The training is done...now what?

This semester I have been taking a course called the Evaluation and Assessment of Instructional Design. It discussed Kirkpatrick's Four Levels of Evaluation and Return on Investment. It was very useful but it got me thinking. What kind of evaluation methods do we use here?

Once the course is developed and put out on Plateau, do you ever get feedback on how the course was received? Did the students enjoy taking it? Did they actually learn anything? How do we know that what we're doing works?

"Measuring E-learning's Effectiveness" is an article that lists the five areas that must be measured in order to know if our training was effective:

• Enrollments. "Is the audience showing up?"
• Activity. "Are people moving through the course?"
• Completion. "Did they finish?"
• Scores. "How well did he/she score?"
• Feedback/Surveys. "Did they like it?"

These questions only account for the first two levels of evaluation, Reaction and Learning, but they are the stepping stones to determining students' attitudes towards the courses we are developing. We can't do our work in a vacuum; feedback is necessary for growth.

Be on the lookout for a CWD Idea Sharing meeting in the near future.

-Claudine