PDF Slides of Thursday, November 9 3:15 session at #Eval17Session Abstract: Training program staff about what quality means and what high program quality looks like is an important first step towards improving program quality. This presentation explores how vignettes—short stories about hypothetical characters in specific circumstances—can be useful for teaching program staff how to think about program quality and, for organizations with high evaluation capacity, learn how to conduct observations prior to going out “into the field.” Through our work, we used this activity across three different groups of people (two afterschool programs and one group of budding evaluators); their usefulness for teaching them what program quality looks like and preparing them for conducting observations will be discussed. Implications of using vignettes to promote evaluative thinking in organizations and as a strategy to promote continuous quality improvement will be discussed.