Evaluation and Implementation are put into place towards the end of an instructional design project, but instructional designers must carefully consider these phases early in the project as we chart a path to solve performance issues. My skills in both areas have increased throughout my coursework in the Purdue LDT program. I now feel confident in applying research-based evaluation practices to my design plans and creating a vision to disseminate the training materials I create in the future.
Formative and summative evaluations are tools completed during the development stage (formative) or after the development stage to determine the training effectiveness (summative). I demonstrated my capabilities to write an evaluation plan that contained both as part of my coursework in EDCI 528 based on the Kirkpatrick four-level model. The evaluation plan I developed was based on a real-world problem I was facing in my current role. I assumed the role of human performance consultant as I considered the needs of the organizations, available resources, and the root cause of the issue. In my future work, I will use these skills to create evaluation plans that collect feedback during the development phase and after training has been delivered to form a closed feedback loop. In future iterations, this information will guide the training design's adjustment for optimal effectiveness.
During my coursework, I have learned the importance of communicating my plan of intervention to the project stakeholders during all phases of the ADDIE model. This could sometimes require me to draft a series of changes to an existing training product. As an ID professional, I demonstrated my ability to analyze project constraints, prioritize the criticality of each constraint, and create a vision for change while completing coursework in EDCI 672. I plan to apply these skill sets in future projects to ensure that changes I propose to a training product are founded in ID best practices, directly tied to organizational needs, and clearly communicated to the project stakeholders.
Challenge 1: Implement formative evaluation plans
Challenge 2: Implement summative evaluation plans
Challenge 1: Create a vision of change that aligns learning and performance goals with organizational goals
Challenge 2: Create a plan for the dissemination and/or the diffusion of the interventions