Thoughts on Evaluating Non-Formal Learning

In previous posts, I've suggested that knowledge workers under time-pressure and with high demands on their skills are motivated to continually educate themselves on new topics. In small- to mid-sized enterprises, for example, workers are required to learn new skills, behaviours and attitudes in the context of their functional tasks. As they do not necessarily have the time to take formal training courses, they take advantage of the range of knowledge resources at their disposal, ranging from searching the Web, corporate knowledge bases, and other information repositories, as well as discovering information incidentally through social interaction with credible colleagues to assist their ability to “frame the problem” (Argyris & Schön, 1974).

As organisations are at root, cognitive enterprises, and the sum of the knowledge of the organisation is expressed collectively through the behaviour, skills and attitudes of its employees, the organisation is itself a cognitive entity. One of the ways that such an entity continually constructs itself is through the learning processes its members engage in.

Situated, experiential learning, delivered:

1. synchronously in a social setting where workers can engage in a dialogue with More Knowledgeable Others, subject matter experts and their peers,
   
   or,
   
   
2. asynchronously accessed when the individual learner has a requirement to acquire information and knowledge relevant to a task at hand

in relevant, context-specific formats, whether in a classroom, live online, on-demand over the web, or via an easily accessible format such as a DVD-ROM to suit a range of learning styles and environments, creates the conditions for “meaningful learning” (Jonassen, 2001) to occur.

Providing workers with a knowledge-centric learning and performance architecture, and structured, goal-oriented content, gives them the motivation or intention to learn, enables them to process “raw” information into actionable knowledge on an ongoing basis, and regularly inhabit a scaffolded environment which encourages the learner’s development. Digitally-based technologies are the optimal mediator for this learning process, which is called ‘non-formal’ in recognition of its flexibility and accessibility for learners, and also because of its pedagogical structure and outcomes-focus.

Over the next week or so, I'm going to look at ways to quantify the learning effect of non-formal learning its target audience beginning with an overview of that stalwart of evaluation, Donald Kirkpatrick.

References:

Argyris, C. and Schön, D. (1974). Theory in practice: Increasing professional effectiveness, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Jonassen, D. H. (1996) Computers in the Classroom: Mindtools for Critical Thinking. Upper Saddle River, NJ. Prentice Hall Inc.

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