How to organise Quality Events Dear locals, The Quality Assurance Committee s role is to help and support the locals in organising quality events. Quality is the term frequently used in education but often not well understood. It can mean different things depending on your country, your institution, even the person you are talking to. Quality can be established in different ways. Below, we will define which understanding we give to quality inside of AEGEE, and its impact on the educational experience of our members. We are also providing you with some tools to help you improve the quality of the events you want to organise. WHY DO WE WANT TO ENSURE QUALITY OF AEGEE EVENTS? AEGEE provides learning space for our members, through different processes, from attending event, to being an active volunteer in the organisation. Members are gaining knowledge, skills and changing their attitude thanks to their participation in our association. The wide range of activities (exchanges, conferences, case studies, meetings..) that our locals are organising is the bulk of this learning, and contributes greatly to the development of members learning. But if we want this Non Formal Learning to be recognised externally, Youth Organisations also have to prove that they are ensuring quality and that there is a minimum quality standards ensured by the organisation.
Up to now, AEGEE locals are organising events on their own, without really receiving any guidelines, not only on how to organise an event, but how to organise a QUALITY event. By ensuring that all locals are aware about what the Quality Criterias for their event, we are gradually improving the quality of the events we are organising, and thus, ensuring a greater impact of them on the participants. QUALITY INDICATORS, OR HANDBOOK FOR LOCAL TO ORGANISE QUALITY EVENTS Below, we would like to introduce you with the list of quality indicators that we have developed for AEGEE. You should not see this indicators as additional work for you, but rather as a help and support for you to make sure that your event matches the quality criterias of AEGEE events! The indicators are covering both the logistical and technical aspect regarding the organisation of the event, as well as the content of your programme. They are proposed to you in a chronological order, with concrete example to help you identifying yourself throughout the process. The different steps are presented in chronological order, thus, we advise you to follow each one of them carefully. Enjoy reading and we are hoping to cooperate with you on a successful event! The Quality Assurance Committee Antonis, Chucky, Hilde, Lucille, Patrick, Réka, Rita and Yagmur
1. DEFINING THE OBJECTIVES OF YOUR EVENT Before starting out to plan your event, you need to think before WHY you are organising it. We shouldn t organise events just for the sake of organising events, but we should think before about the reason behind, and what we want to achieve with this event. To define the objective of your event, first, think about - the need: which need do you cover with the organisation of your event? - the target: who do you want to reach? - What is the knowledge, the skills or the attitude you want your participant to have after attending your event? Once you have defined the objective of your event, take some time to reflect if it is relevant to the current need of AEGEE members? What about the latest society s development? How does your event contribute to it and to the work and values of AEGEE?
2. MAKE SURE THE OBJECTIVES OF YOUR EVENT ARE REFLECTED IN THE CONTENT Too often, events organisers are defining the objectives they want to achieve, but they do not make sure that the content they prepare really ensures the objectives to be fulfilled. Once your objectives are set, you should then spend some time thinking: what kind of activities, workshops, sessions, you could do, in order to fulfil your objectives. Do not start by listing the activities you want to do, without having thought before about what you want the participants to learn! Once your programme is ready, cross check once more that each objective you set for your event is covered by one or several activity of the programme.
3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT METHODOLOGY When you prepare the programme of your event, it is really important that you reflect upon the methods that you want to use. The methods are a tool for you to have your message go through. According to the type of your event (conference, Training or fun event) you will have more or less workshops sessions. However, in all cases, we strongly encourage you, when thinking about methodology: - to think that participants all learn different ways (some need a theoretical approach, some other need more practical experiences, some are more emotional and need to feel and get inspired etc), thus you should propose different kind of methodologies, which can satisfy as many people as possible. - Use Non Formal Education methods to reach your aim: think about some games, group work, brainstorming sessions, which enable the participants to share their ideas, to confront point of views etc. In case you need concrete ideas of methodologies, you can always contact the QAC or the Academy, who are now building a database with methodologies!
