Measures of Learning Effectiveness

In today’s economy, all expenses require justification. You are faced with a daunting challenge. You need to implement a learning program that will successfully educate employees on key objectives, provide course designers and facilitators with timely feedback to improve quality and offer senior management bottom-line justification. Furthermore, you must implement twice as many programs with half as many resources as you had last year. It seems an insurmountable task. Consider that the complete integration of testing and assessment tools and programs can give you the data and feedback you need to prove not only that your program is meeting its objectives of training employees effectively, but also that the organization is receiving some real, tangible benefits because of its existence.

Michael Brannick is president and chief executive officer of Prometric, a part of The Thomson Corp. He holds a master’s degree in industrial psychology from California State University at Long Beach and specialty certifications from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and the University of Southern California.