Emergent Learning

As evaluators, we think a lot about learning. Good learning is key to getting evaluation findings used in a way that improves decisions and increases impact. And good learning can also happen when there is no evaluation, using evidence from practice. But good learning is hard to do. This session will explore one approach to creating powerful learning conversations that produce actionable insights people can actually use in their work. We will take a tour of a specific learning practice – Emergent Learning (EL) – and you’ll discover some powerful tools you can use immediately. These tools scale in infinite ways – use them to reflect on a program activity, unpack insights about a big strategy, or explore ways to navigate an upcoming organizational change…or pretty much anything else. We’ll explore how a learning practice can complement evaluation work, and how it can happen in evidence-informed ways when there is no evaluation. Join us to discover insights and tools that can help you create a powerful learning practice!
Presenter:
Kelci Price, Ph.D., Senior Director Learning & Evaluation at The Colorado Health Foundation, has over 17 years of experience as an evaluator. Her interest lies in innovative approaches to evaluative practice, learning, systems-thinking, complexity, and strategy development. In her role leading the Foundation’s approach to learning and evaluation, she wrestles daily with issues of how to craft strategy to deal with complex challenges, and how to assess the impact of those strategies in communities. She lives in a space of constructive dissatisfaction with the ability of existing evaluation and learning practices to actually help us solve social problems, so is constantly questioning and innovating the Foundation’s practices in order to develop better ways of employing evaluative and learning practice to meet the challenge of solving problems within complex adaptive systems. Her focus is on shifting the paradigm around how we engage in evaluation, learning, and strategy in service of a more just society. In recent years she’s been deeply engaged in discovering how to center equity in the Foundation’s evaluation and learning work.