These two examples of evaluation forms puzzled me. They were filled out after one of my CPD courses.
Example No. 1
Example No. 2
At first I was ‘in the huff’ at the comments left by the person who filled out the example no. 1 evaluation. This person was just ‘fairly satisfied’ with my efforts to persuade her that what I was saying was relevant to her needs, and all the effort I had put in to the preparation of the course was just ’fairly satisfactory’.
In contrast, I loved the comments left in evaluation no. 2!
This person had obviously appreciated all the work I had done – and had left the session with lots of ideas ready to be put in to practice.
It’s interesting, however, that the person who filled out the no. 1 evaluation sheet is the one who has been emailing me with questions about how she can take things further in her own situation. She appears to reflect on responses .. and then asks more questions.
So who actually did get more out of the course? And what should I (and others who I need to pass these evaluation sheets on to) take from the ticked boxes?
Was ‘evaluation no.2′ person just being polite? …… And was ‘evaluation no. 1′ person listening – but thirsty for more? Should I re-design the course content of my CPD presentations as a result of evaluation sheets… or should I re-evaluate the way I look at these feedback forms?
I’m not sure – but in writing this post I’ve been forced in to thinking about all this.
I blame Jaye and her twitter comment for making my head hurt thinking about it all 
Meanwhile …… below is a recent presentation I prepared on Powerpoint …. and here’s a link to the same presentation using prezi http://prezi.com/12821/
I need to think about writing another blog to reflect on this, too? – don’t tell Jaye – she’ll have my head hurting again ;-)
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Love the Prezi!! I need to start thinking about we can get kids blogging in Secondary School. The major stumbling block for me is time – hopefully that will change with aCfE?
On the subject of evaluation forms, very interesting. I find myself that if I’m indifferent about the training I will be polite, tick the very satisfied boxes and get the h*ll out of there. However, if I’ve really engaged with the training I will mull over each question and give it an accurate (and probably lower) score.
When I used to deliver more training I found that using post its was much more effective to get real feedback. I’d have a few pieces of flipchart paper and ask the participants to write things on post it notes along the lines of “what did you find most useful?”, “what could have been improved?” and “what would you like from the next session?”. Although this doesn’t give you nice data which can be added up, averaged, percentagised, pie charted and passed up to the overlords. However, I think it gives much more accurate and useful feedback.
Thanks for the comment, Fearghal.
Very thought provoking! I love the idea of the post it notes. I’ve used them when I’ve attended courses in the past, but hadn’t thought of using them on my own courses alongside the official forms. There are spaces for comments on the evaluation sheets we use, but the headings might not necessarily be appropriate for every course.
I’m definately going to introduce this idea. I’m already thinking of headings I’d like to use – I’ll let you know how it goes!
Glad you liked the Prezi – took me a while to get the hang of it! Im looking forward to playing around some more to see what’s possible.
For some reason the Prezi just displays as a blank page on my home PC, both in Firefox and IE. Is it me?
I’m not at all surprised by the apparent paradox in your “happy sheet” feedback. Although the basic idea is a good one, there’s something intrinsically wrong with asking attendees how satisfied they were. Unless we know what it was that satisfied them, or why they weren’t satisfied, we can’t be in much of a position to do anything systematic to improve things. If people sense that all we want are stats, for use as Fearghal describes, then they’ll just see the form as part of the bureaucracy of training courses, and get it out of the way as quickly as possible. Have you ever noticed that if you don’t have happy sheets, for any reason, no one ever asks for them?
Our LA forms have plenty of spaces for free text responses, and it’s these which I find most useful. They can be fascinating too – sometimes they’ll ask for further info on completely unrelated topics, but they’re a gold mine of new leads and people really appreciate it if you follow them up.
Thanks for the comment, David.
The Prezi opens up both at home and at work …. strange??
I know what you mean about people not asking for sheets if I have none. It has happened twice when I visiting staff in their own school. On each ocassion I forgot to hand out the sheets, so went back to the staffroom and handed them out there. I asked if they could be returned to me via the internal mail system … I’m still waiting! I also sense that people try to ‘escape’ at the end of a CPD session, and I find myself guarding the door so that I can check if they’ve actually filled in a sheet
There is some space for written comments – but the same 3 questions appear on each sheet, so reflection on the course is restricted, I suppose. Also, it’s only the ‘tick box’ information that gets entered into any stats forms.
On one ocassion, I emailed everyone who’d attended a course on blogging. The internet connection was ‘dead slow and stop’ that evening, and the evaluation sheets reflected the frustrations they’d felt trying to set up a class blog under those circumstances. People were grateful for the extra help offering follow-up input at a suitable time for them. It was a bit annoying that anyone looking at the tick sheets info wouldn’t have known the reasoning behind the evaluation ‘ticky’ choices.