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cplysy

Jun 01 2022

Ask Nicole: Pros & Cons of Naming Your Business After Yourself

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know. Today marks 6 years since leaving my employer to run my business full time. While I no longer talk about the ins and outs of running a business anymore, today is an exception. Six years ago, I was more excited, more hopeful, less secure in whether […]

The post Ask Nicole: Pros & Cons of Naming Your Business After Yourself appeared first on Nicole Clark Consulting.

Written by cplysy · Categorized: nicoleclark

May 31 2022

When the data speaks for itself

When the data speaks for itself

(I’m back! Let’s just say that working from home full-time with an infant and no childcare is not for the faint of heart. I’m hoping to share with you more regularly throughout the summer and beyond.)

As I’m sure has been the case with you, the past few weeks have weighed heavily on my heart. 

With the news of the racially motivated slaughter of Black Americans at a grocery store in Buffalo and then the shooting rampage at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, I have felt a range of emotions.

I remember doing active shooter drills with elementary school students at the last school where I worked — both as a precaution and also when we thought there was an intruder in the building. Thankfully, nothing happened, but as we saw this week (and so many times before), we might not have been so lucky. 

I’m also thinking about my young daughter and the world we’ve brought her into. 

I’m sad for the victims and their families, enraged at our country for being the only developed country to continue to have mass shootings and do nothing about it, and I’m fearful for what might come without action on the part of our government.

But my feelings really don’t matter. This isn’t a political blog. This is, however, a prime example, of how some data tells quite the story without us having to do much to it. 

Every Town for Gun Safety is skillful at letting this truly horrifying data stand on its own.

Take, for example, their interactive map of all of the mass shootings in this country in the past 13 years (274 of them). 


Interactive map of all mass shootings in the US from 2009 to 2022

It takes only a glance to see that:

  1. There are far too many red dots on this map,
  2. There have been some particularly catastrophic shootings in the past decade, and
  3. Some parts of our country have been especially impacted by brutal gun violence. Texas alone has had 30 of these 274 mass shootings (11%).

Every Town does a great job of data visualization, as seen in the graph below, but sometimes, all it takes is focusing on a single statistic to drive the point home. 


1 in 4 mass shooting victimes were children and teens


Stacked bar graph showing the number of mass shooting casualties since 2009

I truly believe that their use of data is helping spread their message in a clear and concise way, at a time when that is more crucial than ever. 

Think about your organization’s message and the key data points that are important for you to share. 

Which data points tell your story for themselves?

This week, I’ll be presenting at the 2022 National Community Schools And Family Engagement Conference (CSxFE) with my clients from Greeley-Evans District 6 in Colorado.

 They are doing a GREAT job of using their data to make change for students and families in their district (more on that in a future post!).  

If you’ll be at the conference, we’d love to have you at our session, Using Data to Build a Culturally Responsive District Equity Strategy. 

Written by cplysy · Categorized: engagewithdata

May 31 2022

Carrying an Equitable Innovation Network Forward

Photo by Dom J

This blog post is part of a series of posts about Innovation Network’s transformation towards equity.

The work of equity starts with our own internal work, and by now you have read about our transformation towards equity and new values that center social justice. Though many of the individuals who helped to shape our transformation have moved on to other opportunities, we are committed to carrying forward our collective lessons and vision for equity.

This work has been personal, forcing us to confront our perceptions of ourselves and the way we engage with each other. We have also seen the power of transparent decision making, trust, and a human-centered approach on our practice and our relationships to one another.

We are making structural changes to our organization that embed equity, and allow future generations of Innovation Network team members to shape it by:

  1. Participating in externally- and internally- facilitated authentic conversations, such as healing circles facilitated by Dr. Wenimo Okoya. These experiences provided a model for how we engage with each other as colleagues, and most importantly as human-beings. While relationships, including working ones, require ongoing care, healing circles resulted in a deeper sense of trust, transparency, and connection amongst our team.
  2. Intentionally shifting our culture toward distributed leadership and transparent decision-making. This framework grounds our commitment to disengaging harmful power dynamics and centers the needs of every person, regardless of experience or role, within our organization. This can be seen in our commitment to holding weekly full team decision making conversations that range from making decisions about time-tracking software to equitable salary policies.
  3. Learning about some of the deep work that is required to become activists for equity through evaluation and learning. Doing this work internally has allowed us to engage more authentically with our clients and realize what it takes to deconstruct power structures that are inherent in our projects. A future blog post will focus on how we are embedding equity in our day-to-day learning and evaluation work.

As we broaden our team, new staff are invited to join an organization where they can be themselves while taking an active role in molding the organization according to their collective beliefs; and furthering equity outside of the borders of our organization through our projects and initiatives.

We know there is much work still to do. As we look forward to the future of our organization, we are excited to experiment with ways to engage one another as contributors to a new more equitable way of working and learning. We believe that this is only possible because of those in the field who have been leading by example and sharing their experiences. We are grateful for their guidance and expertise. Following in their footsteps, we invite you to join us as collaborators and welcome your feedback as we experiment and create opportunities to learn together about how to create new equitable structures that start with us.


