Chico the Dog Goes to School

Well it’s time for puppy school.  He seems to like recess the best.  He didn’t do his homework.  I had to use the excuse that he ate his own homework.

It’s interesting to see the different ways people train dogs.  A lot of behaviorism, but there’s also a lot of treating them the way other dogs treat each other.  It’s sort of Pavlov meets the dog whisperer.  I let everyone now if he finally gets his PH.D. in rolling over.

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Measuring Behavioral Change – Level 3

Just continuing to look at the different ways people measure training.  Measuring behavioral change isn’t a bad one.  If you really know what to do look for, you should start to see changes being made after training.  Often creating  behavioral checklists and doing direct observation is a popular way of measuring at level 3. 

Here are the pitfalls.  First, when you divide things into behaviors you can loose how they work together.  You can do all the new behaviors but miss all the connections.  More than likely, participants begin to get better at these behaviors but haven’t yet reached a level of proficiency or mastery.  That takes a lot of time, practice and feedback.

Look at the example of learning to do great presentations.  You can train to a set of new behaviors in front of others during a presentation.  You can then look to see if those behaviors are starting to appear.  You should see some change.  This is a good thing.  However, to continue on to a higher level of proficiency won’t happen immediately.  In fact, the new behaviors can quickly dissappear under the pressure of doing things for real.

The solution is to look at how you can continue to build those behaviors and work on all the subtleties that may not be on the checklist.

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Testing for Knowledge

Uploaded on February 16, 2008 by Hyperscholar

In education and training we spend a lot of time and effort testing for knowledge. Some of it is even around application of knowledge. But here’s the rub. Knowing and doing are two very different things. I think it goes with the comment, if you’re so smart why aren’t you rich?

We see it all the time we’re someone does good on the test and poorly on the job and vice versa. Many people think this is all about test anxiety. In reality, it’s because of the major difference between knowing and doing.

Also knowledge tests are rarely about speed and fluency. In the classroom you have time to answer questions, on the job you need to respond quickly.

So two suggestions. If you need to do knowledge tests, put a fast time limit on it so it mirrors the pace of the job. Second, dump the knowledge tests and replace them with expert on the job observation.

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Does Training Evaluation Work?

by FernandoLins.com

This is a very popular discussion question.  It goes along with how do you actually measure training.  This is the first of a series of posts on the topic.  In this posts, I want to talk about the evaluation sheets that are passed out after every seminar, lecture or course.  It includes questions such as:

• How did you like the workshop?
• Did you get anything out of it?
• How did the instructor do?
• Did you like the lunch?

It’s a lot like a customer satisfaction survey.  It’s never a bad idea to ask customers what they think. 

However, I think the value of these evaluations is very limited.  Just liking something doesn’t necessarily lead to learning, skill building or real change.  This evaluation really won’t tell you if anything will have a lasting effect a day, a week or a month later.  Here’s an example,

One of the training programs that always gets great reviews is style training.  Style training comes in lots of different varieties and people like them.  Everyone likes to here good things about themselves.  However, being able to actually use this information to do anything significant on the job seldom happens.  In fact, it’s more likely to be misused.

So, the point is..it’s nice to have happy participants.  Much better than unhappy participants.  However, don’t confuse happiness with learning.

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Training Scorecard

Uploaded on June 12, 2005
by Hysterical Bertha

If you were to create a scorecard for senior executives relating to training, what would you put on it?  Let’s make it harder and limit you to five or less items.  Remember if it’s on the scorecard it needs to be measurable.

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