Feedback and evaluation are invaluable when assessing your impact and when making tweaks and improvements. It’s always good to evaluate and reflect on your workshops. This does not necessarily have to be a formal procedure, but just a few minutes to think about what went well, what didn’t, and what could be improved.
There are a number of factors which will determine whether the 3D workshop was a success or not. But what does success look like? This is something you will need to decide. Do you have numbers in mind or any specific targets? Are the tangible results more important or fun or basic development of your participants? Are there things which went wrong but they are beyond your control? Reflecting on these will help you refine what you’re doing and improve moving forward.
Another thing is the method of evaluation. It will also depend on your goals and general circumstances in which the workshops are running. For some the final result, designed and printed object will be enough, in many cases, the process will be important too. Did we learn anything new? Did we acquire or develop specific skills? What were our expectations and aims?
From our perspective the most effective are:
You can choose just one of them or make a suitable combination.
Participating observation is usually done by the trainer, sometimes together with other members of the team as a supervisor. Especially the first option is the least demanding for the participants and the least time consuming, but on the other hand, it is also the least objective.
Therefore it is good to supplement it with at least round tables with participants, where you can openly discuss the results and the work process. The round tables can be done after each session in order to enable making necessary improvements on a regular basis.
The questionnaires, especially the combination of the pre and post surveys, give you a chance to get more complex and precise data about the workshops. You decide on the number of questions if they are open or closed with fixed answers. You choose whether they will be in a paper or in an online form (Google forms for instance). Anonymous questionnaires are also a good opportunity for people who would like to share the critical opinion but they are afraid to say it openly.
In general, there’s no only one and the best method of evaluating this kind of activities. Everything depends on your specific situation. However, the above mentioned processes will be sufficient enough in most of the cases.