Learning Measurement

For those who haven't seen it, Will Thalheimer is doing a series of posts over the next couple of days on Learning Measurement. He pulls together a lot of his thoughts and research done with the eLearning Guild.

His reasons for getting involved in learning measurement are fourfold:

1. The performance of the learning-and-performance field is severely deficient—often creating learning that is not remembered and/or not utilized on the job.
2. Of the forces that control and influence our industry and the practices we use, measurement is one of the most critical.
3. Currently, our measurement practices provide us with poor and biased feedback about our performance as learning-and-performance professionals.
4. Because we do poor measurement, we don’t get good feedback (nor do our stakeholders), and so we have very little motivation to critically examine our practices—and improve them as valid feedback would suggest.

I definitely recommend reading this series over the next couple of days as it has implications for all of us interested in actually progressing the field (as opposed to a lot of research that gives the appearance of progression). Personally, I know I still have a lot to learn regarding proper measurements.