If you’ve attended a NACo workshop over the past few years, you’ve been asked to fill out an evaluation form. Whether you complied happily or grumbled at the task, you may be interested in knowing why evaluations are important to you.
NACo staff members cajole, implore, and twist arms in a valiant attempt to obtain these forms — crumpled, torn, mutilated, or bent — because your evaluations are our most direct link to your opinions of the workshops we conduct.
By sorting through these evaluations in the post-conference calm, NACo staff can reflect on what we did right, what we did wrong and how we can change or fine-tune our efforts next time.
In case you're wondering what happens to your filled-out form, each one is collected and considered. NACo's training division personnel scan the evaluations and note both unique and recurring remarks. We then consider your workshop scores and comments when devising future workshop offerings.
For example, through your evaluations, we find which workshops are best received, which have top-flight presenters and where we haven’t left enough time for workshop questions and answers. Your comments on the forms also guide us in eliminating topics and presenters you found lacking, and in readjusting our efforts in working with presenters, moderators, and others.
NACo even documented several of the workshops on videotape for further critique. As we’ve done for several years, the training division held an awards ceremony to reward staff for particularly good efforts concerning conference workshops. In this way, we hope to encourage all staff to create the winning workshops that you — our customers — deserve.
NACo's workshop evaluation forms are only one sign of what the training division does to better serve NACo members.
Using the guidance provided by the Member Programs and Services Committee, several focus groups, and workshop evaluation data, the division helps NACo plan more hands-on workshops, financial management, and leadership topics at conferences.
Also, we are reshaping the way we identify workshop content, reinstituting descriptive program icons for all workshops and several tracks for programs that will receive special emphasis.
We hope you notice the changes and let us know how we can continue to improve. And the next time someone asks you to evaluate a workshop, remember that your voice counts in the workshop improvement process.
(To provide input about the workshops or other aspects of NACo’s training, please fax your comments to the NACo Training Division, at 202/737-0480.)