Support Training Success with Pre- and Post- Tests

Learning and development activities in an organization face several frequently-encountered obstacles. Participants may not be engaged in the process, and they may look at training as an obstacle, a chore which they would like to avoid. There’s also the challenge of demonstrating the value and outcomes of learning activities in a way that’s meaningful to both the participant and to the organization—in other words, providing a measurement of the training that’s meaningful and easily understood. For the L&D professional, each of these can be addressed through the careful and strategic use of pre- and post- testing as an element of a learning program.

What are pre- and post- tests?

In the simplest terms, a pre- and post- test structure is about assessing a learner’s starting point before a learning experience, and then measuring the learner’s progress following the learning. The pre-test establishes a baseline and the post-test demonstrates the progress.

This can be accomplished by a survey given directly to learners before and after the learning event or program, but can also be supported by workplace behavioral data. For example, a training program intended to reduce the frequency of a certain manufacturing process error can be measured both by how frequently the error is observed before versus after the training is delivered, supported by surveys of the staff to measure how they understand the issue.

How can I structure the pre- and post- test?

If you are using a participant survey, here are some guidelines to follow.

1. Be sure the assessment is aligned with learning objectives. The pre- and post- assessments must align with the training, and all of these elements must support a specific outcome. As always, it’s critically important to have clarity about what a successful outcome looks like, and to “work backward” from there to develop your learning intervention.
2. Keep it short. Having clarity about your desired objective(s) will also help you focus your questions on what’s most important. Your assessments should be short, to the point, and clearly aligned with the program’s objectives.
3. Make it engaging. A variety of question types may help you better understand the learner’s experience while making the assessment more engaging to the participant. As with any survey tool, careful thought should be given to your intended use of the results: for example, if you want to have data to quantify a pre- vs. post- change, multiple choice or Likert scale responses are better choices than open-ended or short-answer questions, which typically provide qualitative feedback which is more time-consuming to evaluate and more difficult to measure.

What can the results of pre- and post- tests show me?

As the designer or manager of a learning experience, the information gathered through pre- and post- testing can help you in a number of ways: both by giving you data that can be used to iteratively improve your learning interventions and experiences, but also in supporting learner engagement and motivation, as we’ll explore in more detail below. For the L&D professional, these tests can help you:

1. Understand learner retention. The pre- and post- test structure gives you a baseline of the learner’s understanding before training begins, and a measure of how their understanding has changed since the training has finished. These measures are typically gathered through participant surveys, but can also be gathered through objective performance metrics to understand changes of on-the-job performance. (However, when using performance metrics to understand the impact of a learning experience, care must be taken to attribute the behavior change correctly—as many factors other than training can influence behavior and performance.)
2. Understand gaps in the learning program. Taking a close look at pre- and post- training assessments can help you identify areas where the learning content or program is missing the mark. You can understand where learners may be struggling, or where additional resources are needed, and make changes that improve your program and outcomes.
3. Uncover insights that may be unseen. Especially when using narrative responses (open-ended or short-answer questions), the pre- and post- tests can identify not just which aspects of the learning participants found most or least valuable, they can also uncover issues and opportunities for training that may not have been “reported” elsewhere. For example, a participant’s response may flag for you that while the training helped with problems A and B, there’s another issue C that still needs attention.

How can pre- and post- assessments support learner motivation and engagement?

Communicating clearly with your learners about why you’re asking them to participate in the assessments and how they will benefit is a great starting point for getting them to be on-board with the process. And there’s a great deal of research over more than a half century showing the effectiveness of the pre- and post- test process:

It helps learners focus on the most important information. When learners know before a class or learning experience what they will be “tested on” later, they tend to pay closer attention to those topics, which supports retention and comprehension.

It helps learners self-motivate to learn. A pre-test can create a sense of curiosity or challenge in the learner. Learners tend to be more engaged when they understand what they are expected to learn and can gauge their own progress.

It supports their understanding of their own learning. When learners understand their own knowledge and gaps in understanding—or metacognition—they tend to more actively participate in learning experiences which improve their understanding.

It supports information retention. Learners who complete pre-tests often perform better on post-learning measurements than learners who don’t complete a pre-learning assessment, because the act of recalling or attempting answers in a pre-test prepares the brain to process and store information differently during the learning experience.

These findings are supported by research including The effect of pre-testing on post-test performance (J. Hartley), and Evaluating the effectiveness of pre- and post-test model of learning in a medical school (Shivaraju et al), while other research indicates while both pre- and post-testing improves learner retention, when explored separately, the post-test may have a larger retention effect, as in Does pre-testing promote better retention than post-testing? (Latimier et al).

The general research consensus is that pre-tests both provide instructors with diagnostic information they can use to improve instructional structure and delivery, they also act as a cognitive trigger which can enhance learning.