Good2Talk is a post-secondary helpline funded through the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities. It provides Ontario’s post-secondary students with bilingual, confidential and anonymous professional counselling, information and referral services 24/7/365. Good2Talk is a partnership among four organizations: ConnexOntario, Kids Help Phone, Ontario 211, and the Ontario Centre of Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health (the Centre). 

The evaluation of Good2Talk was led by the Centre with support from each of the partner organizations. The purpose of the evaluation was to determine if Good2Talk was helpful to post-secondary students in addressing their mental health, general well-being and substance use needs. We collected data from campus faculty and staff through a survey and focus groups as well as from Good2Talk callers through a telephone survey. The success of the caller survey was dependent upon the participation of counsellors and information and referral specialists who were providing the service at each of the partner organizations. Because of their direct contact with the callers we needed them to invite callers to participate and transfer them to the telephone survey. It was important to us to share the evaluation results with them, not only because of their involvement in the evaluation but to let them know what thework they did each day meant to the post-secondary community.

We had multiple knowledge mobilization strategies for sharing the evaluation results with the public,but we wanted a way to creatively show counsellors and information and referral specialists the results they had helped achieve.After investigating a few options, we created a whiteboard video animation using VideoScribe software. We chose this method for a number of reasons. First, becauseit provided an engaging way to tell our evaluation story, second, we had to consider that our audience was people who worked round the clock at three different organizations. We needed a way to provide information that could be easily accessed at their computers and in a short time frame, but that wasn’t just an email.VideoScribe was perfect given those parameters.Third, it was easy to use. Technical experience was not required in order to be able to produce a scribe successfully.  However, we discovered that creating a scribe can be time-consuming and may be better suited to shorter, more illustrative messages or stories. Despite these challenges we ended up with exactly what we wanted; an engaging way to share the evaluation story back with those who were imperative to our success.

Check out the VideoScribe below!

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