Workshop: Making it stick 2 – Impactful evaluation reporting and beyond! (Online 8 + 15 October 2020)

Date and time: Thursday 8th October AND Thursday 15th October, 1:30pm to 5:00pm AEDT (registration from 1.15pm) Registrants must attend both sessions. (full day workshop - 2 sessions)

Venue: Via Zoom. Details will be emailed to registrants just prior to the workshop start time

Facilitator: Dr. Samantha Abbato with Rosie Pretorius

Register online by: noon on Tuesday 6 October 2020. Spaces limited to 25 participants from Australia and NZ and international AES members.

Fees (GST inclusive): Members $260, Non-members $425, Student member $125, Student non-member $210

Workshop Overview

In the context of continued substantial underuse and misuse and increasing “over-use” of evaluation findings, effective reporting is more critical now than ever. Technological advances beyond the evaluation box are a disruption to traditional evaluation reporting approaches and offer an opportunity to increase the impact of evaluation.

In this workshop we apply 2020 vision for evaluation reporting. We encourage and facilitate the use of technical advances and a transdisciplinary environment for maximising evaluation communication and use. It is designed for professionals who need to communicate evaluation findings and want to do so with greater effect.  Workshop participants will be literally looking “through the lens” in the practical activities of this workshop and seeing evaluation and reporting in a new light by doing so.

Workshop Content

The workshop will be interactive, involve the sharing of experiences and hands-on activities. A review of the communication, key messaging and design principles covered in Making it Stick Workshop 1 will provide the basis for participants to experiment with innovation to create memorable reports. Case studies from the experience of the presenter as part of an interdisciplinary team including: videography, graphic design, virtual reality, systems thinking and organisational psychology will be discussed.

Participants will be provided opportunities to apply new skills to their own work both during and between the workshop Zoom sessions.

Building from a review of the ‘Making it Stick’ introductory workshop, four main areas will be covered.

1. Alternatives to the written report: Three groups of alternatives are introduced: (1) posters that incorporate storytelling with both numbers, qualitative data and infographics, (2) digital reporting with video and virtual reality and (3) online reporting (including dashboards and systems thinking software).
2. Digital storytelling: Effective story development, storyboarding and use of supporting visuals using technology we all have at our fingertips (e.g. Smartphones and iPads).
3. Stories of data: Use of dashboard software, storytelling, design principles and tools to develop effective data visuals that stick by telling a memorable story.
4. Use of visual Quant and Qual story: Designing your own poster report using digital storytelling and stories of data as key elements and using these same visual building blocks to increase the stickiness of your written report.

Workshop Objectives

This workshop is for evaluators and other professionals who would like to:

• Use technological advances in digital and online tools to move beyond the traditional written report to incorporating visual approaches such as video and interactive online reporting;
• Further their skills in telling an effective story based on both qualitative and quantitative data using story telling tools such as story arc, storyboard and software;
• Learn how to use technology that is at their fingertips such as smartphones and iPads to capture effective images to support their story;
• Design a visual alternative to their written report and at the same time, use the visual story elements to increase the stickiness of their written reports.

PL competencies

This workshop aligns with competencies in the AES Evaluator’s Professional Learning Competency Framework. The identified domains are:

• Domain 1 – Evaluative attitude and professional practice
• Domain 3 – Culture, stakeholders and context
• Domain 5 – Project management
• Domain 6 – Interpersonal skills
• Domain 7 – Evaluation activities

Who should attend?

This workshop is designed for professionals who commission, craft or use evaluation reports. It is designed as an ideal follow-on workshop for people who have completed “Making it Stick 1 – Crafting an Evaluation Report for Impact and Use”. However, it is not essential that participants have attended Stick 1.

It will particularly benefit evaluators and other professionals at an intermediate level of evaluation report crafting.

Workshop start times

• VIC, NSW, ACT, TAS: 1.30pm
• SA: 1.00pm
• QLD: 12.30pm
• NT: 12.00noon
• Perth: 10.30am
• New Zealand: 3.30pm

About the facilitators

Dr Samantha Abbato is the director of a transdisciplinary consortium of professionals which includes: a videographer, a graphic designer, a systems-thinker and a virtual reality practitioner. Over the past 5 years the facilitator has successfully experimented across these other disciplines to un-box evaluation reporting.  She has had considerable experience in crafting evaluation reports using these multi-disciplinary tools across several sectors. She regularly facilitates workshops for AES professional development and for community and health sector clients including in report crafting (AES 2017,2018) and systems thinking for evaluation (Melbourne AES 2015).

With a passion for communication, maximising evaluation use, and a transdisciplinary approach to evaluation, the facilitator is able to offer a wealth of case studies of unboxing and increasing the impact of evaluation reporting using transdisciplinary approaches.  Her most recent evaluation work includes evaluation and M&E reporting using systems thinking, videography, graphic communication, design-thinking and virtual reality. In addition, the facilitator has completed more than 100 evaluation and research reports and papers for a range of government, non-government organisations and community stakeholders including several peer-reviewed publications in 2018 incorporating transdisciplinary approaches.

Rosie Pretorius has extensive experience in and a passion for using digital storytelling through client-centred processes for evaluation.  She has a Bachelor of Human Services and Creative Industries majoring in film (QUT, 2018). Rosie has several years of experience producing and editing film content in the community and disability sectors including evaluation story development of women with intellectual disability. She is committed to a flexible but ethical approach to the use of film in storytelling and evaluation. Rosie has a rare ability to coach those new to the use of film in evaluation in a way that makes the complicated easy, and is enabling, empowering and fun for the participant.

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