Table of Contents

Start Worrying (A Lot) More About Level 1

I generally consider Level 1 evaluation forms to be a waste of time and energy, so when I read Todd Hudon’s The Lean CLO Blog post this week, Stop Worrying About Level 1, I cheered and said YES! And…

Todd’s point is right on. The most valuable learning experiences are generally uncomfortable moments and generally not even in the training room. Even in the training room, trainers can often tell by observing their audience’s behavior (not by using an evaluation form) when participants are engaged.

The best argument I can think of for Level 1 feedback is that it provides institutional memory. What happens if you – the rock star training facilitator of the organization – win the lottery and retire to your own private island in the Caribbean tomorrow? Or perhaps something more likely happens – you need to deliver the same presentation a year from now. Will you be able to remember the highlights (and the sections of your lesson that need to be changed)?

This point was brought home to me earlier this week when a co-worker was asked to facilitate a lesson someone else had presented back in the spring. I shared the lesson plan with my co-worker and his first question was: do we have any feedback on this session?

Searching through my files I realized that my disdain for Level 1 feedback led me to create a quick, too-general post-training evaluation form for this meeting and it didn’t yield any useful feedback for this particular session.

In addition to questions about the overall meeting, I should have asked specific questions (both Likert-scale style and open-ended) about each session during this meeting. Yes, this makes for a longer evaluation form, and if we’re going to ask learners to take the time to fill out the forms anyways we may as well get some useful information from them!

I absolutely agree with the idea that the best, most powerful learning experiences happen on the job. And in a world where formal training experiences are still part of our annual professional development experience, we training professionals need to ensure we continue to build better and better learning experiences for our audiences, both through noting our own observations of the session as well as crafting more effective ways of capturing our learners’ reactions.

What are some questions you’ve found particularly helpful on post-training evaluation forms?

Let me know in the comments section below (and perhaps it will be the subject of a future blog post!).

 

Articles Similar to Start Worrying (A Lot) More About Level 1

How to create a training plan in under 10 minutes

Using a lesson plan template (which is the most downloaded resource from this blog) can help give you structure. Using Soapbox can save you all sorts of time (and still give your presentation some structure)!

airline flying through a sky with palm trees
Job Aids
Brian Washburn

3 Job Aid Design Lessons from a Beach in Hawaii

An effective job aid might be able to replace the need for actually training someone. At the very least, it can be distributed as part of a training to help people remember a rule or how to do something new. Drawing inspiration from “job aids” we see every day when we walk around can make our job designing effective job aids easier.

facilitator competency rubric
Facilitation
Brian Washburn

Training Delivery and Facilitation Competency Rubric

A rubric is a way to assess performance with a standard set of evaluation criteria. The next time you need to assess the performance of someone delivering training (even if that someone is you), you may find this rubric helpful.

Brian Washburn

Is this the world’s most effective role play?

When it comes to your training participants, two of the dirtiest, or perhaps scariest, words you can say during a session may be: role play. In today’s podcast, John Crook, Head of Learning at Intersol Global, offers some thoughts on how to make role plays more authentic and robust.

Subscribe to Get Updates from Endurance Learning

Brian Washburn, Author

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll send you the latest updates from our blog. Thanks for following!

activities cookbook

Download the Training Activity Cookbook

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Endurance Learning Activity Cookbook.

Download the What's Possible in L&D Worksheet

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the What’s Possible in L&D Worksheet.

What's possible in L&D

Let's Talk Training!

Brian Washburn

Brian Washburn
CEO & Chief Ideas Guy

Enter your information below and we’ll get back to you soon.

Download the Feedback Lesson Plan

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the lesson plan as a PDF.

feedback lesson plan
MS Word Job Aid Template

Download the Microsoft Word Job Aid Template

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the Word version of this template.

Download the Free Lesson Plan Template!

Enter your email below and we’ll send you a Word document that you can start using today!

free lesson plan template
training materials checklist

Download the Training Materials Checklist

Enter your email below and we’ll send you the PDF of the Training Materials Checklist.

Subscribe to Endurance Learning for updates

Get regular updates from the Endurance Learning team.