{"id":1969,"date":"2014-11-14T13:47:14","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T21:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nnlm.gov\/evaluation\/blog\/?p=1969"},"modified":"2019-09-24T10:13:30","modified_gmt":"2019-09-24T17:13:30","slug":"liberate-conversations-through-liberating-structures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/2014\/11\/14\/liberate-conversations-through-liberating-structures\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberate conversations through Liberating Structures"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nothing beats qualitative (non-numerical) data collection methods for getting a high volume of rich, interesting information from project participants and stakeholders. The downside is that these methods are resource intensive, so you usually are limited to involving a relatively small number of participants in conversation.<\/p>\n

But what if you want to collect a lot of qualitative responses from a lot<\/em> of people?<\/p>\n

If you do, check out the Liberating Structures<\/a>\u00a0website. It provides step-by-step instructions for activities to engage large groups in conversations for planning and evaluation. \u00a0The website offers a menu of 33 activities with extensive planning details, plus ideas for combining activities into an almost unlimited number of group discussion formats.<\/p>\n

I participated in a Liberating Structure<\/em>s activity in Denver last month when I attended the Quint*Essential Conference, hosted by five Medical Library Association chapters. Staff from National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN\/LM) regional offices invited all conference attendees to generate and evaluate ideas for future network initiatives. It was a high-energy activity that engaged more than 100 people in providing bold ideas for future activities.<\/p>\n

The beauty of Liberating Structures<\/em> activities is that the guidelines include how to document conversations so meeting facilitators will end their exercises with actual data. In some cases, the data can be quickly analyzed. NN\/LM facilitators\u00a0were able to compile and report results from the Quint discussion in the exhibit hall later that day.<\/p>\n

I want to thank Claire Hamasu, the Associate Director of the NN\/LM MidContinental Region, for pointing me to the Liberating Structures<\/em> web site and including me in the Quint Conference activity. I personally look forward to trying more of these activities and hope other readers are inspired to do so as well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Liberating<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nothing beats qualitative (non-numerical) data collection methods for getting a high volume of rich, interesting information from project participants and stakeholders. The downside is that these methods are resource intensive, so you usually are limited to involving a relatively small number of participants in conversation. But what if you want to collect a lot of… Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2959,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8ICUo-vL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2959"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1969"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6589,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1969\/revisions\/6589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.nnlm.gov\/nec\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}