How to Get the Most Out of the Humble eLearning Knowledge Check

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Learning isn’t a one-and-done activity. Too often, organizations provide learning, test knowledge with a quiz and grade, and if they pass, leave it at that. But that’s not very helpful if you’re looking to create a continuous learning culture, or if you want to make sure learning has a long-term impact. We’ll dive into how you can get the most out of knowledge checks to make them more than just embellishments at the end of a course.

What are knowledge checks?

A knowledge check (or knowledge test) is a short assessment or activity designed to gauge learners’ understanding of a specific topic or concept. They’re a critical component of the learning process that ensures knowledge is presented, retained, and applied effectively by learners. Knowledge checks need to be done at key intervals to help organizations create stronger learning programs that benefit learners and improve knowledge retention.

Where you’re going wrong with knowledge checks

There’s nothing necessarily “wrong” with a knowledge check. But too often, people don’t really see the vision for knowledge tests. Done with some strategic thinking, they should go beyond simple, static checks of knowledge, but a lot of them just… don’t.

A big factor is that it’s easy to make a knowledge test overly focused on recall, rather than understanding or knowledge application. This can come down to when you do knowledge checks (hint: only immediately after training is completed) or the kinds of questions you ask. While it’s good to know that learners can answer questions, there’s no proof they can apply that knowledge in a real-world situation. All it really does is emphasize a pass-fail dichotomy rather than a development roadmap.

And it doesn’t help that knowledge checks typically focus on details that aren’t important to learning objectives or organizational outcomes. If you’re not measuring tangible outcomes (like capabilities), you’ll only be collecting inaccurate or incomplete data on learning, and nothing on performance. With poor learning data and no performance insight, you’ll have no foundation on which to make any strategic talent or business decisions. (No fearmongering. We’re deadly serious.)

How to enhance your knowledge checks

You wouldn’t give someone a driver’s license immediately after they pass their written tests. The test indicates that they can recall road rules, sure, but they’re required to prove they can apply them in real life (like practicing maneuvers they’re not so good at) before they can graduate from a learner’s permit to a full driver’s license.

This is what logbooks and competency tests share: Knowledge checks. So how can you make knowledge checks for e-learning as effective as they are for a driver’s license? We’ve got a few strategies up our sleeves:

1. Align them with organizational strategy
2. Focus on real-world application
3. Embed them in the learning journey.

Align with organizational strategy

Capabilities are derived from organizational strategy and outline the skills, knowledge, behaviors, processes, and tools that combine to achieve business goals. That gives you a foundation for L&D and an outline for creating development plans that improve learner and business performance.

This is what a knowledge check should be targeting. When knowledge checks are designed to assess capabilities, then you get a more granular understanding of performance, and you can ask more meaningful questions for more insightful results. While not quite a full capability assessment, capability-based knowledge checks can evaluate the level of competency a learner is working at. The point is the knowledge test should reveal how well an individual is performing the capabilities of their job role at a given point in time, so you can assess where improvement is needed.

Focus on real-world applications

If learning isn’t changing how learners behave in their day-to-day, then it’s pretty pointless. You wouldn’t hand a driver’s license to someone who checked a box saying speeding was against the law, but continues to speed every time they get into the driver’s seat.

Of course, you wouldn’t know that the driver from our example constantly broke the speed limit if you didn’t follow up on how well they understood and applied road rules. Therein lies the key to checking knowledge application: you should do it on an ongoing basis. Focus on scenario-based questions that go beyond recall and definitions, and dive into real-life challenges and situations that learners actually have to deal with in their day-to-day jobs. These questions can be written from specific capabilities and their assigned competencies, so you a) are checking relevant knowledge and b) doing so objectively.

Side note: the objective baseline afforded by capabilities also means reduced manual effort from leaders, instructors, facilitators, HR professionals, or whoever’s writing said questions.

Embed within the learning journey

Don’t wait until after learning—or worse yet, a yearly performance review—is done to perform a knowledge check. The detached, annual performance review is only going to demoralize and disengage employees. That’s partly because traditional performance reviews reduce them to a number, and partly because they often go nowhere in terms of development. It’ll be particularly bad if a knowledge check reveals they were doing something wrong for months, and it wasn’t corrected by a manager.

Instead, you should be providing knowledge checks throughout the learning journey at several key points.

1. Pre-assessment: Perform a knowledge check before learning to determine what capabilities learners already have and what capabilities they need to develop.
2. During training: This is more feedback than a knowledge check, but it’s crucial for establishing a point of contact between learners and their managers and providing actionable feedback as needed in the moment.
3. Post-assessment: Test how knowledge improved since learning was completed to determine what—if any—further training is needed.

Key takeaways

Knowledge checks—when done right—are critical for understanding levels of competency at any given point in time. Totaled, that gives you a view of learner progression and a snapshot of organizational capability. The only problem is they’re often treated as a final step in the L&D process, rather than an active part of ensuring its success from the beginning.

The best way to employ knowledge checks is to embed them throughout the learning process. Don’t just slap them on at the end to see if learners can recall content from their training. Use them instead to assess what learners need to improve, how learners are faring on their learning journey, how well they retained learning, and what further learning they need to improve.

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