Guest Speaker session - Planning your end of session questionnaire

Having just posted my thoughts on evaluation forms to be used for my upcoming Guest Speaker session I could not park this topic and started to consider other elements of the evaluation other than just the format, the question types and some of the questions I would used.

I decided to take a step back and reflect on that last post and here are some of my thoughts regarding end of session evaluations , which may even be questions you should be posing yourself before you embark on creating your own evaluation forms for you own online sessions or interventions. 

• Why are you doing an end of session evaluation?
• Who will use the information and how will this information be used? 
• What specific questions will you ask?
• What should it look like ? Format and design
• Who will proof-read your evaluation before you distribute it?
• When and how will you distribute the evaluation form/questionnaire?
• How will you manage and analyze the data you have collected?
• What will you do with these results? 

This seems to be turning into consideration list or guideline, which anybody could work through before they embark on creating any type of evaluation and I had never really take then time to consider any of the above in much detail. The next question I posed myself is what else do I need to consider?   The following sprang to mind: 

• It must be easy to complete 
• I should always think about the audience
• Group questions together 
• Think about the length of the form  -  you will see in the examples I shared in my previous post that some of them are short and some can be quite lengthy 
• It's all about anonymity
• Provide a time frame for the participants to complete the evaluation 

This list of consideration could continue to grow, although what I hope to achieve is to collect REACTIONS! These could be reactions to several aspects of the Guest Speaker sessions and not to provide an exhaustive list I would like to received reactions to : 

• Content and Information provided 
• Materials shared 
• Activities 

As well as reactions to: 

• Pre-session information 
• Communication 
• Length, time 

When embarking on this project I did not envisage that I would take the time to consider these elements in so much detail, but it is clearly such an important aspect of the success of any intervention online and considering my chosen topic of Online Peer mentoring, where evaluating the success of the programme is crucial to its continuation.