Real Optimism for Learning Evaluation: Innovations That Are Changing Everything

Learning evaluation has been baked into every learning-development model ever created, but our evaluation practices leave much to be desired. We as learning professionals don’t even like what we’re doing. In 2018, Learning Guild research found that 52% of learning professionals wished they could substantially change what they are doing. Just this year, TiER1’s Learning Trends 2022 survey found that 64% of learning teams wish they could make modest or substantial improvements in their learning evaluations. We learning professionals need practical evaluation approaches ungirded by the science-of-learning wisdom we are using in our learning designs.

In this session, we will share two recent innovations that are transforming learning practices and sparking optimism that learning evaluation can be practical, research-aligned, and effective in providing valuable information to learning teams: LTEM, the Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model, a framework that adds learning wisdom back into the learning evaluation process; and the Performance-Focused Learner Survey approach. The session will engage you in reflecting on measurement goals, assessing own evaluation practices, and evaluating learner survey questions. Attendees will explore research on evaluation and on learning and examine in detail the problems of numeric and Likert-like scales, look at the research on whether learners are good judges of learning, and pose the question: What should we focus on when we ask learners questions? We’ll look at the strengths and limitations of the Kirkpatrick Four-Level Model.

In this session, you will learn how to:

• Avoid some of the most common mistakes in learning evaluation
• Design performance-focused distinctive questions to survey learners
• Use LTEM to transform your learning evaluation
• Re-energize your learning team with new innovative evaluation approaches