Fortunately, limesurvey access returned the following morning. We set up 10 accounts, went the computer lab at the Belarusian State University Fundamental Library, and were ready to go. July 3 marks Independence Day in Belarus, the day that Soviet troops liberated Minsk from the Nazis some 65 years ago. The day is traditionally celebrated with a military parade, and is the beginning of a long weekend. There was considerable interest in ending the workshop early on Thursday, July 2, to take advantage of the long weekend. It seemed that many people have access to a dacha, a cottage in a rural area that has been in the family or in the spouse?s family, and leave Minsk for the weekend. This early closure meant dropping the exercises on SMART Goals and Balanced Scorecard, but these exercises may have been closer to management techniques than assessment techniques. During the week, I focused on evaluation and assessment, and while techniques for using the data to generate goals are certainly helpful, these management techniques are perhaps a separate program.
The limesurvey exercise worked very well, and should I do this workshop again, I will give this exercise much greater emphasis. The lack of formal instruction was no problem. I went through a sample question, and then the participants designed their own three question survey, clearly having understood everything that was expected. I would make this group assignment more ambitious, and have the participants come out of the workshop with a working survey in Russian for their library.
This workshop concluded the formal aspect of the program. There was a briefing with the IRC staff, but I was not very helpful with constructive criticism since in my view the logistics had been organized beautifully.
The next three days were spent seeing sites in Belarus.
Computer workshop using limesurvey - Belarusian State University Fundamental Library
Terry