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Evaluation Process

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Creating an evaluation plan for your webinar is truly the only way to know definitively whether participants met the learning outcomes that you’ve set for the session.
Conducting a full evaluation of any learning experience can be detailed and lengthy. However, this module will focus on showing you how to ask critical questions in terms of the delivery and implementation of your content, and offer insight on how you might make improvements in future sessions. In her book “Beyond the Podium,” Allison Rossett references Donald Kirkpatrick’s reigning evaluation method in explaining that a good instructor/designer asks the following questions [1]:

  • Did they like it?
  • Did they learn?
  • Did the training affect job performance?
  • What are the strategic results of training?
Indeed, Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation have you simply looking at the participants’:
  1. Reaction: How do learners feel about the content presented?
  2. Learning: How well did learners master the content presented?
  3. Behavior: Has this new knowledge changed their user processes or performance?
  4. Results: Have there been measurable gains due to the participants’ access to this new content?
As you create a plan for evaluation, build evaluation questions that measure one or more of the four levels above.  Try to collect data to answer the evaluation questions that you’ve set with a post-survey or interviews with participants.  Although your plan might simply be a list of open questions that you’ll answer at the conclusion of both the webinar and evaluation period, you can consider including the following elements in your documentation:
  • Overview of the project to be evaluated
  • Purpose of the evaluation
  • Evaluation questions
  • Methods for collecting data
  • Results
  • Analysis of the data
  • Summary of findings and answers to evaluation questions
Evaluation Worksheet

Post-Assessment and Participant Surveys

Depending on your evaluation questions, you will probably need to collect data in order to complete your assessment of how well your session went.  Post-surveys are excellent for gathering this information in that they give you new insight on perspectives and moods, along with data to measuring how well you met learning outcomes. [2]  The results will allow you to improve your presentation of the content and potentially implement new techniques for better instruction.

As you create a post-survey, consider whether you want it to be a post-assessment of learning outcomes, a participant feedback survey, or a combination of both.  If some or all of the survey is to serve as a post-assessment, you can simply copy and paste what you created in the earlier module on creating pre- and post-assessments.  If you are looking for attitudinal data among participants, consider including questions that measure:

  • Feelings on the subject matter before/after the session (usefulness, relevance)
  • Pace of instruction
  • Effectiveness of the instructor
  • Usability of the system
  • Likelihood of a repeat visit
  • Overall satisfaction
  • Additional questions and comments
You can build these questions into an online survey tool such as SurveyGizmo, SurveyMonkey, Google Forms or WuFoo Forms.
UP NEXT: ONLINE ASSESSMENT
Congratulations!  You’ve completed all of the learning modules on how to plan, design, present and evaluate your webinar.  In the next module, you will be able to assess how well you’ve done.

Online Assessment

References and Further Reading    (↑ returns to text)

  1. Rossett, A., & Sheldon, K. (2001). Beyond the podium: Delivering training and performance to a digital world. (1st ed.). San Francisco: Josey-Bass/Pfeiffer.↑
  2. Azer, S. A. (2009). What makes a great lecture? Use of lectures in hybrid pbl curriculum. The kaohsiung journal of medical sciences, 25(3), 109-115. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1607551X0970049X↑