Do you send feedback surveys to learners after courses or to teachers after training interventions? How principled is their design?
In our competitive industry, providing ‘quality’ learning interventions is crucial for sustainability. Quality doesn’t just happen; it must be systematically evaluated. Feedback surveys remain the most common, and often the only, tool used for evaluating interventions since Kirkpatrick promulgated them sixty years ago.
Taking a principled approach to designing this tool seems obvious. However, while researching for my MA dissertation, I found little up-to-date guidance beyond using open questions and Likert scales, which don’t necessarily provide useful or actionable data to teachers, trainers or academic teams.
I then found research by Will Thalheimer critiquing traditional surveys and offering a fresh design perspective. Inspired by this and further research and experience, I identified five principles for creating relevant and actionable surveys, which I share in this webinar.
They should:
- require minimal effort.
- measure things that matter
- ask clear, specific questions
- have a principled structure
- enable useful reporting
Examples and rationale for each principle will be presented. Attendees are invited to evaluate surveys from their own contexts against these principles and leave with ideas and a checklist for improving the effectiveness of their feedback tools.
