Mindful Metrics
This type of evaluation occurs during a program to support improvement, not just at the end.
What is formative evaluation?
This kind of question invites stories, not just scores — helping us understand the “why” behind feedback.
What is an open-ended question?
Protecting participants’ identities encourages honest responses — this is known as maintaining ________.
What is anonymity? / What is confidentiality?
“Great session!” sounds nice — but to really learn something, you need to ask for this.
What are the details? / What made it great?
Asking questions, we never intend to use creates this type of unused data
What is data without purpose?
Evaluation that starts with “why” instead of “what” shows this kind of thinking.
What is mindful evaluation? / What is intentional evaluation?
A colorful visual that illustrates the most frequently used words from comments.
What is a word cloud?
Leaders and facilitators can demonstrate this mindset by thanking people for feedback, even when it’s hard to hear.
What is openness to feedback? / What is a growth mindset?
“Not enough time” may indicate a mismatch between these two elements of session planning.
What are objectives and activities?
Too many evaluation surveys may lead to this.
What is survey fatigue?
When evaluation questions are built around what learners were meant to achieve, they’re aligned with these.
What are learning objectives?
When every response is glowing, it might mean people didn’t feel comfortable giving this kind of feedback.
What is honest feedback? / What is constructive feedback? (non-anonymous)
When people don’t feel safe, they may swap truth for politeness — and we lose this.
What is honesty? / What is valuable feedback?
More hands-on, please!” — a polite way of saying you might need less of this.
What is lecture time? / What is talking?
The question, “How satisfied were you?” tells you everything except this.
Why? Details? What happened? Reason?
If your evaluation questions only reflect what *you* think is important, you may need a moment of this kind of self-reflection.
What is checking my bias? / What is self-awareness?
When participants say they don’t feel comfortable sharing ideas or asking questions, it points to a gap in this foundational element of learning.
What is psychological safety?
When evaluation questions are written in plain, neutral language that everyone can relate to, they show this quality.
What is inclusivity? / What is accessibility?
When people say “The slides were confusing,” they usually mean there was too much of this on them.
What is text?/ What are words/information?
When you wait until the end for feedback, you may miss this opportunity.
Timely feedback to make change.
When evaluators stay curious, intentional, and aware of their own influence on the process, they’re practicing this kind of mindful evaluation.
What is reflective or reflexive practice?
Without this step, your report is just a pretty spreadsheet.
What is taking action? What is the implementation of change?
One core benefit of psychological safety: people feel comfortable doing this when something isn’t working.
What is speaking up? / What is sharing concerns?
I didn’t feel comfortable participating” isn’t a criticism — it’s an invitation to lean in with this.
What is empathy? / What is curiosity?
When every comment says “Fantastic!” and no one asks questions, you might fall into this false sense of success.
What is complacency? / What is thinking everything’s perfect?