Evaluation of the "Institutional Web Management:The Next Steps" Workshop

A workshop aimed at staff involved in running institutional web services was be held at Goldsmiths College, London from 7-9th September 1999.

This document summarises the evaluation of the workshop. It includes an overall summary, a summary of the individual speakers, a summary of the parallel sessions and a summary of the exhibition.

Overall Workshop Evaluation

The analysis of the workshop evaluation forms indicate that, on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) the overall content of the workshop was given a rating of 4.08 and the organisation was given a rating of 4.35. Seventeen people gave the content a top rating of 5, with 32 people rating the content at 4 and 12 at 3. The ratings for the organisation were even more impressive, with no fewer than 30 scores of 5, 24 of 4 and 8 scores of 3. There were no rating of less than 3 for the overall content or organisation.

Comments on the overall content include:

• Very useful, well-coordinated. Congratulations to the organisers for their hard work.
• Any chance of running it more frequently?
• It remains an essential item on the calendar - always extremely useful.
• An enjoyable 4 days, although I wanted to attend all the parallel sessions
• I was very glad to meet so many interesting people and discuss shared concerns & interests.
• Well done all concerned
• Very interesting and useful. Encouraging adoption of new things e.g. XML / RDF. Good to have wider view of impact and management of the web e.g. PR, Library, management, computing, etc.
• An excellent opportunity to discuss issues as previously.
• Excellent, well-organised and good programme.

Comments on the workshop organisation include:

• Much more a sense of community. The boat trip was an excellent idea.
• Wasn't sure I'd enjoy the boat trip but it was great.
• Boat trip first class

The most highly-rated speakers are listed in the following table (5=excellent, 1=poor):

Comments on Individual Speakers

Comments for John Slater included:

• Excellent
• Interesting perspective that we don't often hear
• Good opening
• Excellent to get this view. More of these please.
• Interesting and raised lots of {couldn't read} that need to be dealt with at {institution named deleted} e.g. service standards

Comments for Joe Passmore included:

• Excellent marketing perspective

Comments for Michael Wilson included:

• Interesting into to SMIL
• Good intro for the completely ignorant. More please!
• Very good introduction.

Comments for David Christmas included:

• Good models
• Clear well thought out
• Excellent demo of what could be done if we only had the money!
• Simply v. good.

Comments for Brett Burridge included:

• Interesting to see browser information and how to use it
• Good stats and resources
• Will alter local policy

Comments for James Currall included:

• Would have liked to see it in action - but useful
• V. interesting applications using XML with some useful pointers for methodologies
• Top marks for James Currall in his XML/HTML slides - I've been getting serious PowerPoint fatigue.

Comments for Andrew Cormack included:

• Very useful, even for non-techies
• Very interesting & informative session
• Very understandable and clear explanation

Comments for Helen Sargan included:

• Thorough overview in this area
• Timely - we're about to do something about searching
• Will look at alternative search methods
• Excellent - very clear. Good supporting literature.

Comments for Danny Sullivan included:

• Very interesting
• Good but could have done with more detailed advice. Good presenter.
• Excellent presentation. Very useful. Very informative.
• Very useful. Good tips Very entertaining
• Excellent.
• Thanks for the funding hints!!

Evaluation Of Parallel Sessions

Comments for the Intranets and Extranets session included:

• Excellent - everyone was involved in discussions which brought out a variety of views and ideas. This gave me a good basis of information and points which I can take back & use to inform / prompt reflections on our development of intranets.
• Good interaction with other participants
• Pretty good - would have been nice to know more about what others were doing i.e. more discussion

Comments for the Web Tools session included:

• Went pretty well in spite of a few problems with the facilities. Although the session covered a range of topics, it was surprising that just about everyone wanted to attend the session due to an interest in content management tools. This could indicate that content management is starting to become a major issue.
• A great session - extremely useful for me as a Web Content Manager. The demonstration of Zope was useful; as a possible way forward for "mass" authoring - as was the talk by the Lychee rep from Netcentric
• Very useful to have a practical session - hands on.
• Well managed, good to see other browsers such as Mozilla being shown. Zope session was very useful.

Comments for the Web Design session included:

• Very useful session, it was good to see or not see our own web pages, and also to learn that good site design was crucial
• Very useful - reminding me about the accessibility issues

Comments for the Legal Issues session included:

• Initial presentations good method iof highlighting issues, followed by good debate and interaction with everyone contributing. As this area is a minefield and the speakers, whil well-informed, do not have a legal background, would have been nice to have some legal input.
• Covered a lot of ground and provided a good overview of some of the main concerns for the HE communities. Made me relaise how much still needs to be done with regard to data protection and AUPs.
• Lots of activities - very good, useful recommendations. Not enough time! ... Certainly gave concrete actions at institutional level as well national level.
• Useful. The Legal session is very timely for me. Useful pointers to information too.

Comments for the Web Site Navigation session included:

• Useful resources to take away. Learnt more about how search engines work.
• Think I would have liked exercises distributed in advance of workshop and then session to be more discussion.

Comments for the Web Editor session included:

• Well structured, focussed, kept to the point(s) in hand.
• Useful and thought-provoking.
• Good discussion. Some interesting ideas & problems/ solutions.
• A useful look at some issues in the industry.

Comments for the Metadata session included:

• OK - but concentrated too much on the evolution of the HE Mall project. (e.g. exercises just to prove the HE Mall is needed). Would have preferred to learn more about the role of metadata in website design in general esp. with reference to searching / indexing.

Evaluation of the Exhibition

The average rating for the Exhibition was 3.2 (5=excellent and 1=poor). There were 7 scores of 5 (excellent), 25 scores of 4, 13 scores of 3, 8 scores of 2 and only one score of 1 (poor).

Comments for the Exhibition included:

• The exhibition was more useful than I thought it would be - less bumf & more useful ideas.
• Exhibition was great How about asking more big names (like Microsoft).
• Good range of exhibitors.
• Could have done with more exhibitors.
• [would like] More exhibitors.