I’m really looking forward to #EVAL15 because this will be the first year that the conference will feature a program track in program design. Here’s a look at the full agenda.
I am especially looking forward to the PD TIG-sponsored panel, “Program Design: Evaluation’s New Frontier?”. The session will feature:
- Dr. Huey Chen, Professor of Public Health, Mercer University, and Author of Practical Program Evaluation: Theory-Driven Evaluation and the Integrated Evaluation Perspective
- Dr. John Gargani (@john_gargani), Gargani + Company Program Design and Evaluation
- Brenda Stead, Stead Consultants
- Dr. Cameron Norman (@cdnorman), CENSE Research and Design
The panelists been asked to consider what program design could mean in the context of evaluation theory and practice. The goal of the session is to attempt to arrive at an initial articulation of what program design could mean in terms of theory and practice.
Here’s the abstract: Notions of design have entered the mainstream in both public and private sectors. Underpinning this shift is an emerging realization that the once-professionalized approaches and mindsets designers employ to solve complex problems may be applied to other contexts. Bridging evaluation with design holds potential to reconceptualize both the theories and practices of evaluation, and as a consequence, enhance evaluation influence. This panel of expert evaluators draws on their theoretical and practical experiences to explore what ‘program design’ could mean for evaluators and evaluation practice.
Without giving too much of the plan away, the speakers will be responding to the following prompts:
- How have you come to ‘program design’? What do you mean by it?
- What potential do you see in program design in enhancing evaluation, if at all? What hazards do you see in evaluators engaging in program design?
- Are there any dangers in evaluators assuming the role of a program designer? Is there not a risk of cooptation?
- What competencies or skills do you see as critical to doing PD work? How might newcomers go about learning these skills?
- If there is potential in program design, what might be next step toward growing or legitimizing its practice? What should we strive to understand better? What might this body of knowledge be comprised of?
It promises to be an exciting panel. This session has been scheduled for November 12th, 2015 (3:00PM – 4:30PM) in “Field”. Come for the panel and stay for the business meeting, which will be short!
See the session details in full here: http://www.evaluationconference.org/e/in/eid=13&s=2000&print=1&req=info
See you there!
Dr. Chi Yan Lam 