When To Design Training Metrics

Those of us tasked with designing learning programs have a responsibility to create them with crisp and relevant learning objectives, targeted reinforcement, and clear accountability.

Many, however, fail at effective training measurement simply because of poor timing. Training metrics should be designed right after you have identified the business and learning objectives and before you choose instructional strategies.

All too often, designers wait until the end of the development phase before they create reinforcement strategies and training success metrics. This can create problems because people do not measure what they are supposed to (business impact and adoption) but are influenced by other parts of the design process (compliance, time, satisfaction, materials, and involvement)

By creating the critical training metrics right upon the heels of business and learning objective identification, your testing of learning and adoption is much more likely to be meaningful and appropriate.