| Session Title: Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building TIG Business Meeting and Presentation: Learning and Meaning in Organizations: How Evaluation Stops the DRIP |
| Business Meeting Session 377 to be held in Liberty Ballroom Section A on Thursday, November 8, 1:55 PM to 3:25 PM |
| Sponsored by the Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building TIG |
| TIG Leader(s): |
| Susan Boser, Indiana University Pennsylvania, sboser@iup.edu |
| Jean King, University of Minnesota, kingx004@umn.edu |
| Rebecca Gajda, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, rebecca.gajda@educ.umass.edu |
| Emily Hoole, Center for Creative Leadership, hoolee@leaders.ccl.org |
| Presenter(s): |
| Rebecca Gajda, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, rebecca.gajda@educ.umass.edu |
| Sharon Rallis, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, sharonr@educ.umass.edu |
| Abstract: Organizational stakeholders often find themselves in the state of being data rich, but information poor. Evaluation, the process through which meaning is made about the merit, quality and worth of programs and activities, has the capacity to transform data into information that can be used by organizational personnel to prevent conditions from eroding, address challenges as they arise, improve organizational adaptation, and sustain those changes that have been determined to be worthwhile. In this presentation, Rebecca Gajda and Sharon Rallis will demonstrate through an interactive skit the issues and tensions regarding the role of evaluation (and the evaluator) in building an organization’s capacity for learning, and present frameworks based on their own evaluation practice for thinking about how evaluation might be utilized to stop organizational DRIP. |