So long FeedbackRA, and thanks for all the fish!

Below is a picture of myself, my business partner, and our spouses on the day we moved into our offices in April 2006. And then a picture of the people in the Feedback Offices today, for one last time (Terence is away in Rwanda on a jobbie).

Today is a little bit of a sad day for me. We’re packing up the FeedbackRA offices which have been the place where I practiced my profession for the past eight years. I'm starting at my new offices tomorrow, and it means that my relationship with FeedbackRA is one step closer to dissolving further.

The timeline:
I started the business in 2002 together with two colleagues. Our first job was a survey we did for MTN. Our first evaluation job was for the Gauteng Education Development Trust.

In 2004 I quit my fulltime job to earn my own salary at Feedback. In this year we did a nice piece of research for the Department of Science and Technology, and started expanding our CSI business base.

In 2006 we graduated to proper offices.  We appointed our first employees and embarked on a range of projects that just saw the business  grow – in terms of its focus, our skill and the turnover.

 In 2007 and 2008 we did a strategic piece of research on JIPSA, and I got to interview ministers and captains of industry. In this time I was also involved with setting up SAMEA and in 2009 I started to contribute to AFREA too.

In September 2009 I took a step back to reflect on the important things in my life. Up and ‘til 2009 I managed the business and business finances, and delivered as a key consultant, while keeping an eye on things at SAMEA and AFREA. I just couldn’t do it all any longer.

In 2010 I scaled down on my work and volunteer responsibilities, and we got Daleen involved to help us run the business. My life was much simpler after that… but it was still tough, because the business kept on growing. I did some lovely work with colleagues from Stellenbosch on a Public expenditure tracking survey… and I learnt so much from being the “junior” on the team.

In 2010 we started negotiations with a range of other high-profile consultants to see if they would like to join as business partners. We worked together on a few projects, we had a strategic planning session… everything looked good.  Our business was expanding and we decided to take up more office space. We started two big contracts which allowed us the scope to do some longer term planning, but it also opened the business up to risk… because things did not always go according to plan.

In 2011 an advertisement for the only other job I ever thought I’d consider, crossed my desk. I decided to apply, and let my business partners know. We let the conversation with the other potential business partners cool down a bit. After 6 months in limbo, I found out that I did not get the other job, but it took only 1 month for me to realise that what I’ve gained at Feedback was significant enough for me to call it quits. The stress of managing a business and a full consulting plate was just too much. I took on one too many assignments – because a colleague that I respect a lot twisted my arm.  This had bad consequences for me as an individual. I didn’t do my best work any longer.  I wanted to do things well again… I wanted to focus on things that I could do well, instead of just taking on jobs to make sure cash flow was sorted. A week after my decision, I found out I was going to be a mom. So suddenly I had another reason to reevaluate my priorities.

I sold my interest in Feedback RA in September 2011, and handed over all management responsibility to my colleagues. I worked as a consultant at FeedbackRA until April 2012, and then returned on a part time basis on selected assignments from October 2012. In this time I realised that I really preferred working on Education issues, and the area of ICT for Education became my core focus.

I continued working at Feedback until October 2013, when I decided to start my own consultancy again – Benita Williams Evaluation Consultants. I still helped out with some of the FeedbackRA work, and by January 2014 I was able to take over some of the FeedbackRA staff.

Tomorrow will be the first day in our new offices, which is quite exciting. But there is a  side of me that is really sad and nostalgic for what was.

Thanks colleagues, collaborators, clients and friends. Thanks to my family. It is the end of an era, so.... "So long, and thanks for all the fish!"

Making a serious point... With a Mini-mouse Ribbon on my head

The ICT4RED project released this video of team members sharing how their lives were affected by the project (Follow Mobilina Cofimvaba's channel on Youtube for more videos about the project). In the video I share how I was motivated to use Twitter as professional learning tool.



For some reason the M&E people got associated with being mice. Maybe because we snoop around everywhere, maybe because we need big ears to listen, maybe because our job involves us being quiet... (Though I haven't managed being quiet yet...) So for the tablet fun day on 2 November I donned a mini-mouse ribbon to man the M&E Mouse station.

Twitter as professional development tool

I was one of the earlyish adopters of Twitter. In 2008 however, I couldn't see the point of maintaining a Facebook profile and a Twitter profile just to keep my friends and family updated about goings on. Very few of my friends were on Twitter so it was hard finding a reason to check in... Since I wasn't into the Kardashians' and Hiltons' business,Twitter just did not have what I wanted. So my account became dormant.

In 2013 however, I started evaluating a tech for education initiative. Maggie Verster @maggiev showed me how teachers could use Twitter to develop their own personal learning network. Here  is a nice summary. Finally I could see a use for it.

http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/08/10-reasons-why-teachers-use-twitter-as.html

Now Twitter is my professional social networking tool and Facebook is kept for personal networking. I use Twitter in a general sense

*To find newspaper articles I'm interested in. All the big newspapers post links to top stories to twitter which links to their online sites. Mail and Guardian is one publication that I follow at @mailandguardian
*To check traffic between johannesburg and pretoria on the @itrafficGP handle whenever I tavel
*To get a sense of public sentiment on major news stories #RipNelsonMandela was quick to trend once the news broke. I was also amused by the #underdog story

But the real value is in the professional applications of Twitter. It helps me to find relevant content and people and to share my own content and interests with others. I have used Twitter:

