The WRITE WAY Evaluation Report
Here's how we scored
Summary
This was the first time we had organised a major conference and it was important for us to find out what people thought. Overall, people seemed happy with the day but they also gave us some excellent feedback and ideas about to make things even better.
As a delegate, I have always been asked at events for feedback - but I never get to hear back from organisers about my comments or find out what others thought. So we decided to do just that - and provide everyone with an evaluation report. This is the one that started it all off &
We asked delegates to score each question on a scale of 1-5 (1=poor; 5=excellent). And they did.
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Questions and how people scored |
Average |
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1 How would you rate the conference overall? (1- 0; 2- 1; 3- 9; 4- 35; 5- 23) |
4.2 |
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2 How would you rate the venue? (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 4; 4- 22; 5- 47) |
4.6 |
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3 How would you rate the administration before the conference? (1- 0; 2- 1; 3- 10; 4- 22; 5- 38) |
4.4 |
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4 How would you rate how the conference was organised on the day? (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 4; 4- 24; 5- 43) |
4.5 |
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5 How would rate your first workshop? Day to day recording; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 6; 4- 16; 5- 12) How to write a winning information leaflet; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 3; 4- 8; 5- 6) Writer in residence: writing with confidence in care homes; (1- 0; 2- 3; 3- 2; 4- 2; 5- 2) Benefits of peer file audits. (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 2; 4- 10; 5- 2) |
4.2
4.2
3.3
4.0 |
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6 How would rate your second workshop? Avoiding the pitfalls of recording - for practitioners; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 6; 4- 9; 5- 4) How to write a winning information leaflet; (1- 0; 2- 2; 3- 4; 4- 0; 5- 2) Effective report writing; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 2; 4- 17; 5- 17) Electronic recording (1- 0; 2- 1; 3- 3; 4- 5; 5- 0) |
3.9
3.3
4.4
3.4 |
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7 How would rate your third workshop? Plain English for social care; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 0; 4- 6; 5- 19) Effective case recording and assessment; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 7; 4- 14; 5- 6) When words are not enough; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 0; 4- 5; 5- 8) Electronic recording (1- 1; 2- 1; 3- 3; 4- 3; 5- 1) |
4.8
3.8
4.6
3.2 |
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8 How would rate your last workshop? How to write a cracking summary; (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 3; 4- 15; 5- 10) Avoiding the pitfalls of recording - for managers; (1- 1; 2- 0; 3- 1; 4- 5; 5- 6) Writer in residence: writing with confidence in care homes; (1- 0; 2- 1; 3- 0; 4- 7; 5- 3) Improving the quality of serious case reviews (1- 0; 2- 0; 3- 0; 4- 4; 5- 0) |
4.3
4.2
4.1
4.0 |
General comments
The good stuff
Good day
Overall very good and informative day - plenty to take back to service
I love "The Write Stuff" and have poached vast chunks of it in my training - thanks!
Well organised and interesting conference. Would have liked to have attended all the workshops. A friendly atmosphere with chance to meet colleagues from other areas. Thank you.
Good conference - a lot packed into the day.
Really informative conference.
Very informative.
Very well organised. The tour at lunch was very good.
The conference was an excellent opportunity to learn about the most challenging aspects of our day to day work. Holding this conference was a very good initiative that should be continued annually. All workshops were relevant and well delivered - we were spoilt for choice. Well done to all the organisers.
Well arranged day. Venue excellent, food plentiful. Trainers were well organised and knew their subject.
Overall, very informative. Good handouts. Approachable tutors.
Enjoyable day.
A really good day - useful and enjoyable. Liked the four workshop format. Thank you.
Very enjoyable workshops. Very useful information to take away. Thank you.
Kathryn was really helpful - thanks.
The content and delivery of all the courses attended have been good. I will find all of the course information useful to help me plan further training.
Very informative sessions. Some areas I will be able to disseminate in my workplace.
A very informative day with valuable information to take back to the workplace.
An excellent attempt to raise profile of an important area of work which impacts on potential and actual service users. Well done.
Well structured and presented.
Very informative and interesting. The subject was handled extremely well with many practice issues being raised.
Good to have something outside of London!
It ran smoothly!
Thank you for a very useful day. Good handouts. Interesting workshops.
A good, fast-moving intro to the topics.
An interesting day.
A related and comfortable ethos with nice sized groups.
Very useful and informative conference that generated much discussion and food for thought.
Excellent, thought-provoking and I feel more confident about developing recording policy and training for it!
