Martin and All, When we were in person we started doing a charge for the two-day workshops, but the fee was provided back to them in the form of a meal card to use on campus. It helped with no-shows. For our smaller workshops, this is not the case, and we do have an attrition rate of half or more at some points. Even today, I think about 40 of 60 showed up for a Terminal workshop I did.
We tend to get a lot of postdocs in our workshops, but they are a rapidly rotating group, and so we usually have enough new users to drive the training forward. In the past I would have probably opened more things up to the public and paired with a public library, to see if I could find more users. Cheers, Zac Zachary W. Painter, MSLS, NREMT Engineering Librarian, Stanford University [email protected] | 1.650.885.1793 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4588-7843 ________________________________ From: Brian Ballsun-Stanton <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2021 15:22 To: discuss <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [cp-discuss] Best platforms to advertise workshops We at MQ always charge a fee for in-person these days -- enough to cover lunch and snacks (AU$35 or so). People are quite reasonable about the nominal purpose/fee and I agree with Toby that it dramatically reduces no-shows. -- Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University ORCID<https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4932-7912> | Book a meeting with me<https://calendly.com/brian-ballsun-stanton> | Room B656, Level 6, 25/B Wally's Walk ________________________________ From: Toby Hodges via discuss <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 14 April 2021 10:55 PM To: discuss <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [cp-discuss] Best platforms to advertise workshops Hi all, (Apologies as we threaten to take this thread further away from the original topic of attracting more attendees…) Adding a fee can also improve attendance In a previous role, we had some success with only the threat of a no-show/late cancellation fee. Honestly, and largely because of the administrative burden mentioned by Mario, this was an empty threat that we would not follow through on. But it had a noticeable effect when we introduced it, cutting our no-show/late cancellation rate from ~30% to <5% … Cheers, Toby On 14. Apr 2021, at 13:13, Mario Antonioletti <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi Nadine, We have thought about this but the prospect of managing a refundable/non-refundable fee has always put us off. Our colleagues in the ARCHER team at Edinburgh have a variant of this which apparently works very well. People are accepted on the proviso that if they do not attend without cancelling they pledge to give a nominated amount, £5 or £10, to some charity. Apparently people do comply and donate though I am not sure if it improves attendance (I will have to ask). That might be another model that might be worth thinking about though you will have to chase people up who did not attend. Even if it does not improve attendance you get a warm fuzzy feeling that any empty seats did not totally go to waste, Mario On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, BESTARD CUCHE Nadine wrote: Hi, Adding a fee can also improve attendance, from here: "Attendance In general, it seems that people are more likely to show up if they’d paid money to be there. Some community members have recommended that people pay a registration fee that can be refunded to them if they show up. Obviously, charging for your workshop won’t guarantee that everyone shows up. Thus, whether or not your charge for your workshop, it’s important to communicate the value of what you’re providing to your potential audience. If people can see that they’re really going to get something useful out of the workshop, the more likely that they show up!" Best, Nadine ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ From: Mario Antonioletti <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: 14 April 2021 10:38 To: discuss <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Subject: Re: [cp-discuss] Best platforms to advertise workshops Hi, As Giacomo said earlier, whom I work with, we have not seen a decline with places filling up pretty quickly. The bigger problem we face is with no shows which can go up to 33% anecdotally which is a shame as there are waiting lists so someone not notifying us potentially excluding someone else in a waiting list who would have attended. You say you mainly target postgraduates but you could also go for, and you probably already do, final year undergraduates who may be undertaking project work which could benefit from software skills - some of these will go on to become postgraduates but those that go to join the workforce could also benefit from the upskilling. Mario On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Martin Dreyer wrote: > This email was sent to you by someone outside the University. You should only > click on links or attachments if > you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe. > Hi Sumana, > > We have seen a decline even before the pandemic. We have run a few campaigns > to see if we can better get the > word out, but I do know that a lot of our intended audience has been > experiencing the overwhelming task of > moving a lot of their work online. > > This, along with virtual meetings, and working almost completely in physical > isolation is most definitely a big > factor in attendance as well. So it is something to take into consideration. > > Although, I still think it should not be that difficult to fill an online > workshop for 15 people seeing that we > mostly try to get Post Graduates as they are the ones that will bring in the > biggest change in the near future. > > Regards > Martin > > On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 9:29 PM Sumana Harihareswara > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > Martin: you mention that you are in constant decline with workshop > sign-ups. Over what period? In > particular, were you seeing this decline before the pandemic started? > > I have seen anecdotal data from multiple different online event > organizers/presenters that, in the past > few months, attendance has declined. This crosses disciplines and audiences > -- weekly religious services, > one-off programming trainings and presentations hosted by a for-profit > platform, a conference-style > speaker series, a regular meditation meetup, and so on. The explanation I'm > hearing is: people are a bit > overwhelmed by the quantity and duration of online events and are trying to > cut down to just the > essentials. > > -Sumana Harihareswara > > This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries > including community activities, > upcoming events, and announcements. Some other lists you may also be > interested in include discuss-hpc, > discuss-r, and our local groups. Visit > https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/ to learn more. All activity on > this and other Carpentries spaces should abide by The Carpentries Code of > Conduct found here: > https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html > > The Carpentries / discuss / see discussions + participants + delivery options > Permalink > > +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Mario Antonioletti:EPCC,Bayes Centre,47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT | | Tel:0131 651 3534|[email protected]<mailto:3534|[email protected]> | +---------------------------------------------------------------------+ -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries including community activities, upcoming events, and announcements. Some other lists you may also be interested in include discuss-hpc, discuss-r, and our local groups. Visit https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/ to learn more. 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