just the executive or rational elements. More importantly, this strategy looks at how these different components might interact by simulating a condition in which they might play out.
The American Evaluation Association conference is on right now in San Antonio and with hundreds of sessions spread over four days it is hard to focus on just one thing. For those interested in systems approaches to evaluation, the conference has had a wealth of learning opportunities.
Over the next few days I’ll be attending the American Evaluation Association conference in San Antonio, Texas. The conference, the biggest gathering of evaluators in the world. Depending on the Internet connections, I will try to do some live tweeting from my @cdnorman and some blogging reflections along the way, so do follow along if …
Today I’ll be wrapping up a two-day kick off to an initiative aimed at building a community of practice around Developmental Evaluation (PDF), working closely with DE leader and chief proponent, Michael Quinn Patton. The initiative, founded by the Social Innovation Generation group, is designed in part to bring a cohort of learners (or fellows? …
Developmental evaluation is an emerging area of practice that builds evaluation methods on the science of complexity and fits with the realities of social and health programs, rather than trying to fit the wrong type of model on to the wrong type of program.
If design thinking is to escape the trap of being trendy towards impactful, the methods that it uses must improve their rigour and testing. This post explores the challenges and opportunities for design thinking to consider it as more than thinking, but also of action.
Our ability to change can be tied to the degree of embeddedness we have within larger systems and how tight the fit between the layers or levels are. Barack Obama’s electoral success and governance frustrations are used to illustrate.
Beyond Google Wave, the metaphor of waves sloshing around in a sea of influence provides a useful metaphor for those interested in doing evaluation in an eHealth environment where there is no one cause and many consequences.
