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Telling Training's Story

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Telling Training's Story

Evaluation Made Simple, Credible, and Effective

Berrett-Koehler,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

To get the most out of your training programs, evaluate whether they’re achieving their goals.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Many factors influence whether training succeeds in providing employees with a new tool or skill. Robert O. Brinkerhoff explains how to evaluate the success of your training programs and shows you how to distinguish between well functioning areas and those that need improvement. The book explains the “success case method” of evaluating training. Brinkerhoff presents real-world case studies to show how various companies used the program and explores the results. getAbstract recommends this book to trainers and to organizations that want a process for proving the value of training.

Summary

The “Success Case Method” (SCM)

The success case method evaluates the results of training by finding and interviewing those who succeeded at the training and put to work what they learned. However, it goes a step further, looking at the people who failed at the training and gained no benefit from it. Understanding two pivotal realities about training is important:

  1. The results of training are predictable – Evaluation teams usually discover that some people have great success with what they learned, some didn’t learn anything and most tried out a few new things and then returned to their previous behavior. Training never has a perfect outcome where everybody either fully uses their new knowledge or fails to apply it on the job at all.
  2. Training doesn’t work alone – Factors such as managerial support, scheduling and employee motivation often determine how well the training succeeds.

An SCM study has two major parts. First, identify which participants benefited from the training and which didn’t. Second, perform in-depth interviews with a sample from both groups. The purpose of the interviews...

About the Author

Robert O. Brinkerhoff, creator of the success case method, is professor emeritus at Western Michigan University, and has written many books about training and learning.

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    A. P. 8 months ago
    Learning and training. You should always go through your own training to see how it works before putting it into action.
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    Y. V. 9 months ago
    This was a very interesting book about learning training