Over the past few years I’ve had several opportunities to teach evaluation. Most of my students have been people who manage programs or provide direct services in government or nonprofits. Often, evaluation is just one of many responsibilities they have in their work. I’m sure I’ve learned just as much as my students—including:
- When you teach something, you are forced to clarify your thinking and back up your statements. That can be a really powerful experience, especially when you’ve been tossing around ideas for a while. For example, I’d been thinking about different models of evaluation. The idea I was exploring was that while proponents of different models sometimes set them up in contrast to other models, I think of them more like a toolkit, with different options appropriate at different times. When I wanted to convey this idea to senior managers through the State’s Senior Leadership Institute, I decided to diagram different circumstances and models. The exercise brought me a lot of clarity and resulted in a handout that was much appreciated by participants.
- Teaching is hard work – thank you, teachers! You need good content, rapport, comfort with your topic, and ability to think on your feet. I think I use more skills in the hours I spend teaching than in any other activities. That must be why there has been so much emphasis on teacher competence and the skills that make teachers successful.
- Course evaluations are more successful when the teacher directly references them. Because I teach evaluation, I sometimes use the course evaluation as an example in class. Recently, I taught a class on surveys, and spent time talking about what I could, and couldn’t learn. The result: I got almost 100% return rate and highly detailed information that I could then use for future teaching.
- When you are an expert, you can’t impart everything, so you have to pick and choose what to teach and make it relevant to your audience. I have learned evaluation from in-depth academic study and 14 years of practice. I get to spend almost all of my time thinking about evaluation, in sharp contrast to the participants in my classes. I try to match my content to what they will really use in practice. One of my mentors, Sharon Anderson, gave me a great strategy: have the students design their own class by opening with an activity about what they hope to learn that day. While this was initially scary – I couldn’t rely on a script nearly as much – it freed me to be responsive to what students needed.
- Potent presentation initiative (American Evaluation Association): http://aea365.org/blog/?p=6116
- Great ideas for presentation slides (American Evaluation Association): http://aea365.org/blog/?p=416
