You don’t pay your plumber for effort. Badges, portfolios, and artifacts of learning.

W. Edwards Deming said that 97% of what matters in an organization cannot be measured and studies indicate that 70-80 % of learning occurs outside a classroom, so how can we expect to evaluate learning initiatives using traditional classroom based tools and methods. There is also a tendency for many organizations to evaluate learning using quantitative, business oriented accounting and productivity measures.  Unfortunately when an organization focuses on quantifying everything, people who don’t make the numbers learn to hide or manipulate the data out of fear of reprisals and implied threats. 

“The practice of measurement leads, over time, to reductionist thinking, and then to mechanistic activity, which does an incredible job of destroying nature and natural sensibility.”  The Dance of Change. The challenges to sustaining momentum in learning organizations.  Peter Senge, et.al.

Some newer approaches to demonstrate learning achievement include the use of badges and portfolios.  When combined with learning contracts and a skill matrix used as a learning assessment tool rather than training needs assessment, badges and portfolios may be something for learning and development professional to consider in measuring outcomes. 

The questions you might want to search for answers to include:

How do you create a skill matrix?

How do you develop a portfolio?

What is a “badge” in assessing learning?

What is a learning contract? 

How can you use all of these tools to assess learning and development? 

One of the first steps is to collect information that will tell you what a successful employee says, what they do, how they think, how they operate, in respect to the task of project your learning initiative is intended to address.  Many of the answers might be in a well developed job description or competency model for the job. From there you can begin to identify the "learning objectives" driving your initiative, and move on to identify what badges to create, what a learning portfolio might look like, and how to validate each badge and the portfolio.  

Once these elements are ready, you can write a learning contract for each learner and let them start filling their portfolio and collecting badges.  We will look at these elements closer in future postings.

The learning is in the experience, the reaction, the change. It's about stuff in the real world, the world that people interact with and it's about making experiences we can learn from.