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AEA Calendar
Your AEA Username and Password for Logging In and Registering
Daily: aea365 Tip-a-Day
Weekly: Headlines and Resources Compilation
Ongoing: Discussion on Evaltalk or LinkedIn
March 30: Deadline for Board Nominations
April 2, 9, 16 & 23: eStudy - Introduction to Quantitative Methods
April 5: Coffee Break Webinar: Understanding Mexican Culture
April 8-13: Needs Assessment Week on aea365
April 12: Coffee Break Webinar: Exploring with Tableau
April 15-20: Environmental Program Evaluation TIG Week on aea365
April 19: Coffee Break Webinar: Facebook Insights
April 22-27: Bloggers Week on aea365
April 22-28: Thought Leaders Week with Jean King
April 26: Coffee Break Webinar: Mixed-Mode Surveys
May 3: Coffee Break Webinar: Getting People Ready to Engage
May 7, 9, 14 & 16: eStudy - Beginner Developmental Evaluation
May 17 & 19: eStudy - Using Theories and Frameworks of Evaluation
May 10: Coffee Break Webinar: Google Refine: Data Now Works!
June 11, 13, 18 & 20: eStudy - Intermediate Developmental Eval
AEA Board    
Last Call for Nominations
Click Here for More Info

Deadline
Friday, March 30

Training Registrations 

Upcoming online eStudy registration open for:   

Introduction to Quantitative Methods

eStudy April 2, 9, 16, 23
with Katherine McKnight Registration Closes 3/26!  

Beginner Developmental Evaluation
eStudy May 7, 9, 14 & 16
with Michael Quinn Patton
Registration Closes 4/30

Evaluation Theories and Frameworks  eStudy May 17 & 18
with Christina Christie
Registration Closes 5/10   

Intermediate Developmental Evaluation
eStudy June 11, 13, 18 & 20
with Michael Quinn Patton
Registration Closes 6/4

Learn More & Register Today 

Your AEA Username and Password

To Facilitate Login and Registrations 

Your AEA username and password may be used to login for members-only content as well as to register for AEA's coffee-break webinars.  
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Daily: aea365 Tip-a-Day for Evaluators

Daily Emails 

aea365 provides a tip-a-day by and for evaluators. Featuring hot tips, cool tricks, rad resources and lessons learned. Get your daily dose of evaluation goodness right in your in-box! 

Sign up for email tips: 
http://bit.ly/aea365Subscribe
View the Archive - Over 700 entries to date! http://aea365.org/blog/?page_id=385
Weekly: Headlines and Resources Compilation

Weekly Compilation  

Each week, we compile Headlines and Resources from across the field and send them out on Sunday to our H&R List subscribers and post them on AEA's listserv EVALTALK. 

Sign up to receive weekly H&R List each Sunday via email:
http://bit.ly/SubscribeHeadlines
Ongoing: Dive Into the Discussion on EVALTALK or LinkedIn

Ongoing Discussion Forums 

AEA's legacy listserv is the longest running public discussion forum focusing on Evaluation. This lively list is open to member and nonmember evaluators alike from around the world.

If you have a (free) profile on popular professional social networking site LinkedIn, join the AEA group for ongoing threaded discussion of questions raised by over 7000 subscribers.  


Sign up for AEA's Listserv, EVALTALK:
http://bama.ua.edu/archives/evaltalk.html
Join AEA's LinkedIn Group: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?mostPopular=&gid=1021707 
March 30: Deadline for AEA Board Nominations      

Deadline  

Show your commitment to the value of the American Evaluation Association and help to shape its future! This year, we will elect three Board members-at-large and a President-elect. You may nominate yourself or someone else. Nominating candidates for office is a valuable service to the Association and your thoughtful participation in this process is greatly appreciated.
View the Full Call for AEA Board Nominations
April 2, 9, 16 & 23: Introduction to Quantitative Methods for Evaluators - Katherine McKnight      

eStudy webinar - Mondays, 3:00 PM- 4:30 PM ET

Quantitative data offers opportunities for numerical descriptions of populations and samples. The challenge is in knowing which analyses are best for a given situation. Designed for the practitioner needing a refresher course and/or guidance in applying several univariate quantitative methods to evaluation contexts, the workshop covers the basics of parametric statistics, as well as how to report your findings. Mini-lectures, computer demonstrations, and homework will introduce methods and concepts. The instructor will review examples of research and evaluation questions and the application of specific statistical methods appropriate to developing a quantitative data-based response.


