Question

1)Discuss who is responsible for transfer of learning? How can those responsible maximize learning transfer?

2)Discuss the different types of training evaluations? What are the advantages and disadvantages to these evaluation methods?

Answer 1

Transfer of learning occurs when people apply information, strategies, and skills they have learned to a new situation or context. Transfer is not a discrete activity, but an integral part of the learning process.

Now let us look at the people responsible for transfer of learning in an organisation:

• Managers: Managers have a very important role when it comes to transfer of learning in a workplace. By their actions they set a mini-culture within the department/company that influence the team to be accountable or not, to adhere to regulations or not to, to seek excellence or not, to serve customers or not which become a basis for the operations in the workplace.
• Supervisors: As the name suggests the primary job is to supervise.Their role in transfer of learning is to control .This control may be extended to the type of knwledge transfer, the medium of knowledge transfer and also control on the internal and external environment of the learning transfer.The ultimate responsibility is to assess the quality of learning and its application in day to day activities.
• Trainers: Trainers can be internal and external depending on the affiliation with the organisation and its activities.They are the ones who are responsible for helping the workers acquire necessary knowledge and to skills to perform well on their respective jobs.
• Co-Workers: They have a supporting role throughout the knowledge transfer process.They support learners when they are engaged in training activities and as they apply new knowledge and skills at the work site.

The ways in which transfer of learning can be maximised are:

• Group training: Training in groups yield great results and also helps in fostering a team mentality in the workers and this helps them to complete their tasks and resolve conflicts by working as a a team.Group training also results in scope for discussions, debates, lectures and other activities that enhanes social behaviour of the participants involved.
• Independent self study: Individuals should take effort to comprehend the skills taught and apply them in practical situations in the workplace.The success of any language transfer depends upon the learner's ability to remember learned skills.So by making the material meaningful and giving the learner tricks and schemes make the information easier to remember.
• Motivation: Motivation is key in enhancing the learning the environment.The learners should feel motivated to study and apply the knowledge in their workplace.Gamification of the training programs and introducing suitable reward systems will help in sperhead the motivation factor in the training transfer.

The different types of training evaluation methods and their advantages and disadvantages are listed below:

The two major methods of training evaluation are:

1. Formative evaluation: Its the training evaluation when the training program is happening or occuring.It can be a pilot test, a structured walk-through, a preview of continuos feedback from participants in training in order to modify it as needed.

• Pros: Formative assessment is important for behaviour change and community-engaged training programs as they are complex and requires few monitoring processes.Formative evaluation is beneficial as it plans for the future and thus any alteration in the training programs can be done.Weakness is disgnosed at an early stage and remediation is made.Another benefit of the method is that it ongoing process.Thus the feedback is increased and issue detection is made easy.
• Cons: Formative evaluation is time consuming as it is ongoing and it is also resource intensive as it is in need of frequent gathering of data, analysis, reporting and implementation.

2. Summative Evaluation: Summative evaluation takes place after the training program has occured.It can be the evaluation of attitudes and information learned after the training program has been conducted or determining how the information provided is used back on the job.

• Pros: It is a great method to assess the learner's understanding of the training objectives.Summative assessment also helps in determining achievement of the objectives of the training program.It is more of evaluative in nature rather than diagnostic.This method also motivates the workers as it assists the individuals and offers them an opportunity to develop a learning environment.
• Cons; It results in the lower self-esteem of workers who performed poor in the training programs.This in turn leads them to put in less effort towards their work and in future training programs.Another major disadvantage is that the rectification is done late since it focuses on the output at the end of the training program.