Today I had the pleasure of attending TLT’s Assessment Symposium for 2015.

I am a technology trainer, what does assessment have to do with me?

Assessment is about collecting data and using it to strengthen our programs.  And Michael Heel points out that “as budgets tighten, ‘assessment for accountability’ becomes a big deal.”  We can use assessment data to make strategic choices for future programs. Interestingly, Middle States says that “assessment results cannot reasonably be used for hiring, promotion, and tenure.” We assess for improvement as teaching and learning is an ever evolving process where the bar is ever raised.  As in many fields, we should always be thinking about what we can be doing better.

While assessment offers insight, patterns, trends and strengths and weaknesses, thinking about assessment can inspire us to make improvements, stated Heel.  After defining the benefits of assessment, Heel began talking about curriculum mapping. As it pertained to my audience, I considered a list of outcomes from broad to narrow and major to minor to redesign the “Assess what you’ve learn” portion of one of my workshops during a break.  I really enjoyed this exercise partly because I got something tangible out of it and partly because it was an opportunity to focus and stretch some boundaries.  Also it was attainable during a 20 minute break because in comparison, a workshop, as far as curriculum design goes, is a small animal to contain compared to a 16-week course evaluation.

After a great lunch, I had the pleasure to attend Ahmed Belazi’s presentation on “Using Qualtrics for Assessment.”

Let’s face it, you know as well as I do, that during all-day events, after lunch, focus drifts and naps sound delightful.  Well, I can safely say Belazi’s enthusiasm and story telling and rapid-fire knowledge was better than caffeine!

I learned you can’t measure everything.  What you are really doing is looking to describe something–to appreciate it.  For a full picture you need a mix of methods to gain perspective.  It is important to me to get a feel for what I can improve or keep in mind for every future workshop to stay on my game and do the best that I can at that moment. DoIT Training sends out anonymous feedback surveys after every workshop and I generally get at least a few people responding, but it is rarely 100%.  Belazi related to me why:  Survey fatigue (A-ha).  We are surveyed and assessed quite often.  And honestly, during busy times when solicited, non-priorities are pushed into the “later” pile. He also shared a spreadsheet that calculates what a good population sample size would be for 100, 1000, etc. recipients. It was very telling as to why we do not get a 100% response and why a sample is still good data. One idea he had to combat survey fatigue was provide a survey on the spot at the end of the workshop.  I think I’d like to do this.  I can simply create a link right on the desktop of the computers in the training room!  Another way to get buy-in is to state the benefit of providing feedback, like stating “Because of past feedback on our workshops we are now able to provide you…”

After telling us how and why to survey, Belazi dove into one of the most diverse and robust online tools in the Universe:  Qualtrics.

I am now a big fan because:

• of the range of questions
• the mobile preview
• you can copy and paste choices for multiple choice questions from a text document
• you can import from a specially formatted text document
  • BTW:  You can download a Google Form as a CSV and convert it into a text document that you’ll need to format to upload to Qualtrics.  So, yeah, you CAN import a Google Form into Qualtrics
• you can have your participants upload a file (like a writing sample) into your survey
• Text piping is magical
• there is a chat help
• you can make reports public

I thoroughly enjoyed this presentation and the symposium as a whole.  It was well put together.

My only feedback is that I really would have liked to attend all of the breakout sessions. Choosing one was hard.