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New Resource In the Mix
Picture this: You are attending a workshop at a nonprofit management conference. You hear laughter and animated conversation from the next room. You slip out to investigate, and find an evaluation workshop in progress.
It’s totally unlike the lecture-style presentation on evaluation you attended last year:
Participants are highly engaged in small groups, role playing and interviewing each other. The two facilitators are right in the middle of the action. What’s going on?
At the end of the session, you ask a colleague about the workshop, and she talks excitedly about learning important components of evaluation through the workshop’s several interactive exercises. ”Who knew evaluation could be that fun? What a great way to learn!”
In Innovation Network’s evaluation training practice, we have found an invaluable resource in Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training. The exercises in this book have added new high-energy interactions to our evaluation trainings, so participants are more engaged and learn better.
In addition to the suggestions for interactive exercises, this book offers guidance on some key evaluation concepts, including:
- How to decide what question-types (open-ended or closed-ended) should be used in a survey you are creating, depending on the type of data you want to obtain;
- How to ask questions most effectively during a key informant interview; and
- How to conduct field observations and ensure that colleagues are looking for the same basic elements.
We highly recommend this publication for all trainers and technical assistance providers. Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training can be purchased through Sage Publications or Amazon.com.
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