assignment

Reasons for Not Evaluating

Reasons from McCain, D. V. (2005). Evaluation basics. Arlington, VA: ASTD Press, pp. 14-16.

Below are reasons to not evaluate, but there are things you can do to overcome these reasons!

· Click Edit (upper right on the tool bar) to get into edit mode.

· Add at least 2 ideas to the page to overcome one or more of these reasons for not evaluating. Please explain in enough detail that someone reading this wiki will be able to understand it!

· Add your name in parenthesis after your idea so we know who contributed which idea!

· Click Save (upper right on tool bar) to save your changes.

1. Evaluation requires a particular skill set.

· Doing evaluation requires no particular skill. It only requires a desire to look into it a course or program and ask the right questions that would answer the whether or not the course was effective. There are many tools that would help in doing an evaluation. (D. Clark)

· Skills can be learned. Learning to evaluate is simply another avenue of training. If the skills to evaluate do not exist in your organization then the training may need to start at the Trainer level before moving on to more organizational specific training, (D Casper)

2. Evaluation is not a priority.

· In order to make progress in any learning environment, it is necessary to initiate check points and measurements producing an evaluation of knowledge (Valle)

· Evaluation is never a priority until things are going bad and the reason is not clear, Evaluation helps us understand where the issues are. (Jim K)

3. Evaluation is not required.

· Currently, as students we are being evaluated to check in our progress ion order to measure our understanding of the tasks given. We get a grade, it is required for this course.(Valle)

· Why are you only providing what is required? Why not go a little further and make the training better? (J. Sprague)

4. Evaluation can result in criticism.

· In order to grow as a person or a company we all need criticism, of course this needs presented in a positive light and in a way that people can learn and grow. (Jim K)

· In today's culture where everybody gets a trophy or everybody gets an "A" no matter how they perform it is not "PC" to criticize someone and hurt their feelings! Criticism is what motivated me to succeed and go beyond just what is normal! We need to stop equating "Criticism" with "Fault Finding" and realize we do more harm than good by not pointing out shortcomings and errors. (D Casper)

5. You can't measure training.

· In my place of work in the industry, we had to measure training. Time was spent in educating employees into new ways to create a product, cost effectiveness, supply management chain and distribution. Measuring effectiveness of the training was in direct correlation with the success of the given product into market.(Valle)

· You can always measure whether or not the training was successful. The key is to look for the right types of measurements. It may be measured by an increase in sales, more customer satisfaction, or many other possibilities. You may have to get creative, but there is always some measurement that will reflect your training success or failure. (D Casper)

6. Too many variables are beyond your control.

· There must have been some evaluation done to identify that they variables are beyond your control. Why not conduct and apply those evaluation where it can make a difference. (J. Sprague)

· You don't need to control all the variables. Just select the top three and work on them, it is the low hanging fruit idea. (Brandon Lance)

7. The information is not available to evaluate.

· If the information is not available then it is up to the evaluator to seek out what information is needed, where that information can be found, and how it will be used for evaluation. The lack of information excuse reflects someone's lack of initiative (Laziness) in developing evaluation metrics and parameters. (D Casper)

· Their are many simple ways to gather information for an evaluation. Taking notes, surveys, observing how well students are doing on assignments and test, simply asking the students questions on how the course is going are all ways to gather information for an evaluation. (Aaron Lyon)

8. There is no system to track data.

· There are simple ways to gather data: from a simple paper tracking to electronic formats. (Valle)

· One great free tracking method is Survey Monkey. It is free survey were you can ask the students questions to find ways to improve the course. (Brandon Lance)

9. It costs too much to evaluate.

· Personally, the cost of not evaluating any tasks, or learning is an absolute disaster whether it is in educational or a business. The risk is having a stagnant situation where nobody can improve, received feedback on any tasks achieved. (Valle)

Evaluations can be done in many ways at a minimal cost. One way is to visually observe and take note on how things are being accomplished. Another way is to issue a survey requesting feedback on the positive and negative areas of a course. (Aaron Lyon)