This eStudy course will occur in four 90-minute sessions and will include preparation materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

 

Day 1 - Measures of central tendency & dispersion (e.g., means & std deviations), the basic General Linear Model, and the t-test

 

Day 2 - Extend session 1 to ANOVA models


Day 3 - Extend the application of the GLM to correlational analyses, i.e. bivariate correlation

 

Day 4 - Finish with multiple correlation, i.e. linear regression

 

All 4 sessions will make a conceptual tie to the GLM and show how tests of means (e.g., t-tests & ANOVAs) and tests of correlation (bivariate and multiple regression) are extensions of the GLM and are therefore related.

 

Presenter: Katherine McKnight applies quantitative analysis as Director of Research & Evaluation for Pearson School Achievement Services and is co-author of Missing Data: A Gentle Introduction (Guilford, 2007). Additionally, she teaches research methods, statistics, and measurement in the Department of Psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

 

Register:  https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp 

($150 full members, $80 students, $200 nonmembers, $55 student nonmembers)
Last day to register Monday, March 26, 2012  
April 5: Understanding Mexican Culture to Improve the Interview Experience with Mexicans - Efrain Gutierrez     

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Efrain Gutierrez will explain several critical differences between American and Mexican culture and how these differences may affect communication between individuals from different cultures during the interview process. The webinar will also offer specific recommendations for evaluators that will improve the quality of interviews with Mexicans and will provide time for audience questions.
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required
Preregister at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/663437481
Week of April 8-13: Needs Assessment Week on aea365       
Join our colleagues in the Needs Assessment TIG for a week of contributions on our aea365 Tip-a-Day Alerts. Join us as NA contributors will be sharing tips, tricks, resources, and lessons learned to help us all better understand the issues and the intricacies.   

Go to aea365 and use the buttons to subscribe to a tip-a-day via email:
http://aea365.org/blog/  

April 12: Stop Wrestling, Start Exploring with Tableau - Daniel Hom      

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Tableau is based on breakthrough technology from Stanford University that lets you drag and drop to analyze data. You can connect to data in a few clicks, then visualize and create interactive and collaborative on-line or off-line dashboards with a few more. You can shift fluidly between views, following your natural train of thought. You just create beautiful, rich data visualizations, which can be easily shared. In this product demonstration, Daniel Hom, Tableau Data Analyst, will provide an introduction to the major features of Tableau, including ease-of-use and sharing.
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required.
Preregister at  https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/532766817
Week of April 15-20: EPE/Earth Week on aea365       
Join our colleagues in the Environmental Program Evaluation TIG for a week of contributions on our aea365 Tip-a-Day Alerts. Founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, Earth Day is now celebrated week-long globally. Join us as EPE will be sharing tips, tricks, resources, and lessons learned to help us all both celebrate and better cultivate a growing green awareness. Also, find out more about the upcoming 2012 Environmental Evaluators Network Forum to be held July 18-19 in Washington, D.C. 

Go to aea365 and use the buttons to subscribe to a tip-a-day via email:
http://aea365.org/blog/  

April 19: What Facebook Insights Can Tell You About Your Social Media Presence - Robin Kipke      

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Many organizations have joined the stampede to establish and maintain a social media presence on Facebook, but they are less certain about how to monitor and measure whether these efforts are proving effective. While there are lots of tools and platforms out there that can help, the one closest at hand is Insights, the free analytical package that is built in to every Facebook Page. With Insights screenshots, this webinar will provide some basic pointers about which metrics to pay attention to, what they can tell your organization, and how to utilize the data to improve your online presence.
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required.
Preregister at   https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/614125656
Week of April 22-27: Bloggers Week on aea365       
We're nearing the end of our five month's long bloggers series highlighting evaluators who blog on aea365. This week, we'll learn about blogging from a past AEA president, a pair of independent consultants, a current Board member, and an international evaluator who blogs in both Spanish and English. Subscribe to learn about why they blog and their favorite posts.

Go to aea365 and use the buttons to subscribe to a tip-a-day via email:
http://aea365.org/blog/  

April 22-28: AEA Thoughts Leaders Forum Hosts Jean King         

Thought Leaders Forum - Weeklong asynchronous online discussion

Free for all AEA members
The  Thought Leader Discussion Series connects thought leaders in our field with AEA members, new and old alike. Most months, we host an asynchronous (not in real time) online exchange over the course of a week using AEA's discussion forums. We are pleased to welcome Jean King in April.

