Training Evaluation at Kern

Some exciting revolutionary research happening at Kern to evaluate effectiveness of courses. Currently, there is no mechanism in the eLearning industry to evaluate the quality and effectiveness of eLearning courses developed. Most training mangers pick up eLearning courses from the shelf or commission courses without any definite idea about how effective the course will be.

We at Kern Communications are doing a research to analyze how effective are these courses and do these actually meet the desired objectives. The research findings will also present a list of criteria that training managers can adopt to quickly evaluate the courses that they buy/commission. This research will be conducted using Kern’s Evaluation Methodology. At Kern, we have formulated an evaluation mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of eLearning courses. The evaluation mechanisms help us discover whether the courses are effective, learnable, and meet their objectives.

Expert evaluation of eLearning courses is based on the proven evaluation technique of Heuristic Evaluation or Cognitive Walkthrough used by usability experts. In this evaluation technique, we evaluate whether the course is effective or not based on how effective the learning will be for the learners.

The evaluation is conducted independently by 3 or more experts and the findings are collated and debated at the end. The evaluation process involves the following steps:
1) Define the learners and their profiles
2) Specify the learners' goals and learning objectives
3) Create a scenario based on each learning objective. Perform a cognitive walkthrough of the course for each scenario.
4) During the cognitive walkthrough, note down the roadblocks, problem areas, good points, best practices, etc that the evaluator encounters.
5) Judge the good and bad points based on how they map to proven learning principles and theories.
6) Collate the independent findings of at least 3 or more experts and publish the report.

Training managers and eLearning companies can participate in this research by sending their courses (strictly under NDA) to us for evaluation. We can share research findings of the expert evaluation with the respective companies. We can also share the consolidated report with all the participants. The company names will be strictly kept confidential. To know more about Kern’s Evaluation Methodology, visit: http://elearning.kern-comm.com/. We will be happy to do a sample expert review for your existing or on-going training program and send you a report. Do send in your requests to rashmi@kern-comm.com and we will get back to you.