Rating E-Training with Online Surveys

It’s all well and good to givee-learning a shot, but how will you know if your new Web-based approach totraining is working? Ask.

    In much the same way as studentsevaluate an instructor in a traditional course, surveys both before and after acourse give companies an idea of how much students learned and where courses canbe improved.

    Richard Nadler, president of PerseusDevelopment Corporation, a company that develops and markets Web survey softwareand services, says many of his clients give a survey before the event, toexamine expectations. “They are often given a survey at the event, sometimesthrough a kiosk, to see how the training is going. Afterwards a survey measureseverything from the quality of the course, the content, the instructor or leaderif it’s a distance-learning event, and the ways in which the training could beimproved.”

    In traditional instructor-led training,by the time the paper survey was analyzed and results given back, the people whoadministered the training were gone, says Nadler. With online surveys, feedbackis received within hours and the training can be modified quickly.

    E-learning surveys vary in cost fromabout $180 up to $5,000, says Nadler, but for a large corporation, that’spennies. “They are so cost-effective, the value is clear.”

Workforce, January 2001, Vol80, No 1, p. 40  SubscribeNow!