YDEKC’s five-part workshop series is designed to help our member organizations develop and deploy practical, meaningful approaches to program evaluation. Workshops are 2 hours long, and can be approached as a series or on an individual basis. Session descriptions are as follows:
Part 1. From Theory of Change to Logic Model: Mapping your Vision to Actions and Outcomes
Examines the relationship between theories of change and logic models. How are these tools used in practice? How can an aspirational vision and underlying theory of change help to ground work at the program level? This workshop will give participants an opportunity to work through their own program theory and create a basic logic model.
Part 2. Creating a Lean and Mean Evaluation Plan: A Realistic Approach to Assessing your Program’s Implementation and Impact
Focuses on organizing evaluation activities around high-priority evaluation questions. Sometimes it is not realistic to track all of the indicators that are of interest to your program, so how do you decide? This workshop will give participants an opportunity to create a streamlined, purpose-oriented evaluation plan while still taking into account the need for a holistic approach.
Part 3. All About Youth Surveys: Choosing or Creating the Best Tool for Your Evaluation
Most programs use surveys for evaluation, but the quality and usefulness of these tools vary. It is often necessary to balance feasibility and cost considerations with validity concerns. This deep dive workshop will focus on choosing, designing, and improving survey tools that are most relevant to your evaluation questions and your program’s needs.
Part 4. Getting Started with School Data: Identifying, Accessing, and Using Information to Improve your Practice and Your Partnerships
Schools collect a great deal of data on the students they serve. Many schools are willing to share this data with CBO partners provided there are legal safeguards in place. It can, however, be difficult to understand and use this data in an out-of-school-time context. This workshop will help program staff to apply school-generated data to program planning and evaluation.
Part 5. Now What? Strategies for Interpreting Evaluation Results and Sharing them with Others
Many programs are awash in evaluation data, but making sense of this data for internal and external stakeholders can be challenging. This session will focus on the communication of evaluation results to different audiences (staff, funders, other stakeholders). We will also touch on the nuts and bolts of analyzing and reporting qualitative and quantitative findings in a way that is both accurate and compelling.
Keep an eye out for dates and registration information!