What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.
If only Thomas Carlyle (Scottish philosopher, writer, historian and teacher) had lived in the age of the Internet. He most certainly would have added websites, blogs, Pinterest boards, SlideShare decks, and much, much, more.
Anyone who knows me knows that I like to collect. I like to amass. I even like to organize (although a peek at my closets and basement might suggest otherwise). Collecting information and ideas is as hot as ever now, what with all the readily available social media, i.e. Pinterest, and the like. While I haven’t yet expanded to that site*, I have been doing a bit of collecting right here on the blog space.
I’ve long been collecting evaluation-related articles, textbooks, and websites, especially for the benefit of my graduate evaluation students. I started l with Google bookmarks and eventually moved to Ur.list. WordPress, however, seems like a better choice now to house the collections. Since I think it’s almost humanly impossible to teach a rigorous, relevant and useful comprehensive course on evaluation in just one semester, I like to point students in the direction of supplemental resources to feed their evaluation curiosity, assist with individual evaluation projects, and expand their evaluation know-how.
While mine is far from the largest collection of evaluation-related materials (my guess is that Gene Shackman’s site may have that distinction!), I hope you’ll find a nugget of knowledge in here somewhere that helps out with an evaluation project. Sure, I could just go to Gene’s site and copy all the URLs to add to my page, but my personal collection features only sites I’ve visited and found particularly helpful, interesting, or useful in my work.
If you look at the top of this page, you’ll find Happy (Evaluation) Places featuring my annotated list of Evaluation-related websites, along with Good(Evaluation)reads with subpages for Evaluation Textbooks, Evaluation Articles, and Free Evaluation Guides and Text Chapters.
If you are so inclined, would you please help me build the collection? Please suggest evaluation-related websites I should visit, and tell me why you find them interesting or helpful. Also, please suggest your favorite evaluation-related journal articles (I have not yet started populating that page yet). What articles do YOU think should be required reading for novice evaluators or graduate students?
Thank you and happy evaluating!
*Stay tuned for new projects in the works: new collections, new collaborations, and new media!