This week marks the first week of Spring, and the buzz of renewal is in the air. Spring is the official name of the season, but GEAR UP members may call this time of year’ APR season.’ It also indicates a renewal, moving from the close examination of last year’s grant performance and looking toward…
The Prove Team at NCCEP hosted the first Research Symposium during the 2023 Capacity Building Workshop which provided a space to highlight qualitative and quantitative evaluation studies specific to GEAR UP goals, objectives, services, and outcomes. Xcalibur participated in the Research Symposium and presented with GEAR UP Georgia during the session focused on quantitative studies.…
Grant work can be exceptionally rewarding because it presents an opportunity to make an impact on communities. In the world of GEAR UP, grants are making an impact on students and their families, by supporting students to graduate high school and prepared to enter and succeed in postsecondary education. Funding for state and partnership GEAR…
As part of Xcalibur’s participatory evaluation approach, Xcalibur staff conduct biannual evaluation retreats with our evaluation clients. The goal is to bring together grant team members to review their grant’s vision, reflect on their work, assess progress, and plan for future work. Retreats eliminate the everyday interruptions of the usual daily work setting and create…
The past few months have been exciting! Xcalibur staff have been traveling and engaging in discussions with high school students, college students, parents, educators, and GEAR UP staff about their GEAR UP experiences. In addition to collecting data for the Annual Performance Report (APR), many GEAR UP grants have accompanying evaluation questions for which quantitative…
Among the many questions to ask yourself when designing an evaluation is, what type of an evaluation should we do? One unique and insightful form of evaluation is participatory evaluation. Xcalibur almost exclusively offers participatory evaluation to grants. Why so? We find it provides the highest extent of evaluation impact for grants. Using participatory evaluation…
Do you find yourself making decisions based on your gut instincts again and again? Do your initiatives seem to falter rather than gain traction? If so, then it may be time for a tune up of your evaluative thinking. Evaluative thinking is critical thinking applied to the context of evaluation. It is the heart of…
As part of the 2017 GEAR UP Annual Conference in San Francisco, Xcalibur team members Julie Jaramillo and Tricia Brainard partnered with Becky Young from GEAR UP Maine to challenge participants to Think Beyond the Pie Chart. The group developed the Five C’s to See Your Data as a way to create effective…
Xcalibur’s Director of Data Quality, Julie Jaramillo, traveled to Bangor, Maine for the GEAR UP Maine Data Steward Training. The team met to discuss SCRIBE Reports, Service Naming Conventions, the GEAR UP Maine Service Taxonomy, and learn about the 5 C’s for Visualizing Data. In the picture above, GEAR UP Maine Data Stewards work on…
On June 21, members of the Xcalibur team traveled to Atlanta to conduct training with GEAR UP Georgia team members. The training covered two main topics: SCRIBE Service Data and Introduction to GEAR UP Evaluation. The Xcalibur team introduced the Service Naming Protocol to the GUGa team by playing a competitive round of Service Naming…