When Donald Kirkpatrick first formed his training evaluation framework, it was 1964 and the world was a very different place. The Beatles were just making it big, training was a classroom event and no one had even dreamt up the idea of the internet – let alone online learning.
Back in these simple times, The Kirkpatrick Model worked well – because learning took place in a classroom it was much easier to measure its success.
Since the internet arrived and online learning exploded, research has found that learning is a social phenomenon, not a classroom session. In this brave new world, we can’t treat online learning like a one-off event.
Even though a lot has changed in half a century, the models we use to evaluate our learning haven’t. They still treat learning like it’s a specific moment in time that you can pause and measure. But, we know that isn’t the case.
Tags: evaluation • Online Learning • ROI