33: How to Use Strategy and Evaluation in Training, with Bonni Stachowiak

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

Be sure to align with the organization’s mission, vision, and goals:

• Requires that you have at least a basic understanding of strategy (long-term planning).
• There are many approaches to strategy.
• A good person to know about in the area of creating competitive advantage is Michael Porter.

Steps to needs analysis:

• Determine the problem(s) by finding a key business lever that will make a big impact on the organization if it gets fixed/improved. People pay more attention to fixing problems than they do to making improvements.
• Affirm that the problem really is the problem (work with stakeholders to see if there is consensus on the key problem(s); engage at all levels of the organization, as there can often be a disconnect between senior management and the line staff who typically engage directly with customers).
• Develop solutions – training is not always the solution, though people tend to go to it as an “easier” way of addressing deeply rooted cultural issues.

Two broad types of evaluation:

• Formative: satisfaction with the training itself. It is the most common form of evaluation conducted since it is the easiest and least expensive way to assess.
• Summative: extent to which real change has occurred. This is the least common form of evaluation conducted because it is hardest and most expensive – but most important for determining whether ROI has occurred (Jack Phillips is a good person to read on the subject of training ROI).

Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation (Kirkpatrick is considered the “father” of training evaluation):

1. Reaction: people’s reaction to the training; did they like it or not?
2. Learning: what knowledge was gained as a result of the training; what did people learn?
3. Behavior: the extent to which behavior was changed as a result of the training; what’s different now?
4. Results: real and lasting change that occurred as a result of the training; what results have been achieved?

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