How to get useful feedback at the end of a workshop

Feedback you ask for after the session mostly doesn't arrive. The Carpentries' instructor training puts it plainly: learners are much more likely to fill out the survey while they are still at the workshop than after they leave. Their advice is to give the time for it at the end, rather than fitting in another fifteen minutes of teaching.

So plan the last five minutes as part of the session. Put the questions on the screen, say why you're asking, and wait while people answer. If the workshop runs over, cut the last exercise, not the feedback.

End-of-day feedback tells you how to improve the next workshop. Feedback before a break tells you how to improve this one, while the same people are still in the room.

Greg Wilson describes a simple version, the minute card: before each break, every learner writes one thing that was useful and one thing that was too fast, too slow, confusing or irrelevant. Reading them over coffee takes less than five minutes for a class of 40, and it shows you what to explain again after the break. The Carpentries add one rule: don't comment on the feedback while you collect it, and open the next part of the session by addressing what came up most often.

A long form gets short answers. Decide which questions you would actually act on, and drop the rest. Wilson notes that "What do you think?" is much harder to answer than "Was I speaking too quickly?", and the specific question is also the one that tells you what to fix.

Three or four questions are enough for most workshops:

• What is one thing from today you'll use in your own work? (open)
• What is one thing you would change? (open)
• How useful will today be for your work? Very useful / Somewhat / Not really
• How was the pace? Too slow / About right / Too fast

Write each one with survey basics in mind. The Pew Research Center advises asking one thing per question (not "Was the session clear and useful?") and offering a choice between alternatives rather than a statement to agree with, because some people tend to agree with whatever statement they are given. Put the open questions first: answers to an open question drift toward whatever the closed questions before it mentioned.

"Did you enjoy the session?" measures mood. People enjoy a friendly teacher, good coffee and an early finish, and none of that tells you whether they can now do the thing you taught.

A meta-analysis of training studies by George Alliger and colleagues separated two kinds of reaction: how much people liked the training and how useful they judged it. The usefulness ratings were the ones more strongly related to what people learned and to what they did back at work. If you ask only one rating question, make it about usefulness.

One comment is one person's view. The same point from five people is a pattern worth acting on.

• Sort the open answers into a few themes (pace, setup, a confusing step, too much theory) and count each one.
• Put the numbers next to what happened. If a third of the room says the pace was too fast and the same third got stuck on the same step, you know where to slow down.
• Ask someone else to read them first if the comments sting. Wilson suggests a colleague who summarises the feedback for you, so you see the pattern before the one harsh sentence.

People give better feedback when they can see it is used. The Carpentries recommend telling learners explicitly what you are changing because of their feedback, which encourages them to keep giving useful answers. At the start of the next session, or in the follow-up email, say two things you changed and one thing you decided to keep, and why.

On the last step, open Send in the console beside the room, press New, write your question, set Students answer to One choice and add the answers. It pops up on every student's screen, or sits as a banner across the top, and the panel counts each answer as it arrives, along with how many students have seen it. The answers stay in the class's report under Polls & quizzes.

The report also shows what students did, not only what they said: how many finished each step, where they got stuck and how long they waited for help. Read the feedback next to it. For written comments you want to keep anonymous, use a separate form: Workshopy's chat and private messages carry the student's name.