Conference reviews are similar to course or seminar reviews since they concern reporting on the value of a learning experience to business's operations. Therefore, you can use the course review template as a rough outline for a conference review. Just keep in mind at least five notable exceptions:
Purposefulness. Courses aim to target specific learners' needs; therefore, learner participation is not only encouraged by required. The trainer should focus not only on learners' knowledge but on their behavioral change, for instance, to present better executive briefings or to increase their number of deal closings. On the other hand, conferences generally have set agendas, compelling attendees to come prepared with their own business aims for appearing at the conference.
Decorum. Courses tend toward informality and stress comfort level to maximize participation. But every conference detail from the registration process to the individual events to the luncheon to the post-attendee survey has a greater level of formality than the course or seminar.
Depth. While a course review covers one specific training event offered to an organization, a conference review may cover multiple talks, symposia, panels, workshops, and clinics, all of reportable value.
Variety. The topics course will be limited to a specific topic, whereas a conference may cover a broad range of topics of industry interest, ranging from the employee to equipment to materials to products and services to vendors to clients to the environment to regulator factors and so on.
Participation. Course attendees participate in discussions and assignments, and they are often evaluated based on their performance. Conference attendees are less active in their participation. They act mostly as knowledge receptacles for the conference speakers.
Other descriptive reports in this series are:
