Adapting and Evolving your Course for Effectiveness (or Value)

The following two links give the basics regarding ADDIE and for Kirkpatrick's 4 levels of evaluation and are authored by some of the topmost experts.

The following link takes you to the California's UCDavies educational shared resources page for a description and examples of simple "Smile Sheets".

Level 2 of the Kirkpatrick training evaluation model involves evaluating how far training programme participants have improved their knowledge and skills as a result of the training. The key questions that evaluations at this level can seek to answer include: Did the participants learn what was intended to be taught?

Viewing an employee's behavioral change post-training can be uplifting as well as frustrating. In the first instance, you see them applying the training to their work and see them soar above where they were, or the second instance, they continue to work the same with no change or worse, their behavior diminishes. The results of what you see can give you a helpful insight into adapting your training to ensure that all employees flourish.

In level 4 of evaluating, you again are looking to the employee, but mostly you are looking at the outcome of the productivity of the employee. If your training is successful, the company will see an increase in numerous metrics - production, customer satisfaction, sales, less days absent/tardy, etc. These are the fundamental goals for training, to invest into the employee to help the company succeed. The second study is to look at some metrics produced by the company. There are certain metrics that can show whether the employee or employees are utilizing the training. Based on the needs and scope of the training, you can tell if the numbers are getting better, worse, or staying the same.

By looking at these levels of the trainees and the company-generated outputs, you can assess the effectiveness and usefulness of your training course. To not do so will eventually render the training and training department as useless as the stakeholders will not see a return on the investment of maintaining the program. By helping the trainees work better and smarter, they produce greater products with less interaction with supervisor and less defects. When these all are in place, the metrics that the company generates will grow, thus allowing the stakeholders to put more faith in your and your training courses.