I am always thinking of ways to make training transfer and Adoption Evaluation better, more efficient, valid, reliable, and meaningful to participants. I have decided to pilot the use of a decision diary as a post-course transfer activity and then use that data collected as part of my Adoption Evaluation work with one of my clients.

Before I employ this, please take a few moments to look at what I am thinking about. Do you have any suggestions? Have you done anything like this before? If yes, what were your lessons learned?

My definition of a decision diary for training transfer is … a record of decisions made by the participant post-program associated with the use of skills learned, together with any assumptions made and the reasoning employed. The record is used to derive lessons to assist future decision-making and evaluation of the Adoption Rate of predicted on-the-job behaviors.

I provide participants with an on-line system where they can easily capture their decisions using the form below. During the course, we train participants on how to use the system and when to update. I recommend 5 minutes at the end each day for 2-4 weeks.

Weekly I compile the dairy entries and send them to each participant for their records.  I then compile all the data and use it as part of my Adoption Evaluation data collection methods and include it in my analysis.

So what do you think?  Worth the effort?  Doomed for failure?  Any thoughts you can provide would be greatly appreciated?