Telling Your Story

Post one of your evaluation questions and share your ideas for presenting your findings related to this question to at least two different audiences.

While you will not be able to collect, analyze, or interpret data for your program until it is implemented, you can plan how you will share your findings and select appropriate methods for various audiences. Consider the powerful example shared by Robby Champion in this week’s video program about how the results from a professional development evaluation were presented to a school board. In this Discussion, you will share with your Walden colleagues how you plan to present your findings in powerful and understandable ways to two different audiences. By sharing your ideas with your colleagues, you may discover new and creative ways to present your findings.
Select one of your evaluation questions and consider powerful and informative ways to present your findings. Then, identify two different audiences and consider how you would present your findings related to this evaluation question differently to each audience.
Think about the information that is important for each audience to know and how the selected audience should receive the information. For example, if you conducted an evaluation study at your school on increasing reading comprehension for the lowest quartile of students by focusing on vocabulary strategies across the content areas, and you collected data over a year, you probably would have a very extensive report of findings. If the School Board asked you to present your findings, you would probably not share with them the entire report, but create a one- to two-page executive summary highlighting the key findings and how you plan to use this data for continuous improvement in the future. A more detailed example is provided below:
Sampe Evaluation Question: “Did student reading comprehension increase based on teachers supporting students in the use of self-monitoring techniques while reading?”

To present your findings related to this question, you might show a bar graph with results of classroom assessments of reading comprehension in September (baseline) and each subsequent month’s results (after teachers participated in professional development to help students monitor their reading comprehension).

You would also want to show data that correlates the increase in reading comprehension with teacher implementation of these strategies. This could be shown through monthly observation logs documenting the types of activities teachers and students engaged in to help support student self-monitoring of reading comprehension. The impact of teachers’ practice, whether positive or negative, would be presented along with the bar graph.

Reporting the above information would be different for specific audiences. With the School Board, you would probably want to share the highest level of impact—in the form of an executive summary with the charts showing the data. For a report to classroom teachers involved in professional development efforts, you might consider setting up a blog with monthly formative reports about the progress or lack of progress you are seeing during the evaluation process. For parents, you would want to ensure that the information is presented in clear terms that help them understand the impact on their children.