I am just back from the annual PSP conference in Washington, where I had the opportunity to attend a number of stimulating sessions. You can find the full program here. How do you evaluate the effectiveness of your programs; and when those evaluations are completed, will you make them openly available to the public? The panelists did not have an answer to this question, and they freely admitted so: their candor was admirable and engaging.
But still, I would have liked to know not just what they are doing but why. They did a good job. They are obviously people of high accomplishment who communicated with clarity and precision. The panel is not the subject here; rather, the panel is the occasion of my own reflections. We should leave the ad hominem arguments in Washington where they belong.
It seems to me that Burley had a good response to my question at hand, but she did not reach for it. As the only representative of a for-profit organization, she could have said that the evaluation of her program lay in the financial results: profitability, return on capital, trailing and forecast growth.
I think she would have gotten very good grades by these measures, but she noted instead that BMC tracks such things as the number of downloads and evidence of engagement among users. But to what end? What does the number of downloads tell us, and what is the meaning of a tweet?
Please send your answers to jospehjesposito. Wherefore open access? This is a tactical program; the rationale for the program lies elsewhere in the university. And so I continue to ask, wherefore open access? With Wilder we move fully upstream to a major source of grant funding. In response to my question, he said that he did not have an answer, but that his area, like all units of the Gates Foundation, attempts to align its activities with the overarching mission of the Foundation.
