TeenRC Survey Results are in and here are some of the results! Ready? Prepare to read!
- over half of you heard about TeenRC from a public librarian, but about 30% of you saw a poster or a bookmark, another 13% heard about us from a school librarian. 16% of you heard about us from "other" so we're super-curious to hear about what that was!
- most teens (2/3) spend less than an hour per week on TeenRC, but a bunch of you spend half an hour per day and almost 10% of those of you who responded spend an hour or more per day! We hope you're still getting your homework done! Well, I guess that was the summer, wasn't it? :D
- one third of you post reviews so that you can win prizes, and slightly more say that you would post reviews even if we didn't have prizes. 6% of you think our prizes are lame. Sorry. And about 20% of you had an opinion on the prizes that we didn't think of! What are you thinking? Please tell us!
- 2/3 of you read a lot and we didn't affect how much you read, and about 1/4 of you read more this summer because of TeenRC. We're pretty happy with that!
Here are some other suggestions you had, along with some comments from us in italics:
Prizes
- More prizes (We'll try! :D)
- More expensive prizes (Unlikely.)
- More libraries doing prize draws (Working on it.)
Contests, Chats & Events
- Wider variety of contests (Working on it.)
- More forum challenges (We'll ask Elphie!)
- Writing contests (Working on it.)
- More author chats (We'll see -- people hardly ever come!)
- More “big name” authors (We've tried. They're too busy for us.)
- Email notification of upcoming contests, chats & events (We can improve on that fo' sho'.)
Booklists
- More booklists (i.e. more genres) (Really? Like what?)
- More books on the booklists (Do you know that you can add books to the lists? Or are you looking for more suggestions?)
- Remove duplicates from booklists (Working on that at the moment.)
- Cover art (We can't -- sorry. It's either really expensive or we break rules that would get us sued. Neither option sounds so hot to us.)
- Some books too young for teens (It's true. We tried to coral them into the "Kids Books Teens Love" category, thoug. If you're finding more books that should be there but aren't -- please e-mail us to let us know their titles!)
- Showcase a “book of the day” on the homepage (Good idea. We'll see if we can get someone to take this on!)
- More options for sorting book lists (by most viewed, most reviews, book publication date) (Good ideas -- we'll see how much we can do.)
Reviews
- Higher standards for reviews. (We only sort of agree with this one. TeenRC isn't school so we're not trying to make it difficult to get reviews published. We want anyone who's read a book and thought about it to be able to post a review. We're especially open to ESL students and people who don't generally like reading very much. We want everyone to feel at home on this website -- both those who love reading and writing and those who just don't know they do. ;-) )
- Require teens to submit a review with a book so every book has at least one review. (This was supposed to happen. Our complicated posting process made it difficult so we're going to try to fix that).
- Takes too long for a review to be approved. (Sorry -- we're working on that. We think we've improved now.)
Forums
- Bring back off?topic forums (Not a chance.)
- Add more forums (Unlikely but we're taking suggestions if you have any -- not off-topics, though, okay?)
- Too many forums (On most days, we agree!)
- Enable one?on?one chat (like MSN) (Never going to happen. It's our great responsibility to keep you all safe on TeenRC and that means we have to avoid situations in which someone -- like an unauthorized adult -- could ask you where you live, who you are, or pull some other personal information out of you. We also have to prevent any kind of online bullying or weirdness. Therefore, we, the librarians, have to be in on every single online chat that happens through our website.)
Site Customization
- More options for customizing the look of the site (more backgrounds) (We'll see. The problem is that more backgrounds cost more $...)
- More options for creating custom avatars (There are other website for that, we think.)
Site Publicity & Teen Participation
- Increase number of teen members (We're working on it. We've got some things we're going to try to bring on more participants.)
- Advertise more widely (Okay. How?)
- Better poster and bookmark art (What? Come on! It's awesome! What could we do better?)
Site Usability
- Site too complicated (We agree -- this is the priority on our list of Things to Fix.)
- Difficult to navigate / easy to get lost (Yep. See above.)
- Need better help and documentation (Working on it. What kinds of things would be helpful to you?)
- Background makes text difficult to read (Sometimes it does, yes. We'll try to make it easier to read.)
- Graphics take too long to load (Not anymore, we hope -- we fixed 'em last month.)
- Make it more obvious how to submit a new book (Agreed. We'll try to make that process a lot easier for you.)
- Explain the workspace concept more clearly (Okay. We'll try to figure out a smart way to do that. We've heard from lots of you that it was confusing.)
- Registration process too cumbersome (Sorry! We'll try to improve that system for you -- and for new people registering.)
- Ability to display the site in other languages (French, Chinese) (That would be awesome but to be honest, we just don't have the resources to do that right now. Maybe someday!)
Well. That's it for now. Please post your questions and comments below -- or e-mail us: info@teenrc.ca or sabina@teenrc.ca. We're looking forward to your thoughts, suggestions, and everything!
HUGE thanks to all of you for filling out the survey. Some of you said some really nice things about the program and we thank you for all your thoughtful words and the awesome effort you've all put into making this website what it is.
*TeenRC admin bows to teens.*
These were edited, right? If not, you guys... you use big words. *nods off* cumbersome, difficult, display, options? :o My words sound so kiddy x3
Uhm, about "More options for customizing the look of the site" (more backgrounds) (We'll see. The problem is that more backgrounds cost more $...).
Why do more backgrounds = more money? Uhm, like those sites where there's a bunch of coloured squares and the one you pick is the one that's the background? Those are cool, lol, but hard to read lots. :o
And to all the people who submitted surveys: you guys are imaginative. Big words and awesome ideas. :o :D Awesome survey results. Yeaaaay! x3
The reponses were edited (by me) although many of you do use nice big words! I summarized points that came up again and again in the responses. Can't help myself with the big words - sorry. Once you learn them, it's hard to express yourself without them!
Wow! You guys sort all these surveys out knowing the percentage and other things, its incredible! It's so great to know what the surveys turned out! It was also fun to read this survey because there was always some extra things written in the brackets which is funny (in a good way, if you know what I'm talking about) Anyways, it was fun reading the survey, good job!
I have a suggestion about the better poster art and stuff (not that i think they don't look good!)
Would it be possible to have a poster contest? teens can send in a photocopy or a picture of a poster that they created, someone goes through them and picks a top, I dunno, 10 maybe, or 5. (there could be a limit of "this" many poster entries so time is limited or something, just to make it easier for the librarian/mod. I dunno) then they put the pics up on the site, and teens can vote on which one they like best! at the end of the voting period, a winner is announced, they get an email asking for a PDF or whatever is needed of the real thing, and as a prize, they can get their name on the poster for the year. or something. i dunno. yes? no? maybe?
Just a random idea. =)