Day 2

LDP & application of Kirkpatrick’s model

Level of Kirkpatrick

Application: How will you know?

Level 1: Reaction

To what degree participants react favourably to the learning event

By understanding that reaction evaluation is how the participants felt, as well as their personal reactions to the learning experience, I was able to capture this data with a reflection activity in my LDP which prompted learners to reflect on what they liked about the entire task as well as what they did'nt. Feedback on a Google doc is based on subjective personal reaction to the learning experience. There was also a Post-Task poll.

Here I know how important to know that the learners were not upset or disappointed, its important that people give a positive impression.

Level 2: Learning

To what degree participants acquire the intended knowledge, skills, and attitudes based on their participation in the learning event

To my best understanding, learning evaluation seems to be the measurement of the increase in knowledge from before to after the learning experience. In my LDP, this was clear in how the creation of the blog activity in which learners shared links and engaged with each other in group discussions. There was a provided rubric as a method of assessment of blog entries which offers reliable, clear scoring and measurements. Relatively simple to set up and mine data.

Level 3: Behaviour

To what degree participants apply what they learned during training when they are back on the job

Behaviour was a concept that required a lot of application for me to understand it. It seems the behaviour evaluation is the range in which learners apply the learning and changed their behaviour, and this can be immediately witnessed during the research task of my LDP in which learners were expected to research some post school options via provided links on a Google doc, then a discussion about the findings with fellow learners and a reflection was expected. It was surprising to see how many learners changed their behaviour about the research and their options after discussions especially amongst groups with different post school options. Here I ensured my assessments were subtle and ongoing, and all captured on the same tool (Google Doc). The Rubric for the Blog assessments ensured subjective judgement which can be observed by anyone.

What I do need to consider more is how the measurement of behaviour change is less easy to quantify and interpret than reaction and learning evaluation.

Level 4: Results

To what degree targeted outcomes occur as a result of learning event(s) and subsequent reinforcement

Results evaluation was a concept I also struggled with and seems to be the effect on the environment resulting from the improved performance of the learner, in my LDP its difficult to measure the impact until I consider a means of measuring the enrollments as well as the attitude adjustment of the learners after being made aware of how important an online personal brand is, perhaps consider monitoring continued use of Blogger entries. organisational key performance indicators. What I really need to consider is the challenge to i identify and agree accountability and relevance with the learners at the start of the task, so they understand what is to be measured, here I suppose the rubric helps. Also it seems, external factors greatly affect organisational and business performance, which cloud the true cause of good or poor results.

Table: The Kirkpatrick Model