Evaluation of training
I am an active user of social media (something we will explore here in more detail later), and one of the places I enjoy spending time is at LinkedIn. There is this very useful function where you can ask and answer questions about more or less about anything. The other day there was an interesting question put forth regarding how to evaluate training, and I gave a short outline of best practice as I see it. In short I rely on the model of Kirkpatrick, but use a more updated and business focused approach than what he originally postulated.
I am going to keep this short and straight to the point!
Ideally you plan the evaluation of training at the same time as you plan the training itself. As for the evaluation itself, best practice is to evaluate it at five levels.
Level 1 – Reactions : Immediately after the training session is finished you should give out “happy sheets”. Basically allowing the participants to give their feedback on what they thought of the training, the setting, the trainer and similar. Whereas this doesn’t tell you whether the training itself was effective, it is useful as it can help improve the training, and also as it gives the training face validity.
Level 2 - Learning: At the start and end of the training you need to give the participants a test that is reliable and valid on the topic they are receiving training on. With the pretest you will establish a baseline level of KSA. Any positive changes to the test scores when doing the test after the training should indicate that the training was effective when it comes to knowledge.
Level 3 – Application: After some time you would also want to evaluate whether the skills learned during the training is actually put in use. One thing is to establish straight after the training whether someone knows the training material. Another thing is actually whether someone is using the knowledge while at work. You would want to look at how often at to what extent a skill/knowledge is being used.
If you manage to evaluate training at these three levels, you are already doing a much better job than the great majority. However you still would want to look at level 4 and 5.
Level 4 – Business impact: You should also evaluate whether the training actually had a positive effect on the business. Did the sales training actually increase someone’s sales?
Level 5 – ROI: Let’s be honest, this is the real question in many cases. Did the business get a return on investment?
There is of course much more to each level of evaluation, and I should return to this topic later, but feel free to contact me should you need any more guidance right now.
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Comments
Hi Greg,
thanks for your feedback. Kirkpatrick’s training model is a very good starting point when designing and evaluating training, and as you point out – not all learning is immediate.
In fact, an often forgotten element in training design is what is known as “transfer of learning”. In short, it means that we need to also think of factors that facilitate the use of the new skills/knowledge acquired through training.
For instance, if you send someone for training on a particular software, yet once back there is no opportunity to use this software, there will be no transfer of learning – eventually the skills will be forgotten.
As I am quite passionate about this topic, I reckon I could go on for ever 
Nice blog btw
Hey Omar,
This is a great overview of the Kirkpatrick model. I didn’t have too much exposure in graduate school (my field is industrial-organizational psychology), and this is a great resource.
What I like in particular is that it shows that the consequences of learning are not all immediate. There are the first levels – the reactions and the learning. Of course though most learning is done on the job, in applied settings. So the learning really only gets deeper as a person moves an idea from the meeting to their office.
The blog is great. Keep up the great work.
Greg Talbot
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