Not your typical meeting — leveraging facilitation techniques to maximize evaluation use

As evaluators, facilitation is crucial during all phases of the evaluation process. Meeting-facilitation skills allow evaluators to maximize the limited time they have with program staff and other intended users. More importantly, effective meeting facilitation can encourage program staff to be engaged in the evaluation process and allow opportunities for intended users to engage and contribute meaningfully to the evaluation purpose, design, implementation, and reporting. This session will share facilitation strategies, activities, and tools that have been used to engage program staff in evaluating public health fellowship and training programs. We will share examples about facilitating routine evaluation-focused meetings with CDC’s Epidemiology Elective Program to promote collaborative evaluation planning and discussion on evaluation priorities and activities. We will highlight how evaluators have strategically facilitated evaluation meetings using slide deck evaluation reports to improve staff engagement and use of findings. We will also discuss how effective meeting facilitation can support program staff who have different levels of experience with evaluation. Attendees will learn facilitation techniques and best practices to incorporate in their next evaluation-focused meeting.