PS496 Unit 4 Training Evaluation Paper Example

Everyone Passed the Seam Check Quiz: A PS496 Unit 4 Training Evaluation Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

PS496: Bachelor's Capstone in Industrial Organizational Psychology

Unit 4 Training Evaluation Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the cannery, the course and every figure are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

The Course and Why It Matters

A sealed can of diced tomatoes is only safe if the seam joining its lid to its body is formed correctly. A bad seam can let in bacteria after the can leaves the retort. At our cannery near Stockton, filler operators are required to pull cans from each seamer every thirty minutes during the pack, check them visually and, every four hours, tear one down and measure the seam. A missed check can mean holding thousands of cases until they are inspected.

Each June, about forty filler operators, a mix of returners and new seasonal hires, take a four-hour seam inspection course from the plant's quality manager. It covers how seams form, what defects look like, how to measure with a micrometer and how to record results. The course ends with a written quiz and a hands-on test on sample cans.

The Four Levels

Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick (2016) lay out four places to look for a course's effect. The first, reaction, is the trainees' verdict on the session and on its fit with their work. Learning asks whether they gained the intended knowledge and skill. Behavior asks whether they apply it on the job. Results asks whether the organization gets the outcomes the training was meant to produce. The authors argue that evaluation should be planned from the top down, starting with the results that matter, and that most of the value is lost when nothing is done to support the behavior level.

Until this season, the plant evaluated the course only at the first two levels.

Reaction

At the end of the course, operators rated it 4.6 out of 5 on average. Comments praised the quality manager's examples and the hands-on practice. Alliger et al. (1997) found that reactions about whether a course was enjoyable were only weakly linked to learning or later job behavior, while reactions about whether it was useful were more strongly related to transfer, more so even than immediate learning scores. Our survey asked mostly about enjoyment. One item asked about usefulness, and it averaged 4.1, slightly lower.

Learning

Every operator passed. The average quiz score was 91 percent, and all forty correctly identified the defect in each of five sample cans on the hands-on test. By the standard of learning, the course worked.

Behavior

In week three, the quality team audited seam check logs against the seamer's run times. Of the thirty-minute visual checks scheduled during the audit week, 52 percent had been recorded. Four-hour teardowns were recorded 81 percent of the time. On the night shift, visual check compliance was 38 percent.

The operators knew how to check a seam; the line was telling them not to stop and do it.

I spent two night shifts on the filling lines. Operators skipped visual checks when the line was behind, when a lead had told them to keep cases moving or when they were covering a second machine because of a no-show. Several said that pulling cans meant stepping away from a seamer running at 400 cans a minute, and that leads had complained when they did.

Why Training Did Not Transfer

Grossman and Salas (2011) reviewed the research on transfer and identified the factors with the strongest, most consistent links to whether training is used on the job. Some concern the trainee, such as ability, self-efficacy, motivation and believing the training is useful. Some concern the design, such as behavior modeling, error management and realistic practice. The rest sit in the workplace: whether the climate encourages using new skills, whether bosses and coworkers back the trainee, whether the job offers chances to practice and whether anyone checks in afterward.

Our course was strong on design and the trainees had the ability. The work environment was where it failed. Line leads, under production pressure, did not support the checks. The checks had no protected time; operators had to step away from a running machine. There was no follow-up after June. The low usefulness score may have reflected operators' sense that the line would not let them use what they had learned.

Results

The results level confirmed the problem. In the first four weeks of the pack, the plant placed eleven holds on product because of incomplete seam records, compared with three in the same period last year, and one lot of 1,800 cases was found to have a seam defect that a visual check should have caught. That lot was destroyed at a cost of about $26,000.

What We Changed

Because the gap was in the environment rather than the operators' skill, the changes targeted the line.

First, protected time. Seamers now signal the operator with a light every thirty minutes, and the line lead covers the operator's station for the two minutes the visual check takes. Leads were briefed on why the checks matter and told that check compliance is now part of their own performance review.

Second, the course was extended with a thirty-minute session for line leads, explaining seams, the cost of a hold and what their role is during checks.

Third, follow-up. The quality manager now visits each filling line once a week during the first month to observe a check and answer questions.

Fourth, the reaction survey was revised to include three questions on usefulness and one on whether operators expect to be able to perform the checks on the line.

Early Results of the Changes

In weeks six and seven, visual check compliance rose to 91 percent on days and 86 percent on nights, and no product holds for incomplete records occurred. Teardown compliance reached 97 percent.

Limits

The audit week may not have represented the whole season. Operators knew they were being observed during my night shifts. The improvement could partly reflect attention rather than the changes themselves. The results level will need a full season of data, including any seam defects found by customers, before it can be judged.

Connections to the Capstone

The line leads' role in transfer connects directly to the line lead academy in Unit 2, where a session on quality checks will now be added, and to the job description in Unit 1, which already listed catching seal failures as a high-consequence task.

Conclusion

The seam inspection course produced high reactions and strong learning but failed at the behavior level, and the results level showed the cost. Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick's four levels made the gap visible, Alliger and colleagues explained why reactions were a poor guide, and Grossman and Salas pointed to the work environment as the missing piece. Protected time, lead accountability and follow-up raised check compliance from about half to about ninety percent.

References

Alliger, G. M., Tannenbaum, S. I., Bennett, W., Jr., Traver, H., & Shotland, A. (1997). A meta-analysis of the relations among training criteria. Personnel Psychology, 50(2), 341-358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.1997.tb00911.x

Grossman, R., & Salas, E. (2011). The transfer of training: What really matters. International Journal of Training and Development, 15(2), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2419.2011.00373.x

Kirkpatrick, J. D., & Kirkpatrick, W. K. (2016). Kirkpatrick's four levels of training evaluation. ATD Press.