Posts Tagged ‘Training Evaluation’
IMPLEMENTING TRAINING EVALUATION: PERFORMING THE EVALUATION
With the evaluation plan in place and approval to proceed, implement the evaluation by using the following sequence.
- Choose the course you wish to evaluate ; it can be a new course design or a course that already exists. Note: this should have been done when you developed the evaluation plan.
-
Review the course to understand fully what it is, what it is supposed to teach, how participants learn the material, what business issues it addresses, who is to attend, how they attend, what pre-course preparations are in place, what post-course support mechanisms exist, who are the sponsors, what sponsors see as the purpose for the course.
- Form a committee to sponsor the evaluation and provide oversight while the evaluation is under way.
- Create evaluation protocols, develop the data collection instruments, and create models to analyze collected data for the evaluation. Developing evaluation procedures involves taking the approved evaluation plan and drafting the techniques, procedures, and instruments necessary to implement the plan.
- Collect quantitative & qualitative evaluation data as prescribed in the plan and using the data collection instruments. This phase of the training evaluation of entails gathering data to address the evaluation questions created in the evaluation plan. The goal is to obtain the right kind at the lowest-cost to answer the evaluation questions.
- Analyze the evaluation data and draw truthful conclusions and recommendations . In the analyze phase the meaning of collected data are interpreted. This phase uses the collected data to determine the conclusions for which the data supports and the amount of support the data supplies for, or against, those conclusions. Quantitative & qualitative data analysis procedures are employed.
- Create an Evaluation Report and Executive Dashboard. The purpose of this phase is to create the vehicles to communicate training evaluation information to stakeholders so that they can make use of the evaluation information for decision-making or purposes of accountability. This phase will generate an evaluation report and an executive dashboard detailing the results of the evaluation and the recommendations for to maximize the program’s impact.
Previous posts in this series:
Questions Evaluation will Answer
Elements in an Evaluation Plan
Evaluation Deliverables & Schedule
Coming up in this series of posts:
- Training evaluation and continuous improvement
- Training evaluation organizational readiness
As always, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic.
Getting Managers Engaged in Employee Training
So honored that training magazine just published my article on Getting Managers Engaged in Employee Training . This is one element of my Learning to Performance (L2P) approach. L2P is a complete training approach that combines learning, leadership and change management competencies to produce documented, sustainable results and value.
I hope you enjoy the article and I would love to hear what you have done in this area.
IMPLEMENTING TRAINING EVALUATION SERIES: EVALUATION DELIVERABLES & SCHEDULE
Evaluation Deliverables
Using the evaluation questions and other planning elements you have defined earlier, create a list of information that the evaluation needs to deliver in order to answer the evaluation questions. Specify when and how each item must be delivered. These are the elements of the evaluation. Add the deliverables to the evaluation plan, with an estimated delivery date. More accurate delivery dates can be established during the scheduling phase, which is next.
The Evaluation Schedule
Create a list of tasks that need to be carried out for each deliverable. For each task, identify the following:
- The amount of effort (hours or days) required to complete the task
- The resource that will carry out the task
Once you have established the amount of effort for each task, you can work out the effort required for each deliverable and determine an accurate delivery date. Update your deliverables section with the more accurate delivery dates. A common problem discovered at this point occurs when an evaluation has an imposed delivery deadline from the sponsor or steering committee that is not realistic based on your estimates. If you discover that this is the case, you must contact the sponsor/committee members immediately. The options you have in this situation are the following:
- Renegotiate the due dates
- Employ additional resources
- Reduce the scope of the evaluation
Congratulations! Having followed all the preceding steps, you should have a good evaluation plan. Remember to update your plan as the evaluation progresses and measure progress against the plan.
Previous posts in this series
Questions Evaluation will Answer
Elements in an Evaluation Plan
Coming up in this series of posts:
- Performing the evaluation
- Training evaluation and continuous improvement
- Training evaluation organizational readiness
As always, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic.
IMPLEMENTING TRAINING EVALUATION SERIES: QUESTIONS EVALUATION WILL ANSWER
A training evaluation is successful when the needs of the stakeholders have been met. A stakeholder is anybody directly or indirectly impacted by the evaluation. As a first step, it is important to identify the stakeholders for your evaluation. It is not always easy to identify the stakeholders of an evaluation, particularly those impacted indirectly. Examples of stakeholders for training evaluation are as follows:
- The Head of the Training and Development organization
- Key executives from various business units or staff functions (note: these may be represented by a Steering Committee or other such body)
- Instructional designers, course developers, and instructors (internal or external)
- External training suppliers (to a lesser extent)
Once you understand who the stakeholders are, the next step is to establish their needs. The best way to do this is by conducting stakeholder interviews. The questions that you ask stakeholders can depend on (1) who you are talking to and (2) how they fit into the overall picture. When formulating stakeholder questions, ask yourself the following:
- What do you want to find out?
- How many people can you interview?
- What will you do with the data to help guide the evaluation?
- What is the underlying reason for asking a specific question?
Some questions that you may wish to use with the stakeholders are:
- What business issue(s) is this training going to help in solving?
- Why does this issue exist?
- Why do you want an evaluation?
- What kind of information would you like to see from the evaluation?
- What decisions will you make based on this evaluation information?
- What is your timetable for getting evaluation information?
- How would you like to see it and receive it?
- Who else should I talk to?
Take time during the interviews to draw out the true needs that create real benefits. Often stakeholders talk about needs that aren’t relevant and don’t deliver benefits. These can be recorded and set as a low priority. Once you have conducted all the stakeholder interviews and have a comprehensive list of needs—is to prioritize them. From the prioritized list, create a set of questions the evaluation will answer.
Previous posts in this series:
Coming up in this series of posts:
- Elements in an Evaluation Plan
- Evaluation deliverables
- Evaluation schedule
- Performing the evaluation
- Training evaluation and continuous improvement
- Training evaluation organizational readiness
As always, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic.
IMPLEMENTING TRAINING EVALUATION SERIES: GETTING STARTED
So you’ve decided that you’re going to do a training evaluation, and, yikes, it is your first one!
First, answer these questions:
- Will the evaluation be used in deciding whether or not to move forward with training?
- Why is the evaluation being done; that is, what decisions does the company want to make during the evaluation?
- Who are the key stakeholders who should receive evaluation reports? What do they want from the evaluation?
- What elements of a evaluation will provide the data to aid in the decisions that you and/or stakeholders want to make?
- When is the information needed?
- What resources are available to conduct the evaluation? Can a Steering Committee be formed to aid with the evaluation? Will internal resources be used or will you employ external evaluation resources?
- Is funding available? What projects will be delayed or not done if the evaluation is implemented?
- What existing evaluation practices are in place? Can they be leveraged and used in the evaluation? Will this evaluation replace some of these practices?
The answers to the questions attempt to get at the purpose of the evaluation and what is prompting it. Implementing your first training evaluation can be a bit intimidating, but, as with any effort, it gets easier and quicker as you do it. First, you need a plan of action—the Evaluation Plan . The key to a successful training evaluation is in the planning. Often, evaluation planning is ignored in favor of getting on with the evaluation work. However, many people fail to realize the value of an evaluation plan in saving time and money and preventing problems.
Coming up in this series of posts:
- Questions training evaluation answer
- Elements in an Evaluation Plan
- Evaluation deliverables
- Evaluation schedule
- Performing the evaluation
- Training evaluation and continuous improvement
- Training evaluation organizational readiness
As always, I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic.