CONFERENCE EVALUATIONS UPDATE

Pam Roberts, our Evaluation Chair, reports that this year NERGC expanded its program evaluation model to include individual session evaluation feedback forms for each speaker in addition to the overall conference evaluation. New England CONNECTions drew a diverse audience in age, experience, professional background and interests, and the evaluations have a wealth of comments that will assist us in meeting these diverse needs in the future.

The data from each individual session as well as the data from the full conference evaluation will contribute to an overall conference evaluation report for use not only by NERCG 2007 Chairpersons and Committees but for future planning by NERGC 2009 Chairpersons and Committees.

Preliminary data shows that our NERGC attendees participated in session evaluations at a higher rate than the 25-30% voluntary expected return rate for most audiences. In nearly all sessions, over 50% of attendees filled out at least a portion of the evaluation form and in some cases over 80% of attendees returned forms.

This high representation of opinion increases the likelihood that the data summary for each session is truly representative of the audience attending each presentation. Overall, hour-long speaker sessions were rated "very good" to excellent" with strong agreement that participants learned something new and that expectations and needs were met.