As program director of an adult education program in the workplace, you have been asked by the training director of Wonderful Company to evaluate your own training program, which seeks to improve workers’ literacy skills in the workplace. You have hired an external evaluator to assist you. You have a two-year time frame in which to work, because the company received a grant from the state for the evaluation project. Discuss how you would go about developing an evaluation plan for this training program. Although you will not be submitting an actual plan, discussing the elements of such a plan and some of the decisions you would have to make will help you better understand the challenges and benefits of this type of research.
In your discussions, you should address the following questions, assuming that you had decided to follow the Kirkpatrick model:
What type of data would you collect at each of the four Kirkpatrick levels (reaction, learning, behavior, and results)? Don’t worry too much about specific instruments. Just focus on the type of data that you would collect and your reasons for doing so.
How would you ensure that your evaluation is utilization-focused?
How would you include both formative and summative data collection?
What research design(s) and method(s) would you use? (Don’t be constrained by the research methods that Kirkpatrick specifies at each level!)
State the strengths and limitations of your evaluation plan and the reasons that your supervisor should approve it.
You will not receive a separate grade for this discussion. Rather, your contributions will be assessed as part of your overall participation grade.
