This blog and site are dedicated to the power and promise of professional learning.
New site, new name!
The site looks different than it did prior to 2018. At that point, I created a new business name, new logo, new colors, and new pictures. The site was long overdue for a makeover – but I’m no web designer. However, I wanted something customized and flexible. So… I set about to learn web design. Why am I sharing this? Because to know me is to know that I’ll make an attempt to learn almost anything!
More importantly, it was time for new content. My blog began with a strong focus on program evaluation, with articles on education, survey design, presentations, and data visualization. I continue with most of those topics, but with a theme that ties all of these fields (my professional interests) together: professional learning.
You might know professional learning by another name – professional development, staff development, inservice, continuing education, or training. These terms have more nuanced definitions and different meanings in different fields. Professional learning can look like a graduate course, a workshop or webinar, a conference, or working with a coach. Even a book, article, or podcast can serve as a professional learning opportunity. Professional learning can be collaborating with colleagues on projects and learning from each other’s expertise and talents. It can also be following and interacting with others on social media, and participating in virtual chats and other online hangouts.
What’s my point?
Anything that serves to increase our knowledge, understanding, or capacity for our work is professional learning.
Your body of work is everything you create, contribute, affect, or impact.
-Pamela Slim, Body of Work
Let me show you around!
My site now features some of my current writing projects, along with links to this blog, my speaking and workshops, and some resources and links that may be helpful.
Subscribers receive a newsletter (about 1-2 times per month) with the latest blog article, along with some additional juicy content (can’t tell you what, otherwise, I’d be spoiling it!).
It felt great to restart writing for this blog again. That’s not to say I’d been absent from writing and teaching. In fact, my first book, Designing Quality Survey Questions, a collaboration with my wonderful co-author Kim Firth Leonard, was published in 2018. As well, we were conducting a very popular workshop for the American Evaluation Association and now offer it as an online course open to the public.
I continued to write and curate for AEA365 Tip-A-Day By and For Evaluators through 2021 (check it out! It’s free, even for non-members) and did a lot of writing for Frontline Education (also free!), while also writing a monthly article on presentations and contributing presentation tools and resources to AEA’s Potent Presentations Initiative (p2i) through 2021 (all resources on the site are free, even for non-members). Since 2020, I’ve served on the Board of Directors for the Presentation Guild, serving in the roles of Director of Education, Training, and Advocacy, Vice President, and Acting President.