Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right, 3rd Edition

Chapter 7

Did It Do Any Good? Evaluation

This chapter will help you to:

• Discover why evaluation is important
• Find the key to appropriate evaluation
• Consider the applicability of the types of evaluation to your training situation
• Master the evaluation of self-instructional programs
• Create a revision plan for your training

............Up to this point you've analyzed, designed, developed, and implemented, but there is still one more step. Sooner or later, more likely sooner, someone is bound to ask: “Did it work?” Did your training do what it set out to do? Was it any good? These questions and others are what evaluation tries to answer. To finish our house metaphor, this would be the inspection before you move in.

WHY EVALUATION?

Evaluation often reminds you of the old proverb concerning the weather. Lots of people talk about it, but few seem to be able to do much about it. You can probably see the main reason why. By now you've already spent a lot of time and energy on this training, and you may not want to invest more. You may also have been given new priorities, new training to do, or simply gone through any of a number of other business changes that say to you: “You don't have time to mess with evaluation.”

However, you must evaluate. You might as well not have analyzed, or developed consistent materials, or implemented properly if you do not evaluate, because the end product is the same: training that is suspect, that may be good or may not—you just don't know.

You evaluate ...