Adaptation of Kirkpatrick’s four level model of training criteria to assessment of learning outcomes and program evaluation in Higher Education

Assessment of educational effectiveness provides vitally important feedback to Institutions of Higher Education. It also provides important information to external stakeholders, such as prospective students, parents, governmental and local regulatory entities, professional and regional accrediting organizations, and representatives of the workforce. However, selecting appropriate indicators of educational effectiveness of programs and institutions is a difficult task, especially when criteria of effectiveness are not well defined. This article proposes a comprehensive and systematic approach to aligning criteria for educational effectiveness with specific indicators of achievement of these criteria by adapting a popular organizational training evaluation framework, the Kirkpatrick’s four level model of training criteria (Kirkpatrick 1959; 1976; 1996), to assessment in Higher Education. The four level model consists of reaction, learning, behavior and results criteria. Adaptation of this model to Higher Education helps to clarify the criteria and create plans for assessment of educational outcomes in which specific instruments and indicators are linked to corresponding criteria. This provides a rich context for understanding the role of various indicators in the overall mosaic of assessment. It also provides Institutions of Higher Education rich and multilevel feedback regarding the effectiveness of their effort to serve their multiple stakeholders. The importance of such feedback is contextualized both in the reality of stakeholder pressures and in theoretical understanding of colleges and universities as open systems according to the systems theory (Katz and Kahn 1966). Although the focus of this article is on Higher Education, core principles and ideas will be applicable to different types and levels of educational programs.