Miscenaneous – Evaluation Uncertainty

May 5, 2013May 13, 2019 jamorell Miscenaneous

A rolling conversation about the “Agreement x Certainty” space.

ECLIPS (Evaluation Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice about Systems) is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation to improve the evaluation programs that support Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). The project is housed at InSites. Beverly Parsons is the PI. I am on the advisory board. Recently I and some of the … Continue reading A rolling conversation about the “Agreement x Certainty” space.

November 1, 2010May 13, 2019 jamorell Miscenaneous

Jonny Morell’s very brief summary of his work on evaluation uncertainty

People have been asking me if I could briefly summarize my work on evaluation in the face of uncertainty. It took me a while, but I finally came up with the following.

Eat dessert first. Life is uncertain.
Good advice. True observation.

Any yet, we must soldier on, trying to predict what will happen and to explain why things work out as they do. My professional life has grappled with prediction and explanation through the lens of program evaluation. I have come to appreciate how much, and how little, evaluation can tell us. Sometimes it is “much”. Sometime is “little”. Sometimes it is “much” and “little” at the same time. This blog expresses my engagement with what evaluation can do, what it cannot do, what it should do, and what it should not do. About the graphic.