ABOUT
Founder and Director
Carey Tisdal founded Tisdal Consulting in 2004 to offer evaluation, research, and planning services to the informal learning community. To this she brings over 25 years of experience as an evaluator and instructional developer. She has special interests in exhibit evaluation, technology facilitated learning, youth programs, social learning in groups (family, adult, and youth), and experiences that welcome people with disabilities and from diverse ethnicities. Located in St. Louis, Missouri, Tisdal Consulting serves clients nation-wide. Carey Tisdal's resume is available for download.
Engage, Enlighten, and Empower
Engage, enlighten, and empower describes how Tisdal Consulting works with clients. The purpose of evaluation is to provide information that helps clients make good decisions and judgments. Evaluation is focused on action. This means that evaluation requires a thorough understanding of the context in which decisions and judgments are made.
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Engage. Early in the process, we engage clients and a broad range of stakeholders in identifying study questions, explaining how they see an experience working to produce outcomes, and clarifying their issues and concerns.
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Enlighten. Based on this firm foundation, we design data collection and interpretation of information that enlightens decision makers' thinking from multiple perspectives and information sources. When requested, we include evaluation capacity building as part of the project plan, offering workshops and hands-on experience to develop evaluation skills within the institution.
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Empower. Clients are also involved in the interpretation stage. We offer including oral presentations and discussions to help translate evaluation findings into specific action. Ultimately, we aim to empower people to make good decisions about changes to a project and to make sound judgments about the level and nature of impacts.