During the years that I lectured international tax law, measuring the outcomes was the weak spot. It was so easy to ignore it; hardly anyone would notice. Students and my boss seemed happy with my lecturing.
That should have been enough. But it was not. And one man opened my eyes to make me aware of this: Donald L. Kirkpatrick who passed away earlier this month.
I was not alone in ignoring the outcome of my training. So were my colleages; and the legal sector as a whole. Thereby everyone missed a great opportunity to really improve legal lectoring. What did Don contribute that still is worthwile today? The golden grail of finding what-to-improve about teaching!
Don introduced in the 1950’s what was become to be known as the Kirkpatrick Model: four levels of training evaluation. Using these levels became the industry standard for measuring the impact of training programs. Simplified the standards were
1. Did the learners like it
2. Did the learners learn it
3. Did the learners apply it on their job
4. Did the learners’ application have the intended impact on the organization?
In most legal training only level 1 is applied. Usually some kind of “smile-sheet questionnaire” is distributed at the end of the instruction. Usually little is done with the results that contributes to better future instruction.
Sometimes level 2 is also applied in legal educational institutions. However, talking to lawyers, most are not even aware of the existence of all four levels.That means missing a lot of opportunities for improvement. There has even been a fifth level introduced by J. Philips: ROI on investment.
Don’s ideas have truly revolutionized training and progressively improved results. His ideas and those of J. Philips are very prescious to me and my clients. I will miss Don and his ideas. Luckily his son Jim and his wife seem to be as devoted as their father. The legal training sector needs their ideas.