How do organizations evaluate their training in 2022? Studying the prevalence of Kirkpatricks four levels of training evaluation

Abstract

Learning technology has been on the rise in recent years, a rise that was further accelerated by the covid-19 pandemic. This has lead to unprecedented growth of educational technology companies who focus on digital learning solutions. Imple- menting digital learning in an effective way is no trivial task and the need to evaluate training programs to find out what does and does not work is imperative. A popular model for evaluating training is presented by Kirkpatrick. With his model as a base, this thesis investigates to what extent learning professionals actually evaluate their training programs. Knowly is one of many companies focused on helping other organizations with struc- turing their digital training programs by using their platform. By analyzing course data from the Knowly platform, the goal is to find out if there are factors that affect the habits of evaluation in courses. Studies investigating evaluation habits of learning professional are a limited quantity and most studies that exist are based on surveys rather than analyzing individual courses which gives this thesis a unique approach. The results mainly confirms that customer satisfaction is the most com- mon way of evaluating training and that usage the Knowly platform did not seem to impact the likelihood of evaluating training programs. The results suggest that further research into the motivation behind evaluating training is needed.