Interesting content, but well-timed in respect of the day. Very enjoyable overall.
Whole day very good.
Three workshops (effective report writing, plain English, and how to write a cracking summary) were great fun and kept attention all the way.
All workshops excellent - content and presentation.
Overall this was a well organised conference. I enjoyed all of the workshops and found them to be helpful.
Enjoyed the day. Very informative - well presented. Good idea to dispense with keynote speeches and get straight into workshops.
Enjoyed and found it useful.
Excellent dinner.
Good mix of practical and thought-provoking approaches. I have gained insight into ways of engaging those involved in training within this subject area. I like to approach of workshops all day rather than keynote speakers etc. The info given to me was relevant and clear - that's how reports should be, so thanks.
Great lunch! No big meeting at the beginning - great! They are a waste of time anyway.
Informative and interesting. Good to network with other authorities in workshop setting. Tour of the ground an unexpected bonus - thank you!
I found the whole training conference extremely interesting, and the lecturer Graham, compelling listening. I will take a lot of knowledge from the day which will be put into practice in my workplace. Also the food was excellent and filling.
Very good. A good variety of presenting/views. Very enjoyable.
An excellent day - plenty of ammunition for my managers.
Well done. Lots of food for thought and plenty to cascade.
Stuff to help us do things better next time
Workshop information
Some workshops focused on specific service user groups which wasn't apparent (to me at least!) before the conference.
Workshop groups should be set alongside people doing the same care - for example, learning disabilities, elderly, children and so on.
More information on the workshops would have been helpful.
Not enough information about workshop content or relevance to different fields of work before the event. This led to attending workshops that were less relevant than I would have expected.
It would be good if a short summary was given. For example, suitable for people (social workers) working with children.
Two workshops were not really relevant to me - but I only became aware by attending. The title suggested that they would be relevant. Need to be clearer about specific content and target audience in the future.
It was disappointing when particular workshops were withdrawn.
Some of the advertised sessions that I was interested in were not available which was disappointing.
What we will do next time: Write Way was conceived as a one-off all things to all people, cram it in, pile it high training conference. It seems sensible that if we do repeat it we should make it more specialised - at the very least hold one for children's services and one for adults services.
We are sorry that a couple of advertised workshops were withdrawn - but unfortunately sometimes things are just out of our control.
Time
There wasn't enough time to complete all the planned exercises. Because of time constraints workshops were rushed.
All workshops could have been extended due to interesting content.
The only fault was trying to cram too much into one day. Each session could have been twice as long as it was.
What we will do next time: This was always a risk. But I think we learnt a bit by trying. Most workshops could easily take a day in their own right. Perhaps with more popular workshops we could consider offering two-parters (all morning or all afternoon) to run alongside other shorter workshops - so we have a good balance.
Room layout
Make sitting less formal across all rooms.
Good - but spoiled a little by seating within workshops and restricted space.
Layout of seating was not conducive to effective workshops (mainly the most popular workshops).
Rooms not conducive to group exercises.
What we will do next time: As the event was a writing event, we think having tables (while formal) is necessary and ultimately more comfortable. However, we did need one room to be classroom style because we simply needed to get so many people into the four most popular workshops. It wasn't the best by a long chalk. But we then run the risk of disappointing more people. Perhaps a way around this is to run the popular workshops at least twice, if not three times during the day - so we can reduce numbers (which, in all honesty, was the "problem") and then set rooms out more comfortably.
Signposting
I think we would have benefited from some large signs or a plan of where the rooms were.
Better signposting would have been nice, both into centre and to rooms.
What we will do next time: We did ask for a floor plan to include in packs but the venue didn't have one - it only had plans of each room. We thought we could get away with it because all rooms were on same floor and we did have some (admittedly small) signs and staff to direct delegates. But next time, if we have to draw our own plans we will!
Directions
Directions needed to be more specific and to indicate where the car park would be in relation to the conference entrance.
The only problem with the venue is that it was a difficult journey from East Lancs!
Struggled to find venue.
Poor directions to locate the place.
Rubbish directions - took half an hour to find the place once we got into Derby - directions did not allow egress via A38.
Directions to venue and confirmation of workshops would have helped.
Would have been helpful to have directions into the venue.
What we will do next time: We used the venue's directions - thinking they should have it nailed. Graham did intend to drive to the venue from all possible angles and write detailed directions ("pass the derelict MFI warehouse on your left" type of thing) but failed to. Lesson learnt.
Too basic
The workshops were really informative but in some cases too basic.
