As many of you know, we Garden Professors justify our existence as faculty members every year through annual reporting. Blogging is one of the newer educational opportunities that most university systems haven’t quite figured out how to measure and evaluate.
So we’re taking matters into our own hands. I’ve created a short survey to assess our effectiveness in outreach education in the blogosphere.
The more feedback we get, the easier it is for us to make the case for continuing this effort. (And feel free to suggest other questions or metrics we should include. This is a first attempt on my part to create this feedback tool.)
Thank you all for a great year!
Hurrah! Great survey, Linda.
Readers: please, please, please take a moment to fill it out.
So far we’ve had 25 people fill it out! I’d love to get at least a hundred. Readers, you can do it!
Can you share the results of the survey? One of my comments was “the professors are willing to discuss views that are not their own and not delete comments that disagree with them. This give a more balanced view then other blogs that only show comments that they agree with.” I think that this is important.
Kenny, that’s a great idea. I will compile results and share them in a posting in January.
Good survey! It’ll be interesting to see the results when you post them. Happy New Year to all The Garden Professors!
you have my 2cents and please dont ever stop!!!!!!!!
Happy New Year and Good Gardening to All
One of the other metrics you can include would be the stats from this blog. Your webmaster may have Google Analytics installed and be able to track things like the number of visitors, the amount of time they stay here and what other pages on the WSU extension website they visit.
If he or she doesn’t have it installed some kind of stats you can request it and use the metrics next year.
Also, while he/she is putting around with the blog see if they can fix the way the URLs in the comments are rendered. If you click on someone’s name it gives you an error page.
P.S. You may want to start a Twitter/FB accts to compliment this blog. I found you through Ron Wolford’s Tweets who is sort of the social media ambassador for the U of I Extension.
You should have “Who are you” in the survey. Landscaper or other professional, avid gardener, professor, etc. I was thinking you should have “where are you” but Washington might not like to see other states.
I forgot to include in my answer to the survey that one of the affects I’ve had is that I recogize trees that are healthy or planted properly or improperly now. I don’t exactly run out and plant a tree
every day – but I have more knowledge then before I began reading the blog.
You have had a major impact on stakeholders with your outreach efforts using new social networking tools for this important consumer horticulture community of practice. Overall the performance of ongoing responsibilities as individuals and team members significantly exceeds expectations.
What became of the survey results? I’ve looked through all the January posts, and they’re nowhere to be found. Hollow promises, or did you receive comments “that disagree” with you?
Benjamin, I’ll be sure they go up this month. We all had annual reviews to complete in January and this just got lost in the shuffle. Thanks for the reminder.
Your 16 February post contains some harsh language regarding some of your survey responses, but does not permit comments. You invite critics to “send your thoughts on to my supervisors,” but you do not provide the contact information to do so.