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These articles are designed to stimulate training directors to increase their efforts in evaluating training programs.
Step I: Reaction
Reaction may best be defined as how well trainees like a particular training program. Evaluating in terms of reaction is the same as measuring trainees' feelings. It doesn't measure any learning that takes place. Because reaction is easy to measure, nearly all training directors do it. But in this writer's opinion, many of their attempts don't meet the following standards:
* Determine what you want to find out.
* Use a written comment sheet with the items determined in the task above.
* Design the sheet so that reactions can be tabulated and quantified.
* Obtain honest reactions by making the sheet anonymous.
* Allow trainees to write additional comments not covered by the questions designed to be tabulated and quantified.
It's important to determine how people feel about a program because training decisions by top management are frequently made on the basis of one or two comments From participants. For example, a supervisory training program may be canceled just because one supervisor told the plant manager that the program was "for the birds."
People must like a training program to obtain the most benefit. Cloyd Steinmetz, past president of ASTD, says, "'It's not enough to say, 'Here's the information, take it:' We must make it interesting and motivate people to want to take it."
It's important to measure participants' reactions in an organized fashion using written comment sheets that have been designed to obtain the desired reactions. The comments should also be designed so that they can be tabulated and quantified. The training coordinator, director, or other trained observer should make his own appraisal of the training in order to supplement participants' reactions. The combination of two evaluations is more meaningful than either one by itself.
When training directors effectively measure participants' reactions and find them favorable, they can feel proud. But they should also feel humble; the evaluation has only just begun. Even though a training director may have done a masterful job measuring trainees' reactions, that's no assurance that any learning has taken place. Nor is that an indication that participants' behavior will change because of training. And still further away is any...