By Phil Havlik
In my experience, what makes the best training evaluation questions really depends on what types of information you’re looking to capture, who you’re asking, and how long you’ve kept them as your prisoner.
At my previous company where I was an Instructional Designer within a larger training team, we used a series of generic questions following every training module. It was the same questions every time, and I don’t even recall what was asked. Our primary interest was reviewing for the inevitable complaints, errors in content or programming, or grumblings our global user base cared to share with us. We had Likert scale questions, but the numbers didn’t really mean much, especially given the total number of users who were required to complete the suite of training modules each year.
Asynchronous training can be like talking to your computer, unsure if anyone is listening or if your mic is even turned on. So getting feedback is always appreciated.
As the trainer, I of course want all the detailed feedback that I can get. As a participant, I want to click as little as possible and get back out. I currently have four standard questions on the docket:
- Did you learn something new by attending this webinar?
- Yes, this was all new to me.
- This was a refresher, but I learned some new tricks and/or a method I didn’t know before
- This was a refresher, but I didn’t learn anything new
- Other (Let us know more below)
- Rate this webinar offering compared to other webinars? (5 = Best, 1 = Worst)
- Any additional feedback for our staff? We’d love to hear it. (Open answer)
- We’re testing some new software features and need some volunteer testers. Could you help us?
Sometimes for fun, depending on the seriousness of the topic and or attendees, I might throw in something like “Rolling Stones or Beatles?”, “What’s your favorite season?” or something similar to lighten the mood.
I won’t say I’ve gotten this exactly right, but I think keeping questions few and focused on the desired outcome (did you learn something new by sitting through this) point in the right direction.