July 28: Short Surveys

In the learning field, we do these post-training evaluations affectionately referred to as Level 1 Surveys. They are typically administered on the final day of training. The purpose of the survey is to measure a participant's initial reaction to the training or education in terms of the Instructor, the content, the environment in which the training was facilitated and so on. In theory, learning people are able to use the results from this type of feedback to improve the education or make any necessary changes to the format of the training. The problem with level 1 surveys, in my own humble opinion, is that when used for training that occurs over an extended period of time, such as 3 or more consecutive days, the feedback tends to be skewed in that participants likely just want to wrap up the session and move on. Thus, people tend to focus on the last day, in particular, as the basis for their summary of the entire education. So, this afternoon, I learned that the Global Learning team I work for at the Bank has developed, but not yet implemented, what they call "short surveys". These short surveys are 3 general questions about the training, but their purpose is to be administered at the end of each and every day of training; thus capturing the feedback from each associate based on their current day's experience. Obviously, these short surveys are dependent on the training facilitator driving the points to which he/she wants the associate to provide feedback around. But, still, if used right, they can be very effective at capturing very specific feedback about a learning offering. Such a simple concept, yet, as I mentioned, these surveys are still not being used by the Bank's learning teams. I'm hoping to change that soon, however, as my team is hoping to use one of these short surveys for an upcoming pilot education, I'll keep you all posted on how that goes.