Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Knowing When an Old Course Has Reached Its End

A course can remain in a learning catalog long after its business value has faded. Employees may still enroll, completion rates may look acceptable, and stakeholders may assume that keeping the program available costs little. In reality, outdated content can consume maintenance time, create conflicting guidance, and weaken confidence in the learning function.

Using Predictive Evaluation to determine when to retire an old course gives leaders a structured way to make that decision. Instead of relying on opinions or a single satisfaction score, the organization examines evidence about adoption, knowledge transfer, workplace application, business impact, and the cost of continued support.

Retirement does not always mean deleting a course immediately. It may involve replacing it, reducing its scope, converting it into a short learning burst, or moving essential information into a performance support tool. The right decision depends on what the data predicts about future value.

Why Course Retirement Needs A Business Case

Training teams often preserve legacy courses because they have historical importance, recognizable titles, or committed internal sponsors. Some programs also remain active because no one owns the decision to remove them. These reasons can keep low-value learning in circulation even when processes, technology, regulations, or job expectations have changed.

An old course should be evaluated as an operating investment. Its value includes the benefits created by improved performance, while its costs include design updates, facilitator time, technology support, learner time, and the risks associated with inaccurate content. A course that has modest participation may still be essential, while a popular course may produce little workplace improvement.

A clear business case also helps learning leaders communicate with executives outside learning and development. This stakeholder communication guide can support conversations that connect training evidence with operational outcomes rather than presenting activity metrics in isolation.

Signals That A Course Is Losing Value

The first warning sign is declining relevance. Subject-matter experts may report that procedures have changed, managers may stop recommending the program, or employees may need information that the course does not address. Frequent workarounds, repeated clarification requests, and poor assessment performance can indicate that the content no longer supports the job.

A second signal is weak transfer. Learners may finish the course but fail to use the targeted behaviors consistently. Low manager observation scores, limited workflow adoption, and stagnant performance measures suggest that completion is not translating into capability. Predictive Evaluation examines these relationships before the organization commits more resources to the program.

Content age matters, but age alone should not trigger retirement. A ten-year-old compliance course may still be accurate and valuable, while a two-year-old technology course can become obsolete quickly. The central question is whether the course remains aligned with current work and whether its expected future contribution justifies its upkeep.

Evidence To Gather Before The Decision

A retirement review should combine learning data with operational evidence. Useful inputs include enrollment and completion trends, assessment results, learner confidence, manager observations, application rates, error patterns, customer outcomes, productivity measures, and business targets connected to the course.

Financial information makes the forecast more practical. Estimate the cost of maintaining the existing program, updating its content, retraining facilitators, supporting the platform, and taking employees away from productive work. Then compare those costs with the likely value of retaining, redesigning, replacing, or retiring the course.

Evidence Area	Questions To Examine	Possible Retirement Signal
Relevance	Does the content reflect current policies, tools, and workflows?	Major portions are inaccurate or rarely used
Adoption	Are employees and managers choosing the course when needed?	Enrollment and voluntary use continue to fall
Transfer	Are target behaviors visible on the job?	Completion does not change workplace practice
Business impact	Are performance indicators improving?	No credible link to current business outcomes
Cost	What will continued support require?	Maintenance costs exceed forecasted value
Alternatives	Can the need be met more efficiently?	A job aid, coaching, or learning burst is more suitable

Forecasting The Alternatives

Predictive Evaluation becomes especially useful when several choices are possible. The analysis can compare the expected outcomes of keeping the course unchanged, refreshing selected modules, rebuilding the experience, replacing it with another intervention, or retiring it altogether.

For example, a long software course may have high completion but low retention because employees need small, timely reminders at the moment of work. Converting key content into brief, searchable resources could improve access while reducing seat time. Research on learning burst retention offers relevant context when considering that type of redesign.

Forecasts should include confidence levels and assumptions. If business impact cannot be measured directly, use a defensible chain of evidence: intended behavior, observed application, operational indicator, and estimated financial or customer effect. This creates a transparent basis for deciding whether continued investment is sensible.

Setting A Retirement Threshold

A retirement threshold defines the conditions that trigger action. It might include a sustained drop in adoption, a material change in the process supported by the course, an unacceptable accuracy risk, a negative return forecast, or the availability of a more effective solution. Thresholds should be agreed upon before strong personal preferences influence the review.

The decision can be expressed through a simple value equation: expected future benefit minus total future cost and risk. If the result is negative, retirement becomes the responsible option. If the result is uncertain, a limited pilot or targeted measurement period may provide better evidence than a full rebuild.

Governance is important after the decision. Assign an owner, document the reason for retirement, identify affected audiences, preserve required records, and communicate what employees should use instead. Removing a course without providing a valid replacement can create a capability gap.

Making Retirement Part Of The Learning Portfolio

Course retirement should be a normal portfolio practice rather than an exceptional event. Establish annual or semiannual reviews for high-risk and high-cost programs, with more frequent checks for content tied to fast-changing tools, regulations, or customer expectations.

A balanced portfolio may include foundational courses, manager enablement, performance support, coaching, and short-form resources. The objective is not to reduce the catalog at any cost; it is to direct learning investment toward interventions that improve capability and business results. Organizations can explore a broader approach to this work through enterprise learning services.

Use these practices to make retirement decisions consistent:

Review course relevance, adoption, transfer, and impact on a defined schedule.
Include operational leaders and subject-matter experts in the evidence review.
Compare retirement with refresh, replacement, learning bursts, and performance support.
Record the decision criteria, forecast assumptions, risks, and follow-up measures.
Recheck outcomes after retirement to confirm that the replacement meets the business need.

When an old course no longer earns its place in the portfolio, evidence makes the decision easier to defend and safer to implement. Apply Predictive Evaluation to your learning inventory, identify programs with declining future value, and turn retirement into a deliberate step toward stronger organizational performance.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.