June 2005 Evaluations
Many of you are familiar with Kirkpatrick's levels of evaluation in regard to training programs.
Level 1 - Reactions
Level 2 - Learning
Level 3 - Behavior/Transfer
Level 4 - Results
While most companies will happily allow and encourage a level 1 and 2 evaluation, some are hesitant to go as far as level 3. So, while most companies are willing to receive feedback on how the learners "felt" about their training session and are willing to implement a knowledge assessment of some sort to determine if the learner gained any knowledge from the training session, why would companies be hesitant to identify if a learner was actually using the objectives learned?
This month's question: Have you successfully implemented a level 3 evaluation?
Tell us about your success story
- Who were the learners?
- What did they learn?
- What time frame was involved in the learning process and evaluation process?
- In what environment was the evaluation implemented, how was the evaluation implemented?
- Why do you believe this effort was a success?
Feel free to disclose, or not, the company information.
Hopefully, as a result of this discussion, we will have some great ideas regarding successful implementations that others can review and apply in their own environments.
In my experience it is not the company that is the problem. It is the middle manager who is totally focused on the objectives given to them by upper management. Those objectives usually don't include anything realistic to do with training. Objectives related to training that are included are "attendance" objectives. Everything else is short term, bottom line focused.
Manager: So please don't bother my people with any measures that will take their precious time. We have goals to make this year and my people are overloaded. I did hear they liked the training, though!
Upper managment fails to demonstrate (or incent) to middle management the value of accurate post-training measures. (Comment this)
Thanks,
Allen (Comment this)