How many ways can we evaluate a workshop?
Stronger Families Learning Exchange Bulletin No.4 Spring/Summer 2003 p.32-33
This was a question of some importance in the lead up to the Stronger Families Fund National Workshop in 2003. We asked ourselves the same questions that anyone considering an evaluation asks: What do we need to know? What is the best way to find this out? How can we make the evaluation interesting and useful?
Given that we were also trying to demonstrate evaluation methods that people could use in their own work, we also needed to ask ourselves: How many different methods can we use? What is over-evaluation? In answer to the first of these two questions, we decided that we would use five different evaluation tools over the course of the workshop. As to the second question, perhaps our workshop participants are better placed to answer that!
The following outlines the five evaluation tools we used.
SFLEX newspaper
On each day of the workshop a wall newspaper was set up on big boards and put in the foyer, which all participants passed through at many times during the day. Wall newspapers have been a popular way of communicating information as well as engaging people in writing and evaluating, and this was one of our key strategies for communicating information and inviting comment throughout the workshop.
Participants were invited to make comments and observations in the newspaper. All sessions had headings and all days were on display. In some workshops, participants volunteered to be 'reporters' and to write up their observations and reflections from that session, in order to share this information with participants who were not at the workshop but were interested to know what it was about.
The newspaper was an unstructured approach that gathered information throughout the workshop. It was noticed that groups of participants would read, write on and discuss the content of the newspaper, and often check back in throughout the day. People also spent time reading over the previous days' comments, and discussing these with each other.
Daily Star evaluation
As part of the SFLEX newspaper, we decided to give participants the opportunity to rate the sessions they attended by using gold stars for the most enjoyable sessions, blue stars for the most useful sessions, and green stars for the least useful sessions. Our aim was to provide people with a non-verbal method of rating their experience, as our other evaluation methods relied on people using written words. This evaluation method was not used extensively but did provide an easy way for people to register their responses to particular sessions.
Scrapbook
A large scrapbook was left in the foyer with a pen attached, and participants were invited to use this to record any observations and reflections that they wanted to share with others. The idea behind this was to provide an unstructured and relatively private way for people to comment on their experience of the workshop, and it was available throughout the workshop.
Over the course of the workshop 18 comments were written in the scrapbook These were mainly related to compliments to the SFLEX team and the Clearinghouse. There were also reflections from participants about their own learning through the workshop, and two topical comments about government not funding administration, and behaviour of auspice organisations. A cartoon was also drawn.
Reflection tree
A reflection (Christmas!) tree was placed in the foyer from the beginning of day two with time set aside for participants to write any reflections on some prepared cut out shapes that they could then hang on the tree. This was a public and unstructured approach, and was used to encourage people to document their reflections and thoughts from the first day of the workshop. It was then left out for people to use as they pleased, and to read comments made by others.
There were 30 comments placed on the reflection tree and most of these were from the beginning of the second day. Virtually all comments were expressive in style and positive in content. The three main themes were about being stimulated with new ideas, having the opportunity to meet with other people, and appreciation of the workshop organisation and structure.
Final evaluation form
A single-sided evaluation form was designed to gather participants' feedback about a number of issues. This was handed out at the beginning of the final day and participants were asked to complete it at any time during that day. It was structured and private, and used a combination of Likert scales and spaces for comment so that people could provide only a rating, only a comment, or both. A total of 56 forms were received from the 98 participants, a response rate of 57 per cent.
People indicated that they were generally happy with the organisational aspects of the workshop, although there were mixed feelings about the venue of the conference. Most participants expressed satisfaction with the content of the workshop sessions, and offered suggestions for next time. Several people reflected that many choices were offered throughout the program, which meant that sometimes it was difficult to choose which to attend, and that concurrent sessions meant that people were unable to attend some things. The visit to the SFLEX Clearinghouse at the Australian Institute of family Studies and other excursions were very popular. Many people enjoyed hearing about other projects, and multiple comments were received complimenting SFLEX and the Institute on the workshop.
Conclusion
We used a total of five evaluation tools throughout the workshop, and were satisfied with how participants used these tools. We felt that it was important that a range of tools was offered, as our participants were quite diverse, and we received comments that it was nice to have a few different options for making comments. People also seemed to enjoy being encouraged to reflect on their experience.
We also felt that it was important to demonstrate some tools that people could use in their own work, and people commented to us that they were looking forward to trying some of these out with people they work with.
Was it too many tools? We don't think so. It was important to give people a range of choices and ideas, which they seemed to enjoy. We also got quite different types of information from each tool, which was interesting and valuable for us.
Note: to access the comments on the Reflection tree above, see the PDF version of this article.
Katrina Bredhauer is a Senior Research Officer with the Stronger Families Learning Exchange at the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
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