Resumen de Opinion:: Formative Evaluation of Study Skills Workshops ‐ an Unsolved Problem
We have recently planned and run a series of three examination preparation workshops for Open University students who are geographically isolated from study centres The design of the workshop has changed each time we have offered it, the outline and the inputs have remained the same but the nature of the tasks suggested between inputs has been modified and would be further modified if and when we run the workshop in the future The feedback from students has been positive throughout and would not of itself have led to changes Indeed the greatest volume of positive feedback came from the first group, in what we have deemed the least satisfactory of the three versions of the workshop We judge that this arose because these students came to the programme with the experience of an academic year of skills study work behind them and so were able to take much from it, and contribute to it in good measure, as a consequence of that experience It is also likely that, having seen the event proceed more fruitfully in our opinion on subsequent runs, we now deem it less satisfactory on the first run than did the students who experienced only that version It will be apparent that we rated our judgement of the need and scope for improvements to be more accurate than that of the participants We are aware that our decision merits scrutiny, which is our real priority and purpose here Our concerns for the coming academic session are the need to develop and use effective methods of formative evaluation, to obtain the type of constructive feedback which we require, not only for this but also for our wider programme of workshops on a range of study skills For that reason we have found it thought provoking, although not yet constructive, to look carefully at the intuitive process of revision which we have followed in this fairly simple case