4. MAKE SURE THE NECESSARY RESOURCES ARE AVAILABLE It is important that during the preparation phase and during the event itself, the material and human resources needed for the good implementation of this event, are available. 1. Start listing all the resources that you will need to organise your event: - Technical resources: lodging, food, material (flipchart, pens, post-its - In case it is a TC organised with another body, set a deadline to receive the information regarding the needed material ), transport from one place to another one, workshop places, promotion material, Welcome pack - Human Resources How many people should be in the team to prepare the event How many people will you need during the event 2. Set deadlines for you to solve all those aspects 3. Have a person responsible for the logistic before and also during the event
5. BE SUSTAINABLE! In AEGEE, one of our core value is sustainability of our resources, and therefore, we need to apply this to our own work. A good management of the resources also mean that your event is not using too much resources when it could be avoided. When preparing your project, consider the resources you are planning to use, and examine them. Are they sustainable enough? Do you use them in a sustainable way? in a cost-effective way? How do your participant travel to the event? Have you informed them enough in advance? Have you informed them about sustainable ways to reach your city? Are you buying material that your local already has? Can you borrow material instead of buying it? During the event, also think about proposing garbage separation and explain it to the participants!
6. TRAINERS /FACILITATORS /ORGANISERS HAVE THE NECESSARY COMPETENCES It is really important that the people who are going to be in charge of the content (trainers, experts, facilitators or organisers, according to the kind of event), have the relevant skills and competences to do so. Make sure that they (the people responsible for the content of your event) have the adequate knowledge and skills for this. You can ensure this by: - cooperating with a thematic body in AEGEE - having a selection process for the content team - asking CV and/or previous experiences, references by somebody else on the given topic The content of the event will represent more than 70% of the quality of the event, thus you need to be careful about who is in charge of it!
7. TRAINERS /FACILITATORS /ORGANISERS ARE PREPARED While the previous indicators regards the selection of the people responsible for the content, with this indicator, we want to stress the need for a good preparation phase. You need to have enough time allocated to prepare the content of an event in terms of workshop, sessions etc. 1 month would be ideal. The content-responsible should also have several meetings beforehand (online (skype, google hangout..) or physical, according to the context). Moreover, to be well prepared, the content responsibles need to have been informed about the resources available on the spot (material, arrangement of the room etc) and to be in communication with the local hosting the event.
8 THE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN ALL ACTORS IS MANAGED EFFECTIVELY Communication is really important in all phases of the project. A quality event will also happen if and when there is an effective, constant and inclusive communication within the different actors involved in the preparation of the event. First of all, you should list already all the actors involved in the organisation (can be just the local, but can also be done in cooperation with another body, external trainers etc etc). Now, define how will people involved in the organisation of the project communicate? Do you establish mailing list (one?several), skype meetings? Do all people involved have the necessary resources and information regarding how the communication will take place? Is everybody confident with the common language established? Clarify those aspects before starting your work, it will make your life easier and will avoid frustration and miscommunication.
9. LEARNERS CAN INFLUENCE THEIR LEARNING PROCESS AND ARE AWARE OF THE LEARNING OUTCOME During the event, (especially for a Training course of content-focused event) learners should be given space and also tool to understand what they are learning and what they want to learn. It is really important that you make sure that the participants are: - aware of their learning (by sharing with them what are the objectives of the event and/or of each session in terms of knowledge you want to share, - Hear expectations from members before or the first day of the event - The people responsible of the content are flexible and can adapt to the needs and requests coming from the participants, so participants can influence the learning process. This is not Formal Education, namely, if participants are willing to focus on one aspect more than another, we have to be flexible and adapt to their needs
10. EVALUATION Your event has passed, yet it is not finished! It is really important to carry out the evaluation phase! Why the evaluation is so important? - because it is the time to thank the people who have been involved (volunteers, partners etc) - because it is a chance to come back to what has happened and learn from mistakes - because you need to measure the impact of your activities and reflect: have the objectives you have set at the beginning of the event, been achieved. In order to proceed with the evaluation, you can use several methods, such as evaluation by survey (paper or online) as well as using evaluation tools where participant can share a bit more their perspective on the event. For the evaluation among organisers/trainers, you can have a meeting, or a skype call, giving each others perspective on what worked well or didn t. You can learn a lot out of it.
Come up with idea of event Do a needs analysis and confirm that the event is relevant to the context/ organisation Form a team to organise the event Work on the logistics Work on the content Send a request to Quality Assurance Committee at least 6 month before at least 5 month before at least 4 month before at least 4 month before at least 3 month before at least 3 month before
Reply for Quality Assurance Committee Send the call for participants Deadline for participants to apply Send info pack to participants Event Evaluation survey to Quality Assurance Committee Evaluation phase at least 3 month before at least 2 month before at least 1,5 month before at least 2 weeks before maximum 1 week after maximum 2 weeks after
Thank you for your attention! In case you have any questions, contact us at: quality.events@aegee.org