Learning Effectiveness Measurement: A New Approach for Measuring and Managing Learning to Achieve Business Results

Abstract

The problem and the solution.One of the major challenges facing human resource development is how to achieve organizational impact through the use of learning interventions. So much has been written about the importance of achieving results from learning, but even practitioners who advocate results-oriented measurements tend to default back to low-level (attendance, satisfaction, and learning) measures in actual practice. This article describes the Learning Effectiveness Measurement (LEM) methodology, which was developed to address the challenge of providing a credible results-oriented learning measurement that would not only help evaluate learning interventions but also increase their effectiveness. The article begins by identifying some of the major limitations of existing learning measurement approaches, and then, it describes the LEM methodology in detail, provides an example of LEM in use, and concludes by showing how LEM addresses the limitations discussed at the beginning of the article.