At the end of the workshop the participants were asked to provide some feedback on the workshop with a help of a short feedback questionnaire that included a few open-ended questions.
We received 15 returns of the questionnaire, i.e., about 40% of the participants returned the questionnaire. We have included all of the returned comments in verbatim in a feedback data report.
The general feedback from the workshop was overwhelmingly positive, practically every respondent indicated a positive response to the first question ("What do you think of IWSED-95?"). The things that people seemed to appreciate were (the percentage of respondents who mentioned the issue has been included in parenthesis):
The good mix between presentations and discussions (13%) and good presentations (7%) were also mentioned in the feedback.
The second question ("What should we change it to make it better?") prompted some concrete ideas for improvement. The main concern for people seemed to be that the questionnaire data that organizations had prepared and sent for the workshop was underutilized in the presentations and in the working groups, 40% of respondents mentioned this. Obviously, the general overview of the data given on the first day was inadequate for detailed discussion.
The overall agenda and especially working group topics should also be better formalized and agreed upon earlier, according to five respondents (33%).
The third question asked whether the respondent would participate in the workshop if it were arranged in a year or two years from IWSED-95. Eight respondents (53%) indicated that they would participate within a year and 12 (80%) indicated a participation in two years.
Two people pointed out that it is important to ease the communication problems that may participants have as they need to interact in a foreign language. This may inhibit some valuable contributions and potentially diminishes the value of the workshop to all participants. Smaller working groups, slower and clearer speech, more detailed preparation of topics, and good audio system should all help alleviate this problem.
The fourth question asked for topics for the next IWSED. The following is list of topics that were mentioned in the feedback, the number in parenthesis describes how many respondents mentioned the topic:
Also, data mining, presentation data, cost effectiveness of process change, and the gap between state of art and practice, were each mentioned once.
The final question referred to the practical arrangements of the workshop. It seems that everybody was satisfied with the workshop venue arrangements and with the social program. However, several people pointed out the following two problems:
Overall the IWSED-95 seemed to have been a useful event for participants. For the next workshops the most important improvements should be in better preparation and utilization of the workshop data and better preparation of the working group agenda and composition.
The IWSED questionnaire data should be collected early enough so that it can be processed into a form that can be made legible and accessible for working groups. This data might need to be sent for working group participants in advance so that they can study it before the workshop.
The working groups should be organized well ahead of time. It would seem that the working group topics should be defined before the call for participation goes out and the workshop registration forms should include working group preference question. With an early registration deadline this would allow enough time for working group chairs to refine and detail their sessions.
The challenge with both of the above points is, of course, that people may not send in their registration and data early enough. In IWSED-95 we received most registrations within a couple of weeks of the registration deadline, i.e., 5-7 weeks before the workshop. Too early registration deadline may result in low attendance. However, with some key issues fixed early, such as working group chairs, topics and format, a slightly earlier registration deadline should allow enough time for appropriate planning and preparation. Also, having a single chair for each session might result in better preparation.
I would like to thank all respondents for their feedback. Now we know how to do things even better next time.
Updated 09-Apr-96 by Jyrki Kontio