Evaluating the effectiveness of an organizational training program is a necessary but expensive process. Oftentimes, the success of a training program is evaluated by how much trainees learn or how much they know after completing the program. The classic post-training test/exam is a great way to do this. Still, developing and administering well-constructed learning measures can be costly. Instead, one option is to simply ask trainees how much they have learned. But how well are trainees able to self-assess how much they have learned?
COMPARING METHODS OF ASSESSING TRAINING
In an extensive meta-analysis (or statistical combination of many previous studies) that included a total of over 41,000 study participants from 166 studies, researchers (Sitzmann et al., 2010) found that self-assessments of knowledge and learning are actually more highly related to motivation and satisfaction with training than with actual knowledge or learning. This even occurs in training programs that provide trainees with feedback and give trainees access to information about their learning. Additionally, the researchers found that self-assessments of current knowledge level (“how much I know”) are much more strongly related to actual learning than self-assessments of knowledge gain (“how much I have learned”). In fact, self-assessments of knowledge gain were unrelated to actual learning.
Yet another interesting finding is that self-assessments of learning are more accurate when training is classroom based versus online-based. The researchers suggest that classroom-based and blended training allow for trainees to observe others and thus gauge their knowledge or mastery of the topic. Such information is not as readily available in online training.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Though self-assessments of learning are cheap to develop and generally easy to administer, they are not appropriate alternatives to tried and true measures of knowledge gain (e.g., written tests, skill assessments). Decisions made about training programs that are based on trainees’ self-assessments of their own learning may be misinformed, because what trainees think they know, may not be what they actually know.
Sitzmann, T., Ely, K.E., Brown, K.G., & Bauer, K.N. (2010). Self-assessment of knowledge: A cognitive learning or affective measure? Academy of Management Learning & Education, 9(2), 169-191.
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