The Improved Insights team recaps highlights of 2024, looks ahead to 2025, and provides some STEM activity recommendations for the holiday season.

Dr. Sarah Dunifon discusses who is currently guiding evaluation policy frameworks in the United States.

Emily Neill, Evaluation Assistant at Improved Insights, shares resources for evaluation project management.

Emily Neill, Evaluation Assistant at Improved Insights, shares the value of a detail-oriented mindset in evaluation practices.

Improved Insights introduces Dr. Sarah Dunifon’s dissertation, An Examination of Evaluation Policies and Funding Priorities in Informal STEM Education

This week Sarah discusses the EvalULand podcast.

Welcome back to our Insights! In 2024, we will be sharing a series of helpful tools, resources, and deep dives that focus on informal STEM education (ISE). These will include websites, podcasts, research briefs, news on emerging technologies in the ISE space, and other items that we think you’ll find valuable.

With January well underway, many organizations are taking stock of their current practices and developing strategies to enhance their performance in the coming year. Here, we outline three attainable resolutions to begin the process of improving your evaluation practices.

Improved Insights celebrates 5 years in business by reflecting on 2023, and looking forward to opportunities in 2024.

This month Improved Insights invites Carol Martincic, MNO, to reflect on how organizations can align their storytelling efforts with funder priorities, and the role that evaluation has to play in communications strategies.

This month we examine the differences in formal vs. informal evaluation practices.

This post (part two of two) talks about all the different considerations that go into effective survey or questionnaire design.

This post (part one of two) talks about all the different considerations that go into effective survey or questionnaire design.

This post talks about evaluation policy: what it is and why it is important to informal STEM education.

This post talks about investing in evaluation: the importance, how much to spend, and how to decide what to focus your efforts on.

In this article, we’ll explore the Equitable Evaluation Framework™ (EEF) and how it helps to center equity in evaluation practices.

In this article, we’ll explore who deficit thinking impacts the most, how deficit thinking plays out in formal and informal education, and how we - as educators and evaluators - can avoid it in order to impart greater equity and justice in our work.

This blog post does a deep dive into the concept of 21st century skills, including what this concept is, how it might be incorporated into your program outcomes, and how evaluators think about assessing it.

This blog post does a deep dive into the concept of STEM engagement, including what this concept is, how it might be incorporated into your program outcomes, and how evaluators think about assessing it.

This blog post discusses science communication and its intersection with informal STEM education and evaluation.