3 Attendance
3.1 Executive summary
Counts of workshop attendance are only influenced by whether a workshop was presented as part of course instruction. Format (virtual, in-person, hybrid) and marketing did not change attendance counts. Even topics (Chapter 5) didn’t impact attendance counts.
3.2 Per-workshop attendance by format and request
3.2.1 Statistical analysis
For scheduled workshops, format and year impact attendance numbers in a conditional inference tree analysis. Virtual and hybrid workshops get generally higher numbers. Within in-person workshops, the most recent two years (2023-2024) have lowest numbers attending per workshop.
format (in person vs virtual vs hybrid)
calendar year (starts in January)
semester (spring, summer, or fall)
workshop topic
multi-day vs single day scheduling
When we examine all workshops (included on-request visits to classes and on-request workshops), we add the following variables:
workshop was in a course
requested or not
Whether a workshop was in a course (where students are presumably required to attend) was the most dramatic factor in increased attendance numbers. For workshops not in a course, virtual and hybrid workshops have the highest attendance.
3.2.2 Format
Ignoring all other factors, the workshop format was not significantly different. You can also see this with a different visual analysis using notched box plots. The overlapping “notches” here show that there is no difference between median attendance for scheduled (not on request, not in a class) workshops by format.
3.2.3 Workshop attendance over time
The median number of people at each scheduled workshop has declined slightly per calendar year from 2021-2024. Workshop attendance at courses is higher, presumably because most classes have to reach a certain enrollment to “make”.
3.3 Total people reached
The total number of people reached has no strong trends since 2021.
# A tibble: 3 × 8
Is.Course `2018` `2019` `2020` `2021` `2022` `2023` `2024`
<chr> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int> <int>
1 Not a course 190 496 128 257 311 293 188
2 Within a course 8 134 162 39 205 233 201
3 Total 198 630 290 296 516 526 389The proportion of total people reached each calendar year in courses peaked in 2020, declined, and then has increased each calendar year since 2021.
