Dipping Toes into Mobile, Thanks to Mobile Commons
At our recent Social Media Boot Camp kickoff event on Long Island, we completed evaluations through text messaging on our phones. Yes, the prevalence of smartphones (iphone, Blackberry, etc.) means that more and more is going mobile. For example, the recent success of Twitter is largely due to the fact that many users participate via their mobile device, not (or more than) their computer. Like the rise of broadband made online video possible, the rise of smartphone use is driving a whole new world of mobile connectivity, information, advocacy and action.
Mobile evaluations on an iPhone
Thanks to generous support from Mobile Commons, we designed our evaluations via text message to model this, help participants experience this sort of mobile activity, and to make data collection easier for us! Mobile Commons set up a short code and keyword. When participants send the keyword to that number, they got the first question. Rate on a scale of 1-5 … type 4 and hit send. Next question pops up. And so on. And on the backend, we have a spreadsheet of data that’s easy to crunch, sort, and process.
I learned about this when NTEN did their session evaluations with Mobile Commons at their last conference. I really didn’t believe how easy it would be until I tried it.
Mobile Commons does great advocacy campaigns with their product. At our “Facebook, Twitter, Mobile, What’s Next?” session at the GA next month we’ll be learning to text-to-pledge fundraising campaigns too.
As Dru Greenwood, head of SYNERGY at UJA Federation of New York said in her closing comments, “and, I just sent my first text message!” Many heads nodded. In fact a decent handful of people had just sent their first text, including some Blackberry users!
Hmmmm. What do evaluation experts have to say about this? I imagine that they have no idea. I guess I am concerned about what the down side is – not to be a nay sayer but if it completely takes the place of either paper or web based surveys – do you lose anything with the new medium?
Thanks for your question, Bradley.
First, I would welcome the input from an evaluation expert! Next step for me: see if any research on this exists.
Just to be clear, we asked 10 questions rated on a scale of 1-5 in this mobile evaluation. Technically, you can have a scale of 1-anything, and/or ask for people to type comments. We chose numerical answers since it would help us crunch the data from 60 participants. Second, we had reflection sheets on the tables, where participants answered a number of other open ended questions with traditional paper and pen. Thus, the 1-5 scale via text message was not the only feedback we received.
We did feel that by capturing their responses while they were still in the room we’d get more participation and more accurate reflections than a post-session follow up survey, though we’ll also be conducting those through the year as the program progresses.