Jean King
is a professor in the Department of Organizational Leadership, Policy, and Development at the University of Minnesota. Jean has taught middle school English, served on the faculty at Tulane, and was the founding director of the UM's Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI). More recently, in 1996 Jean founded the Minnesota Evaluation Studies Institute (MESI) and currently serves as its director. With over 30 years of experience teaching and conducting evaluations, Jean has received numerous awards for her work, including AEA's Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice and  the Ingle Award for Extraordinary Service, three teaching awards, and three community service awards. Her newest book, co-authored with Laurie Stevahn, comes out this month from SAGE publications: Interactive Evaluation Practice: Mastering the Interpersonal Dynamics of Program Evaluation.

If you aren't already subscribed to the forum: Go to the AEA Thought Leaders Forum Page to learn more and subscribe
April 26: Mixed-Mode Surveys: Combining Web, Phone, and Mail Modes in a Single Study - Lija Greenseid       

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Mixed-mode surveying is a hot topic in survey research circles. A mixed-mode survey is a survey that uses more than one mode, such as telephone, mail, or web, to collect data. Why and how would you conduct one? This webinar will discuss reasons for mixing-modes within a single study, effective data collection strategies, and cautions to keep in mind when analyzing mixed-mode survey data. A case study will be presented to illustrate the benefits and challenges to conducting mixed-mode surveys.
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required.
Preregister at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/622564704
May 3: Activating Mental Velcro: Getting People Ready to Engage - Cassandra O'Neill        

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Helping people get ready to engage and learn can be simple and easy. If you are presenting at a meeting or during a workshop, or working with groups of stakeholders at any point in your evaluation process, you can help people engage by starting out with a couple of quick and simple activities. Learn how to set the stage for engaged learning by giving people a chance to focus, identify what they want to learn, and activate what they already know. The information shared is part of a new e-book from AEA member Cassandra O'Neill called The Six Secrets to High Impact Presenting.
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required.
Preregister at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/547195904
May 7, 9, 14 & 16: Beginner Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use - Michael Quinn Patton       

eStudy webinar - Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00 PM- 3:30 PM ET

This eStudy is geared for an audience with beginner level expertise in developmental evaluation (DE). DE is especially appropriate for innovative initiatives or organizations in dynamic and complex environments where participants, conditions, interventions, and context are turbulent, pathways for achieving desired outcomes are uncertain, and conflicts about what to do are high. DE supports reality-testing, innovation, and adaptation in complex dynamic systems where relationships among critical elements are nonlinear and emergent. Evaluation use in such environments focuses on continuous and ongoing adaptation, intensive reflective practice, and rapid, real-time feedback. The purpose of DE is to help develop and adapt the intervention (different from improving a model).

This evaluation approach involves partnering relationships between social innovators and evaluators in which the evaluator's role focuses on helping innovators embed evaluative thinking into their decision-making processes as part of their ongoing design and implementation initiatives. DE can apply to any complex change effort anywhere in the world. Through lecture, discussion, and small-group practice exercises, this workshop will position DE as an important option for evaluation in contrast to formative and summative evaluations as well as other approaches to evaluation.

  

This eStudy will occur in four 90-minute sessions and will include preparation materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

  

Day 1 - The specific niche for which developmental evaluation is appropriate and useful.

Day 2 - Understanding and distinguishing five different types of DE and the implications of those types.

Day 3 - Implications of complexity concepts for DE theory & practice.

Day 4 - Practical frameworks and innovative methods for use in DE.


Presenter:
Michael Quinn Patton is an independent consultant based in Minnesota and former president of the American Evaluation Association. An internationally known expert on Utilization-focused Evaluation, this workshop is based on his book, Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use (Guilford, 2010).

 

Register:  https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp 

($150 full members, $80 students, $200 nonmembers, $110 student nonmembers)
Last day to register Monday, April 30, 2012  
May 17 & 19: Using Theories and Frameworks of Evaluation Practice to Inform and Improve Our Work - Christina Christie

eStudy webinar - Thursday and Friday, 2:00 PM- 3:30 PM ET

The majority of our evaluation theories are intended to offer principles, rationales, and organization for the procedural choices made by evaluators and to orient practitioners to the issues and problems with which they must deal (Chelimsky, 1998). These "theories" are qualitative models, points-of-view, and approaches to the process of evaluation. Discussions of evaluation theories often focus on a particular approach. In this eStudy webinar, however, participants will be offered an opportunity to examine a range of theories comparatively, while also examining the theories that fit best with each participant's current social, political, and methodological beliefs, values, and practice.

