As a rule, questionnaires are usually distributed to attendees when a presentation is over, or in its final part. A survey may include elements of polling, but always means more personal, diverse answers with elements of individuality and self-expression of a person who answers them.
A survey helps you to understand how effective your speech was. Thanks to the answers received, you can see clearly whether you have done well with your work or not, whether all the necessary information was delivered to the listeners or not, whether it helped somehow in their work or study, or not. You can see also problems that you can fix to be better next time. And if you conduct a survey in real time - you have the opportunity to change the direction of the conversation right now.
Let's talk about surveys. What to ask?
The first and most important goal of the survey is an effective feedback. You can consider yourself to be a brilliant lecturer who splendidly reveals the topic, but if your listeners disagree with this, you should change something. Otherwise, your success will not happen, and you'll be disappointed. Therefore, the main idea of the survey should be aimed at improving the effectiveness of feedback and correcting your work based on the information received. How to achieve this goal?
Use different types of questions
Sure, there are traditional forms with a first and a name of an attendee, and other personal data (age, gender, etc.). To talk about other questions, two types of them are most common.
The first are questions in the style of polling, but they have some difference from the usual polling in real time – a user can choose several answers to each question. It is very important to formulate such questions in the most specific way. You shouldn't ask: "Was there something interesting in my presentation?" And suggest variants of "yes", "no", "not sure", "possible" or use a well-known Likert scale with points from 1 to 5 (Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree). You understand that this is about nothing. What is the benefit of answer "2" to the question about the interesting moments of the lecture, if you do not learn which specific moments were interesting and which ones were not?
That is why it is better to ask questions like: "Was the main topic fully discussed in this presentation?" or "Are you going to use the new knowledge in your work/study?". The students can answer these questions - yes, no, not sure, or choose a score point from 1 to 5.
In the same way, you will need a completely different form of the questionnaire to collect true impressions of your presentation, possible mistakes and shortcomings, clarifications and comments, criticism and appreciation. Include in your survey questions that require their own, lengthy answers. For example: "What was the most memorable moment in the presentation?" or "This presentation could be more interesting / effective if ..." or "In my work/study I will use information about ..." or "Name 3 points of presentation that surprised you." And so on.
Ask for any comments
Also you can ask your listeners to leave ANY comments and wishes about the presentation for the future. By the way, a combination of two types of questions can work well too. For example, you can ask the user to comment on his answer, if in he put 2 points or lower on some question in the poll part of your questionnaire. We are sure you will be interested to know why he voted this way, so you can make changes to the presentation and make it better.
Keep calm with the criticizm
Don't take critical comments too close. The majority of such comments will not make much sense to you - you'll be surprised what nonsense some listeners critisize (for example, absence of a coffee break every 30 minutes, or yellow chairs instead of white ones). But sometimes among the critical comments you can find such masterpieces that will help you greatly improve your work. So you should take them calmly, but read completely.
Think of questions as a listener
What would you like to tell the speaker about his presentation? What would you add or improve? Formulate questions based on your ideas as a potential participant in the presentation. You can use a scale of 1 to 5, you can use percent or any other units of valuation. And of course, do not forget about the forms of feedback.
Use technical help
PodioBox, the all-in-one presentation platform, can help you to convey surveys easily – whenever and wherever you want. You don't need tons of papers any more. You don't need to collect all information manually. PodioBox will do it for you. You need just to come up with questions and choose a form of poll or survey. You can convey it in real time and collect data immediately, you can provide it in the end of your presentation and get analytic information to make your next performance better. Feel free to act like you use to.
You don't need to install anything – just plug and play. Polling is available in the STANDARD package that you can try FOR FREE now, surveys is the feature of PRO and ENTERPRISE versions. You can ask us any questions on info@podiobox.ch
Good luck with your presentation!
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