Portland Program
January 27, 2005

Building Evaluation Capacity:  Teaching Evaluation Concepts
with Darlene Russ-Eft, PhD

A new year and new pressures to justify your training budget? Imbedding a solid evaluation capacity within your organization could make the difference in 2005. Join us as we welcome nationally recognized speaker, researcher and author Darlene Russ-Eft to kick off our ASTD Cascadia program calendar with an insightful presentation on what it takes to effectively build evaluation capacity in your organization. You will not only learn about Dr. Russ-Eft’s effective evaluation model but will also gain tips and tools for building the approach within your organization. Dr. Russ-Eft’s work is based on hundreds of internal and external evaluation projects conducted both in the US and overseas. 

This session situates evaluation within a systems framework based on the theory and practice of evaluation and organizational learning. It will present these concepts, along with a practical systems approach to evaluation. The session will then engage participants in two experiential and interactive activities that convey these concepts within an education and training setting. The session will conclude with a discussion on methods for evaluation activities within organizations.

The goals for the session are for participants to:

• Learn about a framework for teaching evaluation.
• Understand the importance of using experiential and interactive approaches when teaching evaluation.
• Experience two different activities that could be used to teach evaluation.
• Discuss interactive approaches to teaching and learning.

This will be a hands on session with tools and tips based on Dr. Russ-Eft’s recent co-authored book, Building Evaluation Capacity: 72 Activities for Teaching and Training. (co-authored with H. Preskill; Published in 2005 by Sage in Thousand Oaks, CA).

Speaker

Darlene F. Russ-Eft, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Adult Education/Community College Leadership
School of Education, Oregon State University
darlene.russeft@oregonstate.edu

Dr. Russ-Eft is a nationally recognized researcher and speaker in the training and evaluation field. Currently she teaches masters and doctoral level courses in program evaluation, research analysis, and learning theories. She is the former Director of Research Services at AchieveGlobal, Inc. and Director of Research at Zenger-Miller. In those positions, she maintained oversight and management of several hundred internal and external research and evaluation projects undertaken within the United States and in Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. Prior to those positions, she was a Senior Research Scientist at the American Institutes for Research, a non-profit research organization in the behavioral and social sciences. Her masters and doctorate are from the University of Michigan in psychology. 

Dr. Russ-Eft is the current chair of the External Evaluation Panel for the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL). She has recently consulted with the Office of National Statistics of the British government on a project to evaluate staff development efforts.

Dr Russ-Eft is the current Editor of Human Resource Development Quarterly, a refereed research journal sponsored by ASTD and AHRD. She holds positions on the editorial boards of the research journals, Human Resource Development International, Human Resource Development Review, and Advances in Human Resource Development. 

Dr. Russ-Eft is past Chair of the Research Committee of the American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) and past member of the Board of the American Evaluation Association (AEA). .She received the 1996 Editor of the Year Award from Times Mirror for her research work and the Outstanding Scholar award from the Academy of Human Resource Development (AHRD). 

In addition to her faculty position at Oregon State University, Dr. Russ-Eft is an instructor in the Evaluators’ Institute. She has conducted 80+ professional development sessions for evaluators, trainers, and graduate students. She has presented at numerous national and international conferences, including AEA, AHRD, ASTD, American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, Academy of Management, International Management Development Association, and the International Federation of Training and Development Organizations. 

Dr. Russ-Eft has published numerous research articles and co-authored several books on training, development and adult education research. Her current research interests focus on issues related to developing people within organizational settings and evaluating the effectiveness of those development efforts.

Details

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