Date and time: Tuesday 7 July 2026, 4.30pm - 5.30pm AEST 
Topic: Making MEL usable: designing credible, practical guidance for practice settings
Location: online, via Zoom. Details will be emailed to registrants just prior to the start time
Presenter: Kat Goldsworthy | Australian Insitute of Family Studies
Register online by: 6 July 2026

Event description:

Using monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to support better decision-making and continuous improvement is widely recognised as good practice. But translating MEL concepts into clear and practical guidance is far from straightforward.

For evaluators and evaluation teams, this raises practical design questions: how do you move from theory to guidance that supports implementation? How do you translate a non-linear evaluation process into clear, usable steps? And how do you design MEL guidance that is rigorous enough to be credible while remaining accessible to practitioners with different roles, learning styles and levels of experience?

This seminar draws on the development of the AIFS Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Guide  - a step-by-step, interactive resource designed to help child and family service providers embed MEL into their everyday practice. The guide aims to support organisations to plan, collect and use evidence to understand what is working, for whom, and why - and to strengthen their programs over time.

The presenter will reflect on the purpose, design decisions and development process underpinning the guide, including how the team:
• translated MEL concepts into clear, practice-oriented guidance without losing conceptual integrity
• balanced monitoring, evaluation and learning (rather than privileging evaluation)
• designed a step-by-step approach informed by user feedback and testing
• combined visual tools, templates and examples with videos and interactive content to enhance user engagement and accessibility.

The session will also reflect on what it takes to develop guidance that is credible, usable and responsive to context - and the trade-offs and tensions encountered when designing resources for implementation in real-world service settings.

Presenter details:

Kat is a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), a national research organisation that produces evidence to inform policy and practice to improve the wellbeing of Australian families. She works in the Evidence and Evaluation Support team, where she specialises in strengthening evaluation capability across child and family service systems, with a focus on translating evidence into practical tools and guidance for the sector. She is passionate about supporting organisations to generate and use evidence to strengthen programs and improve outcomes for children and families.

Kat recently led the development of the AIFS Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) guide and has contributed to a range of evaluation capability building resources. Her work spans the design and delivery of evaluations, involving children in evaluation, and the development of theory of change and logic models.

If this seminar is recorded, it will be available on the member portal only.

This event is organised & hosted by the Victorian Regional Network of the AES. Our seminar series provides an opportunity for you to meet with AES members and others in the evaluation community and to share and learn from the experiences of fellow evaluators.

Seminar start times:

VIC, NSW, ACT, TAS, QLD: 4.30pm

SA, NT: 4.00pm

WA: 2.30pm

New Zealand: 6.30pm

For other time zones please go to https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Please ensure you have access to your email address just prior to the start time to access Zoom details. Please also check your email address is correct on your registration form before submitting. Thanks.