Mobilizing Innovation Through Evaluation: pd|hub hosts workshop for its Implementation Sites

In recent years, the graduate/postdoctoral eduation community has had increasing interest in moving beyond satisfaction toward more rigorous outcomes-oriented evaluation of programs. On Wednesday, November 29th, pd|hub hosted an evaluation workshop—Building Our Evidence Basis: Mobilizing Innovation Through Evaluation—for Implementation Site members interested in growing their knowledge of educational evaluation. Andrew Hartman, pd|hub Evaluation Consultant, outlined a stepwise process for developing an evaluation protocol that is grounded in program theory, using the pd|hub Collection's cross-Site evaluation as an example. Mimicking the spread of knowledge about evaluation in the broader community, workshop participants spanned those very new to evaluation, to those who already had experience with evaluative tools. To build a shared langaguge, we defined terms commonly used in educational evaluation studies. Then, Sites practiced interpreting pd|hub program logic models to understand linkages between the design of program activities and their intended outcomes and also considered ways that reflecting on a logic model's program theory can spark new ideas for program development. Access the pre-workshop recording Introduction to Program Theory and Program Logic Models here.