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Reinventing training assessment in the digital age
The integration of new employees and service providers, certifications, skills management and training programs are now major challenges for most organizations. Offering training systems is no longer enough: training must be really effective, and this effectiveness must be measurable.
It is therefore essential to objectively assess the quality of each course in order to know if it has achieved its educational objectives and whether it has truly brought value to the learners and to the organization.
Continuous improvement through evaluation
The main objective of training evaluation is to improve the overall quality of the courses provided. This involves evaluating all aspects of a training course: preparation, logistics, accessibility, accessibility, activities offered, commitment of learners, quality of trainers, memorization of achievements and concrete impact on the ground.
Assessment provides organizations with clear, tangible, and multi-dimensional indicators to identify what needs to be improved or corrected.
A continuous improvement approach is based on precise and quantitative indicators to monitor and measure the impact of each action, combined with various tools to be used according to the level of precision sought.
No effective assessment without automation
Traditionally, the training took place in person, in a meeting room with a trainer. But things have changed: the world has experienced the Covid crisis and lockdowns, digital learning platforms (LMS) have evolved and businesses are now focusing much more on online training, which is easier to organize, more scalable and more economical.
The evaluation of training has also evolved. It used to be based on paper questionnaires distributed to participants at the end of the course, filled out quickly and given to the trainer. These answers had to be handled manually, with the risk of them being misplaced or simply put aside.
Now, digital solutions make it possible to automate the evaluation and to analyze the effectiveness of each training in greater depth, regardless of its format: face-to-face, hybrid or 100% digital.
Automation makes assessment possible at different times: questionnaires can be sent to learners just after the session (“hot evaluation”) and then again later, for example one month later (“cold evaluation”), to measure the impact over time. Are the skills and concepts transmitted still known and used after a certain period of time, or has the training lost its value?
Why limit the evaluation to participants only? Feedback from managers and colleagues is also valuable, and automation is the only reliable and cost-effective way to collect this information at scale.
Get relevant feedback through surveys
With modern tools, surveys must be digital: they must be completed online, even for a course given in person. The trainer can send a link by email or simply ask the participants to scan a QR code. Digital surveys are easier to create and the results are centralized and automated.
Surveys remain an essential way of collecting learner feedback. They make it possible to identify areas for improvement in a course. They are generally composed mostly of closed-ended questions and should always include one question. NPS to track overall satisfaction with a single, clear indicator.
It is also important to include an open-ended question, to allow learners to freely share their remarks and suggestions.
Even if the analysis of open responses can be time-consuming, AI now makes it possible to automate part of this work: it analyzes the answers and highlights the key points to be brought to the attention of the training manager, thus limiting manual processing time.
Experquiz has specifically developed and integrated this innovative feature to facilitate the use of open questions in survey forms.
An objective assessment of skills
The evaluation of training goes well beyond satisfaction surveys. While these are useful for collecting impressions and measuring satisfaction, they do not objectively measure what learners have actually learned.
The objective assessment of competencies is based on questionnaires or tests that focus not on the training itself, but on the knowledge and skills that the training must transmit. Conducted under controlled conditions, these tests answer a key question: Did the training really make it possible to learn ? Are learners able to replicate these skills?
To be effective, competency assessment should include a test before and after training. It is the only reliable way to measure what has actually been achieved.
These evaluations must also be done online, except for certain practical cases requiring a concrete demonstration. Modern learning and assessment solutions like Experquiz now make it possible to measure both technical and behavioral skills, while giving trainers tools to easily create quizzes.
Objectively evaluating skills allows:
- To adapt the course if the majority of learners do not reach the expected level, also taking into account the feedback from the surveys.
- To use micro learning to stimulate the acquisition of knowledge if learners seem to forget over time. Microlearning is easy to set up as long as you have a sufficient question base.
- To use adaptive learning to target individual gaps when only certain learners need additional support, in order to help them make long-term progress.
Combine micro learning and adaptive learning can be extremely effective and places the learner at the center of the training process. The Experquiz platform was designed with this spirit in mind. The design and correction of evaluations is facilitated thanks to artificial intelligence directly integrated into the platform. Combining micro learning and adaptive learning is a native feature of Experquiz and can therefore be easily exploited. Thanks to advanced functionalities, the platform also allows more experienced trainers or educational designers to define a whole set of parameters and consequences to automate all processes according to specific criteria in order to truly achieve the educational objectives according to the personal needs of each learner.
Evaluation can take several forms and reflect the level of ambition of the organization in terms of continuous improvement and the quality of training. Investing in robust evaluation means investing in better learning, better results and better competitiveness. To do this, it is necessary to rely on modern digital solutions. With the right tools and the right method, any organization can make its training really effective... and measurable.