session overview

Learning evaluation

In this session Donald Clark opens the debate on L&D's interest in proving the impact of learning. What is our ongoing interest in it? What are the models available, and are they any use? And what, practically, can we do to find the right way to show the use of learning in our organisations. It's an essential question at any point, but when economic times are hard, everyone is expected to prove the value of what they're doing, and L&D is no different. As always with one of Donald's sessions, be prepared to be challenged, made to think and - hopefully - to come away with practical, useful thoughts on establishing meaningful evaluation in your own organisation.

P1: Re-thinking our obsession with evaluation

Donald Clark, Board Member, Ufi

In the real world, says Donald Clark, training evaluation is done because some senior manager wants a document to justify a budget. Tracy Sitzman's research shows the futility of Kirkpatrick's level 1, level 2 is usually a knowledge test of short term memory and that levels 3 and 4 rarely achieved and seldom understood. Instead, in this fast-moving world of informal learning, it's time to establish a different way of describing and measuring the value of training.

• How to avoid the 'evaluation game'
• The value of short pre- and post- event qualitative evaluation
• Why Kirkpatrick's behaviourism fails today's organisations
• Making evaluation fit the needs of decision makers
• Evaluating learning in your organisation.