22:1 (2007:03) Committee Annual Report: E&A

February 21, 2007 at 4:36 pm | Posted in Committee Annual Reports, Evaluation & Assessment | Leave a comment

EVALUATION & ASSESSMENT COMMITTEE ANNUAL REPORT (2006)

Committee members (2006):  Marla Baden, Chair (Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne), Joe Badics (Eastern Michigan University), Carole Bell (Temple University), Jana Brubaker (Northern Illinois University), Sarah Corvene (Harvard College), Sandy Folsom (Central Michigan University), Carole McEwan (University of California, Berkeley), Anne Mitchell, Co-Chair (University of Houston), Lori Terrill (University of Wyoming)

Board Liaison: Adam Chesler 

The Evaluation & Assessment Committee’s main charge is to produce, distribute, and assess evaluation forms for the annual conference. It is the only NASIG committee that operates on a calendar year basis.  The committee completed its responsibilities and assignments this year including a summary report on the 21st Annual Conference which appeared in the NASIG Newsletter, December 2006. In January, the committee was notified that the Executive Board had approved the implementation of online evaluations for the Denver conference with a $500 appropriation toward the project. It was decided that during the transition year, paper evaluation forms would still be made available so conference attendees would have a choice of evaluation format. 

In March, the committee created the print evaluation forms for the conference, pre-conferences, and poster session. These forms were sent to the Program Planning Committee to include in the conference packets. A version of each form was also forwarded to Stephanie Schmitt and the conference programmer to use as templates for the online forms. Although deadlines were tight the online forms were unveiled on the conference’s home page in time for the start of the 2006 conference. Many thanks need to go to Step Schmitt for all her liaison work between E&A and the conference programmer.  Committee members spent the month of July entering evaluation data from the conference. Three hundred and two conference attendees completed evaluation forms (conference, pre-conference, or poster) with 192 of those still being submitted in paper. Since the data entry from the paper forms could be done via the online forms instead of being constrained by the five license limitation as in the past, committee members Marla Baden, Joe Badics, Jana Brubaker, Sarah Corvene, Sandy Folsom, Carole McEwan, Anne Mitchell, and Lori Terrill all contributed to the effort. 

Once the data had been entered Stephanie Schmitt worked with Paul Seeman to create the final results reports. The reports were placed in a password protected directory on the NASIG Web site. The Executive Board, chairs of the Conference Planning Committee, and chairs of the Program Planning Committee were sent the report access information in September.  

Also in September twenty-six speakers received individual summaries of their evaluation reports via email. This work was managed by Carole Bell who both extracted and distributed the information to the requesting speakers.  This year there was a slight delay in distributing any evaluation data including the usual preliminary summary report. However, now that the format programming has been done for creating the final report, the committee should be able to distribute future conference evaluations promptly after the conference. This will eliminate the work of having to create the past “Quick & Dirty” report. In the future the Executive Board, CPC, and PPC will have much quicker access to the complete conference data for planning purposes.  

The Evaluation & Assessment Committee believes that the transition to online evaluations was a successful venture and recommends discontinuing all paper evaluation forms. The Committee asks the Executive Board to give its approval for a totally online evaluation process for the 2007 conference.