Evaluation in Instructional Design
Evaluation is the systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of a learning or training process by using criteria against a set of standards. The evaluation phase is ongoing throughout the ISD process. The primary purpose is to ensure that the stated goals of the learning process will actually meet a required business need. Thus ,it is performed during the first four phases of the ISD process:
- Analysis: Is the performance problem a training problem? How will implementing a learning platform positively impact a business need or goal? What must the learners be able to do in order to ensure the required change in performance?
- Design: What must be learned by the learners that will enable them to fulfill the required business need or goal
- Development: What activities will best bring about the required performance.
- Implementation: Have the learners now become performers (have the skills and knowledge to perform the required tasks)?
It is also taken one step farther by ensuring the learners can actually meet the new performance standards once they have completed their training and returned to their jobs. And secondly, ensuring that the business need or goal is actually being met.
The most exciting place in teaching is the gap between what the teacher teaches and what the student learns. This is where the unpredictable transformation takes place, the transformation that means that we are human beings, creating and dividing our world, and not objects, passive and defined. - Alice Reich (1983).
Evaluations help to measure Reich's gap by determining the value and effectiveness of a learning program. It uses assessment and validation tools to provide data for the evaluation. Assessment is the measurement of the practical results of the training in the work environment; while validation determines if the objectives of the training goal were met.
Bramley and Newby (1984) identified five main purposes of evaluation:
- Feedback - Linking learning outcomes to objectives and providing a form of quality control.
- Control - Making links from training to organizational activities and to consider cost effectiveness.
- Research - Determining the relationships between learning, training, and the transfer of training to the job.
- Intervention - The results of the evaluation influence the context in which it is occurring.
- Power games - Manipulating evaluative data for organizational politics.
A literature review for the 17 year period to 1986 suggested that there is a widespread under-evaluation of training programs, and that what is being done is of uneven quality (Foxon, 1989). However, with today's economy and organizations looking to cut programs that do not work, this lackadaisical attitude towards training evaluation is changing, but not necessarily towards ROI (Return on Investment), but rather towards ensuring that training supports the business units' needs. This is primarily because stakeholders do not view training as a profit center but rather as a strategic partner who supports their goals.
References
Bramley, P. & Newby, A. C. (1984). The Evaluation Of Training Part I: Clarifying The Concept. Journal of European & Industrial Training, 8,6, 10-16.
Foxon, M. (1989). Evaluation of training and development programs: A review of the literature. Australian Journal of Educational Technology, 5(2), 89-104. http://www.ascilite.org.au/ajet/ajet5/foxon.html
Next Steps
Go to the next section: Formative and Summative Evaluations
Return to the Table of Contents