Carrying an Equitable Innovation Network Forward was originally published in InnovationNetwork on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Written by cplysy · Categorized: innovationnet

May 25 2022

How to create logic models and theory of change using MURAL [Guest post by Anne Heberger Marino]

Today’s post was written by Anne Heberger Marino who is the founder of Lean-To Collaborations. You can learn more about Anne’s work by visiting her website or by following her on Twitter (@LeanToCollabs).

When Chris shared his Canva redesigns of a logic model and theory of change, it didn’t take much for me to agree it would be interesting (and possibly instructive) to recreate them in MURAL.

I am a BIG fan of MURAL. A crazy amount of my world and work winds up in MURAL.  MURAL has become the place where I think, plan, dream, and run collaborative workshops for my business.

Though I don’t work on many evaluation projects these days, evaluation is still my professional home.  

A screenshot of Anne’s Logic Model & Theory of Change MURAL adaptation, you’ll find the template link at the bottom of this post.

In today’s guest post, I’ll walk you through how I re-created Chris’s Canva redesigns of a Logic Model and Theory of Change in MURAL.  If this is a new tool for you, don’t worry. I’m assuming zero familiarity with MURAL.  The plan is to look at:

Creating and adapting a standard logic model in MURAL

  • Creating and adopting a theory of change in MURAL
  • A few MURAL-specific features to try in your logic models & TOCs
  • Additional ideas for how evaluators might use MURAL in your practice.

You can think of MURAL  as an online version of the whiteboard in your office or classroom.  You can use MURAL alone or with hundreds of collaborators. If you’ve used Jamboard, Miro, or Zoom’s whiteboard feature, you’ll be familiar with some of the features and use cases for MURAL.

Recreating the Logic Model using MURAL – Version 1

Looking at a standard logic model through the MURAL lens, it’s made of up 3 x5 sticky notes, 3 x3 sticky notes, and arrows.   The process I was to make all the sticky notes, line them up, connect the arrows, and add labels.

It only takes seconds to create a sticky note formatted with a box around it.

Screenshot of Adding Sticky Notes inside MURAL

Now that the sticky note looks the way I want it, single-clicking on that sticky lets me add text.  MURAL will automatically shrink the text to make it fit in the sticky note so don’t go overboard.  Double-clicking near the sticky note I just made creates another sticky with the same formatting.  Great time-saver! The align tool gets all the boxes looking orderly.

Screenshot of aligning sticky notes inside MURAL

The arrows and connecting lines are a bit fiddly to get juuust right, but I expect that when adding lines and arrows to things.  The align tool is helpful here, as are the guidelines that show up automatically.

In less than 15 minutes I was able to recreate the W.K. Kellogg logic model.  In the lower right I added stickies with links to the original model and Chris’s freshspectrum post.

Screenshot of Anne’s adaptation of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model

If you look closely at the template version, you’ll see a light gray line around this model.  That’s because the model is within what MURAL calls an “area”.   The individual pieces of the model are part of one area, so I can copy the whole thing to create Version 2.

Almost magic, right?

Logic Model Versions 2 and 3: Gray boxes, Pastel Boxes

Here’s the process for Version 2:

  1. Duplicate Version 1
  2. Align the new model with the first
  3. Select all the sticky note boxes
  4. Change the formatting on the boxes

For Version 3, follow steps 1-4 and then change the color of the headers to match the boxes.

It took less than 2 minutes to go from Version 1 to Version 2 and Version 2 to Version 3.

Version 3 uses default colors already part of the MURAL color palette.  Using an eyedropper tool would have made it easy to precisely color match Chris’s design or a client’s branding.

Screenshot of Anne’s MURAL – W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Version 2
Screenshot of Anne’s MURAL – W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Version 3

Version 4: Adding Images to the Logic Model

I couldn’t perfectly replicate Chris’s results using a photo background for the logic model. 

MURAL comes with an extensive album of photos that you can crop, turn, and adjust to whatever size you need.  Every image I tried felt like it was competing with the model rather than adding value.  This is how I feel about most photo backgrounds in MURAL.  It’s a personal preference. 

You can upload your own photos to MURAL. And I’ve done that when I want to brand a workshop for a client.  In this case, I decided to stick with “out of the box” content from MURAL. It would have felt like cheating to use one of my own photos or design one that fit my needs.

Eventually, I found an image that fit with the content of the logic model.  I used an eyedropper tool to match the background to the “hospital scrub green” in the image.   Part of why I chose this picture was the pure horribleness of the color.  Consider this a reminder to make your color and design choices carefully. 

Screenshot of Anne’s MURAL – W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Version 4

Version 5: Experimenting with Tags

In this screenshot, you can see that I started off replicating the labels Chis used in his model using MURAL tags.  It would have been possible to recreate those labels, but I wanted a way to demonstrate the power of tags.

Screenshot of Anne’s MURAL – W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Version 2, adding tags.