Too basic and would have liked something more demanding - something pitched at managers.
What we will do next time: Again this is the ultimate problem when you try to be all things to all people, you lose some people along the way (rubbish directions again!). But to be fair most people comment positively despite this. But if we target more effectively - we might attract less numbers but keep it all at the right tempo. This, of course, would mean actually charging properly for the conference - something which again reduces numbers. Our aim, in some senses, was to raise the importance of writing and recording - at that had to be across the board and populist. Maybe now our marker is down we can look at smaller, regional and more targeted (albeit more expensive) mini-Write Ways.
Introduction and keynote speeches
Think you lose something by not having an introduction to the day and key note speech.
An introduction to the day would have been beneficial.
Introduction to the day would have been helpful.
Not very well introduced, somewhat disjointed.
Intro to the day 5-10 minutes: what conference aimed to do, plans for future would have added coherence.
Would have been good to have a keynote speech at the end to draw it all together. Perhaps next time &
I feel a welcome to the day would have set the day in context.
What we will do next time: The trouble is when you ask people to comment - sometimes they say stuff you don't want to hear. In our defence some people (above in the good stuff section) did welcome the ditching of these conventions. We know how social care audiences are with change! Write Way was a training conference - the operative word was "training". We wanted to try and maximise time and wanted to make things practical. Keynote speeches got in the way of that ideal (although we must admit to exploring the idea of having a "celebrity" speaker - Lynne Truss or John Humphries - who had written recently about writing, but dumped the idea on the grounds it would have doubled the conference fee).
Other comments
A lot of time was spent raising problems. We need to solve problems! There was also a lot of jargon used!
What we will do next time: Fair point - we were supposed to be offering solutions - so if we didn't, we're sorry.
Would consider PowerPoint presentations next time rather than OH projectors.
What we will do next time: Deliberately wanted to be low-tech (often think PowerPoint is presentation over content) just to make a point. And the venue did want a lot of money to provide facilities. We did have one unit - the Barry Raynes presentation needed PowerPoint, the others weren't (or shouldn't have been) presentations - so not felt necessary.
I feel the term "conference" does not describe the day of four workshops.
What we will do next time: Write Way was very deliberately labelled a "training" conference. We wanted people there to be trained and hopefully we did that. Possibly no problem with calling the next event a "training day".
For ease of accessibility, it could help to have the conference in other cities too.
What we will do next time: We chose Derby because it was in the Midlands - and therefore for a one-off national conference was better placed. People in or near London have had things too good for too long! But point taken - it would be great to put on the event regionally. Indeed many people who asked for information before the conference did ask whether it would be put on nearer them. It is clearly something to think seriously about.
Unfortunately I ended up in workshops that weren't my first choices - so I feel I missed out.
What we will do next time: We are sorry as we did want to please everyone (foolhardy, we know). But we were overwhelmed with the numbers of people who wanted to be in the most popular workshops. That said only four of the 16 we ran sold out, as it were. We did ask people repeatedly to get their workshop preferences in as things would be first come, first served.
Covering basic skills, ability to "read" and issues around confidence would have been helpful.
What we will do next time: We did think about this - Graham was going to do a workshop on it but our report writing person dropped out, so Graham had to step into that (very popular) workshop. But yes, something we will consider strongly next time.
Comments on specific workshops
Writing with confidence in care homesTook cheap shots at management
Electronic recording
Very poorly structured/delivered
I had hoped to get more positive instruction on electronic recording and ESCR.
Improving the quality of serious case reviews
Redeemed the day
How to write a cracking summary
More ideas needed
Avoiding the pitfalls of recording - for managers
It would have been helpful to have had less O/H material and more exercises in groups - making use of handouts with discussion
Discussion and debate in this session was welcome
How to write a winning information leaflet
Allowed too long for some exercises. Hadn't got enough handouts for everyone. Needs to look at being better organised and address time management in presentation.
Too basic and not as interactive as others.
When words are not enough
Really good
Very thought provoking - it really made the conference and distance travelled worthwhile.
The most useful workshop, even though it was aimed towards child care workers and I work with older people. A riveting session
Day to day recording
Too simplistic and would be appropriate for care assistants.
Effective report writing
Extremely useful.
I did not find it as inclusive as it could have been. Maybe too much info in too short a time.
The info given made so much sense.
Plain English for social services
Delivered with humour but had a serious message.
Effective case recording and assessment
Would have liked more childcare practice links.
Benefits of peer file audit
I would have liked to know about how the peer audit works in practice.