*To find interesting blog posts by other evaluators and development players @BetterEval for example post snippets from their blog onto Twitter. So does the @Worldbank, @DGMurrayTrust  @Tshikululu and @RockefellerFDN
*To find information about education and evaluation events. This year I followed the American Evaluation Association's #eval13 conference from afar, and Bridge @BridgeProjectSA is very good with keeping a running commentary going on twitter for their education events
*To publicise my own blog content to potential users. My handle @benitaW sometimes carry links to www.mandeblog.blogspot.com
*To share interesting reading with other people. Twitter is probably not the best content curation tool, but its easy to find an article you've read and shared if you need to. It also helps to show other colleagues what your thinking is influenced by. They may suggest content on other or similar viewpoints... in essence allowing a little debate to take place, and extending your horizons a bit

 *To express opinion about published content. @DBE_SA ocassionally puts out very good and very nonsensical content that I just *have to* respond to.
*To maintain a back channel of communication at events. At the #SAMEA 2013 conference there was quite a vibe going on Twitter between persons attending the conference (@aidencholes @SouthernHemis @mmarais). At the #ICT4RED #tabletfunday I helped someone find their lost cellphone via twitter.
*To live tweet events. I kept up a running commentary of the #Samea 2013 conference sessions I attended. This helped me to keep a record of important points, and provided other members of the international evaluation community (e.g. @txtPablo @guijti @patriciajrogers) with a sense of important news.
*To find other like minded professionals. I started following @aidencholes because he is linked to the narrative lab and they also look at narrative methods... the topic of a recent conference paper. At the Samea conference we finally met face to face and we already had lots to talk about. @louisevanrhyn also works with schools
*To figure out who the movers and shakers are in other fields that I'm interested in. Dave Snowden @snowded is a systems thinker whose work I started following as a result of Twitter.

So if you are ready to take the plunge, here is a ten day twitter challenge that Sean Cole @seanhcole created for South African teachers. It applies well to evaluators too. Give it a bash!

Evaluators (#eval #evaluation) that I follow:
@patriciajrogers
@clysy
@John_Gargani
@ejanedavidson
@AnnKEmery
@txtPablo
@chiyanlam
@evalu8r
@EvaluationMaven
@sukist
@guijti


Evaluators from South Africa
@Duganf
@SouthernHemis
@aidencholes
@mmarais
@alfredeinstein
@developmentWorx

Orgnizations involved in Evaluation
@EvalPartners
@aeaweb
@BetterEval
@CDIwageningenUR
@JPAL_Global
@gatesfoundation
@Worldbank
@DGMurrayTrust
@RockefellerFDN

ICT4RED Learning Workshop

I'm contributing to the evaluation of the ICT4RED (Information Communication Technology for Rural Education Development) initiative - A very ambitious project that rolls out teacher professional development to enable teachers and learners to use 21st century methods and tablet computers in rural schools in Cofimvaba in the Eastern Cape. More information about the project here and here.

We decided to use a developmental evaluation approach - I'm practically embedded in the organization that's responsible for implementing the project. I'm finding that this is a wonderful opportunity to influence what happens... But because this project is so different from the many failed technology projects that I've evaluated before, I sometimes wonder whether I am "objective" enough to add actual value.

We organised the M&E team's work into four categories -

• Monitoring - Measuring progress made on outputs, facilitating ocassional debrief meetings with team members, reflecting on abundant data from various social media streams and participating in weekly project management meetings
• Evaluation - Measuring the success after various implementation phases - incorporating some self-evaluation workshops, and other more standard evaluation measures including ethnograpic descriptions, baseline and follow up surveys, and a small scale RCT and tracer study
• Learning - Asking team members to ocassionally reflect on what theyve learnt - from successes or failures
• Model Development - Developing a modular theory of action underpinned by a theory of change that can be used to support scale up and replication. 

 Yesterday we held a "learning workshop" where team members had to reflect on what they've learnt.
Our first template for the learning briefs asked for the following information:

Project Name
    Give the project name here
Submitted by
    Give the name and component name
Date
    Give the date on which you submit the learning brief
What was the learning?
    Please describe the learning that occurred
Learning brief type
    Indicate which of the following three is applicable and provide a short description
    •    Learning from failure during implementation
    •    Learning from implementation success
    •    Learning from review of previous research and practice (i.e. not practically tested yet)
The Context
    Say something about the context of the learning / project context, add relevant pictures if they are available
Why is this learning important?
    Please describe why this learning is important
Evidence Base
    Please indicate what the evidence base is for this learning brief, if possible, provide references that may help the reader track down the evidence base.
Recommendations for future similar projects
    Please provide your recommendations in a list wise form. If possible add pictures, graphs or diagrams
Recommendations that should be taken into account by the current project
    Please indicate which of the above recommendations should be taken into account for the current project

My colleagues, who are great at packaging information, asked that we focus the learning presentations on
& What we designed
? What we learnt
# What we're doing now
! Advice for Policy and practice



This made for quite nice presentations. We'll probably adapt our learning brief templates accordingly.

Monitoring and Evaluation framework and design for SAESC - July 2013

In July 2013, I did a presentation on the M&E framework I helped to develop for the South African Extraordinary Schools Coalition.

Better Evaluation, OECD DAC Evaluation criteria, and Michael Quinn Patton's Developmental Evaluation all featured in there.