Session hosts and evaluation forms

I've been too busy working on things for the Missouri Library Association conference to blog about them like I promised! I'll try to do better because the two future chairs of the Computer and Information Technology SIG have said they think these will be useful when it's their turn.

Last year when I attempted to recruit session hosts, people to introduce each program session that the SIG sponsors and to mention the SIG in the process, I got no takers. This year, with three times as many programs, I managed to get them all covered. Here's what I learned--start earlier and ask twice! Last year, I started about two weeks in advance and took a non-answer as a "no." This year, I started about a month in advance and took a non-answer as "I haven't worked it out yet." In the end, everyone that I asked said "yes" and seemed happy to do it; it just often took a second prompt or a more detailed "how about hosting this session?" request.

This year the Conference Chair wanted to have evaluation forms for each session of the conference. In the past, that was something that one or two Divisions and SIGs did for their own sessions, but was not widely practiced. I had planned to steal the idea and form from MACRL (the Missouri Association of College and Research Libraries, one MLA division that has used session evaluation forms consistently for years), especially since one of our speakers last year hinted that she would like to have session evaluations.

So, once the Conference Chair came up with that idea, I volunteered, figuring that it wouldn't be much more work to handle the session evaluation forms for the whole conference than for just the CIT SIG's sessions. As it turned out, it was less work because I got a lot of help. The chairs of the SIGs and Divisions worked collaboratively to create the form. Margaret Booker, the MLA Executive Director, offered to print them and bring them to the conference.

We're asking our session hosts to handle the evaluation forms for each session. Since one of my other conference hats is working on the Hospitality committee, the blank forms will be in the Hospitality area along with a file box for the filled-out forms. Filled-out forms will go in a file labeled with the sponsoring Division or SIG. The Division or SIG chair will pick up his or her file at the end of the conference to analyze and summarize the forms.

I'd be curious how other conferences handle analyzing and summarizing forms. Our Executive Director, who summarizes the evaluation forms for the conference as a whole, recognized immediately that the real work would start after the conference and would be too much for her to handle, maybe too much for any one person to handle. Since the history in our organization was for Divisions and SIGs to do their own evaluation forms, if they wanted to, it seemed natural to ask them to take care of it. Of course, it hasn't happened yet, so I'm hoping that doesn't turn out to be too much of a burden for the officers of Divisions and SIGs. Since my SIG is sponsoring the most programs, I felt pretty comfortable taking the lead on this -- I'm not asking anyone to do more work than I am!     #

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