Who's afraid of data?

Data. It can light up your eyes with excitement or make them glaze over with boredom. Run for cover or call in an expert to crunch the numbers.

At this month's Victorian Facilitators Network @Vanessa Hood and @Sharyn Cox showed us how to embrace data and harness the opportunity it offers to involve people delivering programs to take an active role in evaluating them.

They took us through some simple, practical ways to uncover the richness of the diverse programs we work on, in our organisations and with our clients. And we had fun!

We experienced how to assess the richness in stories, uncover the unintended benefits, and valuable learnings, from diverse social programs. Agreeing how to to ‘judge’ these stories and make evaluative decisions.

Effective facilitation can uncover valuable data. Turning the tables, Sharyn guided us through the ‘magic questions’ to get the data to assess the value of facilitation. What methods work best in groups, large and small, and when time is pressing.

I can’t wait to put what I learnt into practice. With my students - involving them in how to assess their own knowledge - and with clients, to uncover the richness of their stories as they rate their performance and plan for their future.