Online Evaluation Forms for Online Clubs - WordPress for Toastmasters*

WordPress for Toastmasters now includes web forms you can fill out to give written feedback to a speaker, eliminating the need to upload, download, and email back and forth files. The completed evaluation will be emailed to the speaker and saved to the user’s progress report page on the website. (A simpler version for clubs on Easy Speak or some other software is available here).

I’ve been learning about how operating an online club is different through my work with Online Presenters, and this strikes me as an opportunity to fill an unmet need.

A Pathways project PDF translated into an online form.

It strikes me as foolish and awkward for members of a club that does all its business online to require people to follow a paper-based process for evaluations. Besides, a form I complete online is much more likely to be readable than one I download, print, scribble on, scan, and email. And expecting everyone to know how to edit PDFs, which are essentially digitized paper documents, is unreasonable.

Forms corresponding to speech projects in the basic and advanced manuals in the “old” Toastmasters program most of us are still going through are available, adapted from “evaluation guides” documents available on the Internet that give just the evaluation prompts from the manuals.

I’m showing a Pathways example above. So far, I only have forms for a couple of Pathways projects, but see below for details on how you can help with my crowd sourced approach to filling in the gaps. Although Toastmasters International classifies online clubs as undistricted, and undistricted clubs will be among the very last to get Pathways, Online Presenters already has dual members asking to do Pathways speeches, even though they will need to get credit for them in their other club. Providing a written evaluation is one way of giving them the documentation they will need to share with their land based club VPE.

When evaluating a project for which no specific form is available, you will get a form with three generic prompts commonly used in Pathways —

You excelled at
You may want to work on
To challenge yourself

— plus a space for entering additional comments.

Even when a project-specific form is available, it may still make sense for the speaker to email the evaluator with background information about the goals of the project, but I will recommend that members of my online club complete the written evaluations themselves through the website.

Here is a mockup of a completed form, as it would be displayed for printing. The same content is sent to the speaker via email.

Adding and Editing Forms

All the evaluation forms are stored in a centralized repository at wp4toastmasters.com and provided to individual websites as a cloud service. Site editors and administrators have access to a screen that allows them to add or edit content for the forms, as shown below. If you find an error, or you can add a project that is not yet covered, your edits will be shared with all other WordPress for Toastmasters users.

I found it was possible to copy and paste much of this content from PDFs, like those being distributed to members in the Pathways programs or the evaluation guides developed by Toastmasters members. Pasted in content does require some cleanup, and you need to understand how this text-based form editor works.

A simple prompt that appears on the form over a text entry box, like “You excelled at” would be entered on a single line under Speech Prompts.

Multiple choice prompts, like those that ask you to rate the speaker on a 1 to 5 scale, are entered with the introductory label separated from the choices, and each of the choices separated from each other, using the | symbol.

Example:

Here is what that looks like as a prompt on the form (the actual label text is a little more than I’m showing above).

The evaluator filling out this form checks off the most appropriate choice and can also enter a comment.

Potentially, some offline clubs could also find this useful for members who are more comfortable typing than writing their written evaluations. I suppose one danger is the online format gives you an opportunity to be longwinded. My recommendation would be to give written feedback the speaker will find meaningful, perhaps covering points you didn’t get to in your aural evaluation, then stop.

Let me know what you think.