Managing Evaluation Goals for Training.

Evaluations of training material serve many goals and are characteristically underresourced. The article describes a framework for managing training evaluation in such contexts. Enumerating features of a tutorial would be an intrinsic evaluation, for example, a given tutorial may immediately involve learners in realistic tasks. A set of such features, along with their instructional rationale, would constitute an intrinsic evaluation of the tutorial. Such an evaluation could be used formatively, to direct design changes, or summatively, to gauge a final design product, and perhaps to contrast it with other training products. Intrinsic evaluations are often conducted early in a training development project, to characterize the state of the art and generate requirements, and at the end of the project, to market or position the final product. Pay-off evaluation produces solid facts, but often these facts are difficult to interpret. A high error rate is problematic, but it may not be clear what aspects of the training caused the errors.