BSBIMN501A QUEENSLAND INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS ACADEMY

1.4 Monitor and document effectiveness of learning activities

 It is important to monitor how effective the learning activities have been in meeting the outcomes and objectives that were specified in the planning stages and seeing if the allocated resources were justified.

 Monitoring also helps to identify areas that need modification and further development, as well as being an opportunity to recognise the achievements of all those involved in the learning activities.  Many people, both internal and external to the organisation, may be interested in how effective the learning activities were in meeting their objectives.

 managers responsible for authorising the learning activities  human resources personnel  financial resources personnel  managers responsible for organising the learning activities  participants in the learning activities

 trainers, mentors, coaches, facilitators of learning activities  other workers who may want or need to participate in learning activities in the future  union or employee representatives  members of professional associations

 Monitoring can occur during learning activities as well as after.  It can occur immediately after the completion of activities, and/or at a defined time in the future.  Deciding when and what to monitor will depend on what you are hoping to learn from doing so.  The more comprehensive your efforts are, the more value you will gain from the process.

 Decisions about what and when to monitor need to be weighed up with the costs in time and resources (financial, human and physical) that monitoring will incur.  The following is a list of some of the aspects of learning activities that can be monitored:  attendance of participants  achievement of learning outcomes for participants

 performance of trainers, mentors, coaches, facilitators design, content and delivery of learning activities design and content of learning materials  suitability of venue and facilities  improvement in work processes as a result of learning activities impact of learning activities on the organisation's bottom line.

 Monitoring of learning activities should be approached as a research task and, as such, the methods and skills involved can encompass the use of different types of investigative tools.  Some of these tools provide numerical data such as attendance records or questionnaires using numbered scales.  Other tools, such as surveys and face-to-face interviews, gather more subjective information

 Questionnaires in which participants are required to fill in numerical scales for their responses are useful for monitoring large groups of people.  These scales are used in questions and statements such as, 'Now that you have completed the learning activities, do you feel confident about using the new system?'  Answer (1) "definitely", (2) "probably", (3) "maybe", (4) "probably not" and (5) "definitely not".

 Questionnaires with numerical scales are simple for participants to complete and usually don't take a lot of time to do so.  Opinions about the trainer, facilitator, venue, facilities, course materials, course structure and so on can all be gathered with one questionnaire.  Because of their numerical nature, it is easy to present the results of this type of research in a graph or other pictorial form.

 Questionnaires that ask participants to respond to open questions that need a detailed response, and closed questions that only require yes/no/maybe answers, can also be used to monitor large groups of people.  These types of questionnaires, especially if there are a lot of open questions to respond to, take longer to complete than those that are scaled.  They can, however, provide more insight into an activity.