The tag feature allows you to add words and an icon to a sticky note.  They allow you to convey more information on a sticky note without taking up much space or diverting too much attention to the main text.   I’m curious what Chris thinks about this feature from a design standpoint.

[Note from Chris: I like it. One of the biggest issues evaluators run into when creating models is the desire to add way more text to a box than can actually fit. Tags give you another way to incorporate additional context without adding a lot more text.]

What might that offer to an evaluation logic model?  We could indicate partners that are involved in the program’s activities.  We could use icons corresponding to different data collection methods and when those will occur. You might use tags to indicate the status or progress connected with an outcome. 

Screenshot of Anne’s MURAL – W. K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Version 2 with Tags
  • I imagined an evaluator adding methods and timing to the logic model.
  • Under A1, there is a tag and icon showing indicating there will be a survey in Year 1 and Year 3 to assess this activity (see legend at the lower right).
  • There are also tags for who might be involved in these activities.  You’ll see tags for the Coalition Team, Medical Network, and Partnerships.
  • Each tag can be given a label, color, and icon.  
  • We could communicate what’s been done (and what’s left to do) by greying out the tag color as work progresses
  • Tags can only be added to sticky notes.  They won’t work on shapes like the ones used in Models 7-10.  

There may be no end to the creative ways evaluators could find to use tags in MURAL. What would you use them for?

Model 6 & Model 10

These are blank versions of the models.

Recreating the Theory of Change using MURAL- (Image 7)

Looking at the theory of change I can see it is best recreated by using shapes in MURAL.  We need several of the same size rectangle, several ovals, one long and skinny rectangle, and some arrows.

To create shapes with text, follow these steps:

  1. Create and format the shape you need.
  2. Add text. (You can change the font)
  3. Adjust the elements so that the shape surrounds the text, and the text is readable.
Screenshot of the NCVO Example Theory of Change created using MURAL

You may need to experiment to find a shape/text combination that will accommodate all the pieces of the model.  It may help to create the wordiest element first.  If your shape/text combo looks good for that element, it will work for the others.

Adding Icons & Images to the Theory of Change (Models 8 & 9)

For Model 8, I used MURAL’s icon library to find simple images corresponding to the program’s outputs.  I kept all the icons the same color for a simple look.  Model 9 uses the image library and a bit of cropping to put “real people” in the model.  Since the photos all had distinct color profiles, I used pastel text boxes to unify each level of the model.

Screenshot of NCVO Example Theory of Change created using MURAL with icons and pictures.

Ways to Share your Models

There are several ways you can share models made in MURAL. 

  1. Invite people to the mural itself.  If you’re using this option, be sure to “lock” areas unless you want people to be able to move things around. Viewers can leave comments for you in the mural. 
  2. Download and share. You can download an entire mural board or sections of one as a PDF or png image.  It’s also possible to download HTML and data in a zip file. 
  3. Share your mural as a template. When you publish a mural as a template, others can use and adapt your designs to suit their needs and your original mural remains unchanged.  (That’s what I did with this set of models.) 

Other ways to use MURAL for evaluation

  • MURAL is a very flexible tool, making it well suited for diverse evaluation contexts.  Here are a few other ways you might use MURAL in your evaluation work.  I’m sure you have others.
  • Use an existing logic model as the background for an entire mural board, giving you a large workspace for a stakeholder engagement workshop.
  • Put the building blocks of your evaluation (inputs, activities, outputs, intended users, evaluation questions, methods, and outcomes) into a mural and invite stakeholders to build a representation of your evaluation plan.
  • Create different versions of the same theory of change (linear, circular, etc.) and host a “gallery walk” to get feedback on the designs.
  • Make a “home base” for evaluation in MURAL.  Store links to your models, reports, explainer videos, meeting notes, and cartoons so everyone can access the information they need when they need it.
  • Take the identifiable information out of your logic model or theory of change and share it as a template with the MURAL community.

Want to play with these designs in MURAL?

You can get a copy of the template of all the models here if you already MURAL account or want to register for one. (It’s free, there’s no catch, and this is NOT an affiliate link.)

And if you end up creating something using these templates, please do share it with me in the comments!  I’m happy to answer your questions about MURAL too.

Written by cplysy · Categorized: freshspectrum

May 21 2022

Comment on Evaluation is Not Applied Research by Quinn Mitchell

Dr. Wazer,

Thank you for your blog and for your interview with Dr. Pann on YouTube regarding your research; I found it very interesting. I am also a grad student at ASU studying Learning Design and Technology. Like Kerry, I found the hourglass illustration very helpful in distinguishing the very real differences between research and evaluation. While the methods of analysis may be the same, the purpose and outcomes are different. I appreciate your distinction concerning value judgments. In my last evaluation course, we discussed the ethics regarding evaluation and the importance of transparency. While evaluation has very real commercial applications, the research you describe seems to be purely academic. How might the differences between evaluation and research change when research is more commercial in nature? How does research change if there are stakeholders involved?

Thank you, Quinn

Written by cplysy · Categorized: danawanzer

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