Through lecture and homework, the course will introduce you to different evaluation perspectives and how they can influence how we evaluate. We'll use the Evaluation Theory Tree categorization system to gain a fuller understanding of one's own framework preferences, then compare, contrast, and explore theories from different branches to identify their application at each step in designing and conducting an evaluation.

 

This eStudy will occur in two 90-minute sessions and will include preparation materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

 

Day 1 - This session will discuss a system for categorizing and comparing evaluation frameworks and the key tenants of prevalent evaluation frameworks for practice included in the categorization schema.

Day 2 - This session will cover the ways in which evaluation frameworks can inform, guide, and be used in practice.

 

Presenter: Christina Christie has taught professional development workshops for many organizations, including the Claremont Graduate Professional Development Workshop Series, the AEA/CDC Summer Institute, the AEA annual conference, and the Canadian Evaluation Society (annual meeting workshops). She has published both peer-reviewed and invited papers on the topic of evaluation theory.

Register: https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp
 ($75 full members, $40 students, $100 nonmembers, $55 student nonmembers)
Last day to register is Thursday, May 10, 2012  
 
May 10: Google Refine: Data Now Works! - Juan Paulo Ramirez         

Coffee Break Webinar - Thursday, 2:00 - 2:20 PM ET

Free for all AEA members
Tired of cleaning data from thousands of records, and/or running simple frequencies with sophisticated and expensive statistical software? If this is your case, try Google Refine! Google Refine is a free desktop application that you install in your computer allowing you to clean, cluster and multi-tabulate data from large datasets. Google Refine imports your "dirty" data from Excel or CSV (comma separated value) files, and it can work with text, numeric, or time values. This free application will save you literally days of hard work, and improve the accuracy of your data set!
Register: Free to AEA members, but preregistration is required.
Preregister at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/292983320
June 11, 13, 18 & 20: Intermediate Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use - Michael Quinn Patton       

eStudy webinar - Mondays and Wednesdays, 2:00 PM- 3:30 PM ET

This eStudy is geared for an audience with intermediate level expertise in developmental evaluation (DE). DE is especially appropriate for innovative initiatives or organizations in dynamic and complex environments where participants, conditions, interventions, and context are turbulent, pathways for achieving desired outcomes are uncertain, and conflicts about what to do are high. DE supports reality-testing, innovation, and adaptation in complex dynamic systems where relationships among critical elements are nonlinear and emergent. Evaluation use in such environments focuses on continuous and ongoing adaptation, intensive reflective practice, and rapid, real-time feedback. The purpose of DE is to help develop and adapt the intervention (different from improving a model).

This evaluation approach involves partnering relationships between social innovators and evaluators in which the evaluator's role focuses on helping innovators embed evaluative thinking into their decision-making processes as part of their ongoing design and implementation initiatives. DE can apply to any complex change effort anywhere in the world. Through lecture, discussion, and small-group practice exercises, this workshop will position DE as an important option for evaluation in contrast to formative and summative evaluations as well as other approaches to evaluation.

 

This eStudy will occur in four 90-minute sessions and will include preparation materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

 

Day 1 - Emergent methods in practice: The challenges of designing & budgeting developmental evaluation studies

Day 2 - Co-evolution and interdependence: The challenges of the relationship between the developmental evaluator and social innovators (primary intended evaluation users)

Day 3 - Making "real time" feedback meaningful and valid: The challenges of evaluation in a fast-paced, real-time world

Day 4 - Issues raised by participants: Interactions around DE in theory & practice

 


Presenter:
Michael Quinn Patton is an independent consultant based in Minnesota and former president of the American Evaluation Association. An internationally known expert on Utilization-focused Evaluation, this workshop is based on his book, Developmental Evaluation: Applying Complexity Concepts to Enhance Innovation and Use (Guilford, 2010).

 

Register:  https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp 

($150 full members, $80 students, $200 nonmembers, $110 student nonmembers)
Last day to register Monday, June 4, 2012