Workshop Evaluation Tools

From Peacebuilding

In order to assess whether or not the workshop has gone well, it’s critical to get participants’ feedback. Adding their feedback to your own personal evaluation helps improve the content and procedure for future workshops and gives participants an opportunity to air any concerns they might have had during the workshop. Different evaluation techniques can be used to gather feedback, including the following activities. For more on workshop evaluation, see Peacebuilding - A Caritas Training Manual, pp. 222-223.

Contents 1 Keep and Revise 2 What Worked, What Did Not Work 3 (e)Valuation 4 Problem Hat 5 Three Questions 6 Quantitative and Qualitative, (Sample) Evaluation Sheet

Keep and Revise

This is a quick evaluation activity. It can be used at the end of a day during a multi-day workshop to understand what’s working and what isn’t, in order to improve the following day. It would be inadvisable to use this activity as a final evaluation for a multi-day workshop. The idea is to get an understanding of how it’s going, and have an opportunity to make necessary adaptations for the following day.

What Worked, What Did Not Work

This quick evaluation activity can be used at the end of your workshop or at the end of each day in a multi-day workshop. In the second case, it is advisable to start the following day by summarising the results of the evaluation and pointing out what concrete steps you have taken in order to apply participants’ suggestions to the current day.

(e)Valuation

Rather than conducting a traditional evaluation – in which people focus on what was wrong, where the process failed and what the problems were – this exercise takes an appreciative approach and looks for ways to build on success and identify wishes and aspirations for the future. As such, the questions aim to investigate moments of excellence and help people to reconnect with their vision for the workshop.

Problem Hat

A simple way to ask participants what difficulties they are experiencing in the workshop. Sheets of paper are folded and put in a hat. Later, volunteers pick up one sheet at a time, read it out and offer a suggestion on how to deal with the problem. Note it down and apply any necessary (and possible) changes to the workshop.

Three Questions

This activity provides you with a quick and easy way to evaluate your workshop. It can be used either at the end of a workshop or – in a multi-day workshop – at the end of each day. In the second case it will help you understand what’s working and what’s not working and apply the necessary changes starting from the following day.

Quantitative and Qualitative, (Sample) Evaluation Sheet

This is a sample evaluation sheet with both quantitative and qualitative information. With the first two questions (or more, depending on the number of objectives) participants are asked to assess the extent to which the workshop objectives were met. The subsequent questions will provide qualitative information.