In my 25-year experience, I’d estimate that roughly 1/2 of a room’s attendees will fill out the Speaker Evaluation form if they’re encouraged to do so at the end of the program.  And 10% of them will screw it up.

What’s the most-common mistake hurried evaluators make?  
I think that it’s failing to pay attention to the order of the 1-4 (or 5) numbered rating system.  That is, is “1” is the lowest or the highest number?  When you’re in a hurry to get to the coffee break or next session, it’s an easy mistake to make.

I spoke recently at the ALA Greater Chicago Chapter’s Educational Conference and Expo on “The Hottest Trends in Websites and Digital Marketing.”  It was, of course, both beautifully organized and extremely well run.  Anne Jewell, my personal session monitor, ran a tight ship and motivated 24 of the ~40 attendees to fill out their forms. 

Out of that group, here are the two examples of internally inconsistent scoring.

It’s not unreasonable to presume that someone who wrote down “Awesome!” as their only handwritten comment did not intend to then give the program the lowest-possible score:

However the numerical evaluations marked “Strongly Disagree” with each of the six questions that inquired whether the program was: clear, relevant, to the point, and effective.  (And The Law says that in conflict, the handwritten words win….)

Here’s another one, same issue. “Loved it,”

…then panned with six straight Strongly Disagrees: 

That’s going to lower my overall speaker score.
😉

The larger point is that if the form’s designers were aware of the frequency of this occurrence, they could find a way to tweak the design to help address this issue and generate more accurate data.  
A special thanks to Diane Brummel, Travis Larson, JenniferWinters, Ony Beverly, and ALA/Chicago’s other Education Committee members and volunteers for organizing a terrific day of programing.

Fishman Marketing, Inc.
+1.847.432.3546
ross@fishmanmarketing.com


Categories: Continuing Legal Education (CLE), Conventions, Law Firm Conference, Law Firm Marketing Speaker, Law Firm Marketing Training, Law Firm Presentations

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