 | Implementing the Four Levels: A Practical Guide for Effective Evaluation of Training Programs |
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Product Description
- Amazon Sales Rank: #139131 in Books
- Published on: 2007-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 153 pages
About the Author
Donald L. Kirkpatrick is Professor Emeritus of the University of Wisconsin and a widely respected teacher, author, and consultant. He has over thirty years' experience as Professor of Management at the University of Wisconsin and has held professional training and human resource positions with International Minerals and Chemical Corporation and Bendix Corporation. He is the author of eight "Management Inventories" and six books, including: Managing Change Effectively; Improving Employee Performance Through Appraisal and Coaching; 2nd edition, Developing Supervisors and Team Leaders; How to Plan and Conduct Productive Business Meetings; and No-Nonsense Communication. The first two titles received the "best book of the year" award from the Society For Human Resource Management (SHRM). Donald Kirkpatrick is a past president of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and in 2004 he received its highest award, Lifetime Achievement in Workplace Learning and Performance. In 1997, he was inducted into the exclusive Training magazine's Hall of Fame. Jim Kirkpatrick has worked in the field of organizational development for over 15 years. He works for Corporate University Enterprise, Inc., as its Senior Consultant for Evaluation Services, where his main responsibility is the delivery of the Kirkpatrick Evaluation Certification Program to organizations and individuals. Prior to his new position, from 1997 to 2004, Jim was the Director of the Corporate University for First Indiana Bank in Indianapolis, where he was responsible for the bank's Balanced Scorecard Management System; Leadership Development; Training; and the Career Development Program. Jim has worked as a management consultant in the fields of health care, education, finance, manufacturing, A--not-A--for-profits, and government, and he has also had relevant experience as a career consultant and clinical psychologist. He has given workshops and consulted in a number of U.S. cities as well as in Canada, England, the Netherlands, Colombia, Australia, India, and Malaysia. Jim and his father, Don Kirkpatrick, have co-authored a book, Transferring Learning to Behavior: Using the Four Levels to Improve Performance (Berrett-Koehler, 2005). Cofounder of the downtown Indianapolis Organizational Development Network and on the board of the American Red Cross, Jim has a Ph.D in Counseling Psychology from Indiana State University and a master's degree in Education from the University of Wisconsin.
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
By Craig Matteson
This book is for people who have to evaluate and justify their training programs. The authors are a father and son team. They have come up with a very interesting structure for evaluating training efforts. The methods begin with the response or smile sheets. While some criticize these instruments, the authors make some great points about why they are important, how to construct them, and offer several good samples you can use in designing your own.
The second level measures what they learned from the training. You can use control groups, measure what they knew before and after, focus groups, or the other suggestions they make. They emphasize the third level and it is quite important. It is a longer term measurement of changed behavior in those who took the training. They offer many ways to measure it and are frank about it being hard to do. But it is the connector to the fourth level, which ties the first three steps to results achieved through the training. They are clear that the goal is not to produce proof, but to accumulate evidence including indirect evidence to a level that convinces the readers of the report.
I like the fact that they offer samples of all the instruments they recommend including the final level 4 report.
Their writing can be a tad repetitive and the phrasing is not terribly polished, but the substance is very worthwhile if you need to evaluate and justify training programs.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
By Rolf Dobelli
This practical guide, a companion to Donald Kirkpatrick's Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels, provides a framework for putting his system into practice. The book assumes a prior knowledge of the four-level system, but demonstrates how to determine which programs to evaluate and at which level to pitch the evaluation, and how to gather the right evidence and present it in a compelling format. The authors provide many examples of every form they discuss in the book and emphasize the importance of following each level in sequence. The style of writing is rather repetitive and could have been better edited, but the advice is sound. We recommend this guide to all those involved in learning and development, such as trainers, training designers and managers.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
By zechariah aloysius hillyard
This book lacks any intellectual rigor or statistical proof that it works, it provides a set of taxonomies that are helpful for classifying areas, but gives you no clear way to evaluate. If this work had not existed in one form or another since the 60s, that might be excusable, but there has been adequate time to test this; instead, the authors have made much money marketing this book that emphasizes a magical thinking approach to testing. This is exemplified on page 25, when one of the authors recounts how he delivered a full version of his training to upper management. He states that he had no idea if it had any effect on increasing management support or effectiveness, but he is confident that it was helpful. This is something that could be easily tested, and he aptly chooses to ignore it based on personal confidence. While confidence can sell books and give the false impression of competence, it lies in the area of magical thinking where good employees can lose their jobs. Scholarly articles on the subject concur. The taxonomies are a helpful starting point, but there needs to be, as Shakespeare wrote, "More matter, less art."
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