The depth and quality of evaluations typically varies greatly between organizations. Many organizations, for both face-to-face and online learning, ask very basic evaluation question such as: “Were you satisfied with this training?” While basic questions can give an overall reaction to the training, they do not get at deeper issues such as whether the participants truly learned anything of lasting value and whether they will actually implement and use their learning in the future. Instead, basic evaluation questions often ask questions mainly relating to participant satisfaction. Another basic evaluation criterion is to assess completion rates as a measure of satisfaction.
More in-depth, higher level evaluation questions delve into high level issues such as the learning experience of participants and implementation plans for what they learned. Higher level evaluation would ask questions such as “What did you learn?” and “How will you apply what you learned?”
Higher level evaluations sometimes also track participant response to the training over time. For example, an organization might conduct a follow-up survey with participants three months after the initial learning event to learn if in fact participants were actually implementing what they learned and whether their learning had indeed proved to be relevant to their needs over time.
The University of Georgia has prepared this overview of Donald Kirkpatrick's four levels of evaluation (reaction; learning; behaviour; results): www.stfrancis.edu/assessment/Kirkpatrick_1.pdf
As well, for a more in-depth discussion of types of evaluation, the Council on Foundations has written an informative article called “Evaluation Approaches and Methods” which is available at: www.cof.org/Learn/content.cfm?ItemNumber=1379.
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