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What's New at GRG?
| GRG Welcomes 4 New Staff Members!
Kate Parkinson, Research Assistant, joined GRG after graduating with Honors from Tufts University with a Bachelor's in Child Development and Clinical Psychology.
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Molly Priedeman, Research Assistant, also joined GRG after graduating Cum Laude from Amherst College with a degree in Psychology and French.
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Rachel Schechter, is GRG's newest Project Manager after spending last summer and fall at GRG as a
doctoral intern. She is also in the process of earning her Ph.D. at the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, focusing on the use of music as a learning tool for young children.
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Tina Lagerstedt, is our new Office Coordinator who joined us in May 2010 after graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Political Science.
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AnnouncementsThis coming November, Irene Goodman, Rucha Londhe, and Rachel Schechter
will present a workshop about evaluation at the New England Museum
Association annual conference in Springfield, MA. The title of the talk is Museum Evaluation
in the Digital Age: From the Basics to the Bells and Whistles.
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GRG's Director of Research, Colleen Manning, is a
co-author of The
Schwartz CenterRounds: Evaluation of an
interdisciplinary approach to enhance patient-centered communication, teamwork
and provider support, which will appear in the June 2010 issue of Academic Medicine.
___________________ Senior Research Associate, Elizabeth Bachrach,
presented the findings from a five-year longitudinal study of SAE
International's A World in Motion (AWIM) curriculum to the SAE Foundation Board
of Trustees at the 2010 SAE World Congress meeting in Detroit, Michigan. Read More___________________ Rachel Schechter was selected to
receive the esteemed Fred Rogers
Memorial Scholarship. Read More
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Welcome from the President.....
It's still spring, the season that signifies the emergence of
new life, meaningful growth, and rejuvenation. This has been the case
at GRG, as activities have been blossoming (along with the azaleas,
dogwoods, and peonies). We have had good reason to rejoice because we
recently kicked off a new NSF-funded research study, there are several
exciting projects ongoing, and talented new staff (all of which you can
read about in this newsletter).
Spring also brings spring cleaning. Anne Marie Amello, our finance
manager, and I did some cleaning out of archived GRG documents, finding
files that were 10, 15, and 20 years old. Many of the files were from
the era before the Web and email. There were typewritten pages and
handwritten documents, and lots of faxes on that thermal paper (anybody
remember those?). We certainly communicated much more by phone then.
Surveys were all paper and pencil.
Now, we program our own electronic surveys, we moderate online
discussion groups, and host webinars. Many of our clients have not only
Facebook pages, but are on Twitter and YouTube, and maintain their own blogs. GRG has entered this age of social networking, with new pages on Facebook and Linkedin. We're eager to help our readers keep up with
interesting research and tidbits. We'd love to hear from you, so please
stay in touch (either on our Facebook page, our LinkedIn page, by email,
or an old-fashioned letter via U.S. Mail). We hope you have a wonderful
summer!
Irene
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GRG Receives NSF Award
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GRG is known primarily as a research firm specializing in
evaluation of educational programs, materials, and services. However, every now
and then, GRG pursues its own research about topics that pique our
interest. In March 2010, GRG received its own three-year grant from the National
Science Foundation, Division of Gender in Science and Engineering.
Our research project, the Massachusetts Linking Experiences and
Pathways (M-LEAP) study, is designed to answer the question: How do
students' in-school and out-of-school experiences shape their choices related
to their future careers? M-LEAP is
a longitudinal study of 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th
grade elementary school students who will be followed for three years. Their
parents, teachers, district subject matter specialists, and community program
representatives will also provide data.
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Data Visualization
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A hot topic in the evaluation community these days is the
visual representation of data, or "data visualization." Visualizations show relationships among data
points, comparisons between sets of values, changes over time, parts of a
whole, analysis of text, and much, much more.
The best visualizations have two main characteristics: they are both aesthetically pleasing and they effectively communicate
information.
Evaluators have long visualized data using tables, line
graphs, scatter plots, bar charts, and the like; however, as the popular
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods demonstrates, there are at least 100
ways to visually display data. Evaluators are experimenting with mind maps,
story templates, infomurals, and even cartoons!
This "tag cloud" shows the frequency with which
evaluators used certain words when responding to a question about what they
do.
Created at Tagxedo.com.
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| Evaluation Spotlight | | Trustee Advantage
Trustee Advantage is a grant program designed and sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts to help the Boards of Trustees at five Massachusetts hospitals advance the governance of quality and safety improvement at their institutions. As part of our process evaluation, GRG is collecting data from Board members, coaches, and learning community facilitators to understand how the program is unfolding.
In Spring 2010, GRG began an evaluation of the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program (NCS) which is designed to help the
Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) inform and enhance the NCS program. We are currently collecting data through a series of online focus groups with Fulbright New Century Scholars who participated in the program since 2001. NCS is
an initiative under the Fulbright Scholars Program, launched in 2001 by
the CIES, a division of
the Institute of International Education, and the Bureau of Educational
and Cultural Affairs in the U.S. Department of State. Read More
We Shall Remain
WGBH created a national outreach initiative for We Shall Remain, a five-part documentary series on Native American history produced for American Experience. In partnership with the American Library Association, WGBH developed an event kit with ideas and resources to help libraries organize events related to the series. GRG's evaluation assessed the reach and impact of the We Shall Remain community coalition and library outreach activities. To view the Executive Summary, click here.
Nova ScienceNOW
GRG just completed evaluation of Season 4 of NOVA scienceNOW, the PBS series that explores cutting-edge scientific and technological innovation in real time, as the science unfolds. The evaluation of the TV series, outreach, and website was designed to assess NOVA's effectiveness in meeting its overall goal of engaging a variety of audiences more deeply with scientific research in both formal and informal settings. To view the Executive Summary, click here. |
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| Thank you for reading our newsletter! For more information about our exciting work, check out our website, www.grginc.com. |
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