The course review is a descriptive report that a company may request of a staffer to see whether a course, workshop, seminar, or webinar offered to its employees delivers its promised objectives, among other reasons. The more writers understand management's concerns about a course, the better chance they have of crafting a valid and reliable review.
Course reviewers would do well to work from a checklist of details. Below are some of them.
1. Purpose. Why did the company make the course available to employees? Do not stop with a personal reason; extend the purpose to a business aim. For example, instead of writing just to improve the presentation skills of business analysts, write for business analysts to summarize industry trends and forecasts to executives with greater authority, clarity, and conciseness, enabling faster, accurate responses in the marketplace.
2. Context. Was the course a part of a series? A segment of a course certificate program? A pilot project? One of several seminars in an industrywide conference? Does the course provide professional credits?
3. Logistics. When was the course delivered? What was its duration? Where was it delivered? Who offered it? Was it offered live or recorded? In person or online?
4. Administration. How easy was the registration process? Was support offered by the service provider before, during, and after the course?
5. Accommodations. How was the facility? Refreshments? Rooming if in a location remote from the employees' workplace?
6. Attendees. How many people attended the course? What were their professional titles, education, experience, and training needs?
7. Facilitators. What were the credentials and experience of the facilitators? How was their teaching style? Were the responsive to learners' questions about the content?
8. Objectives. What were the goals of the course? Were the goals affective (e.g., appreciate the challenges of presentation skills), behavioral (deliver an executive summary of a business case in 3 minutes), or cognitive (e.g., identify five vocal and five body traits)?
9. Content. What topics, principles, and maxims did the course cover? Did they enable learners to achieve the course objectives.
10. Activities. What discussions, exercises, tests, audio-visual learning experiences, etc. were assigned?
11. Applicability. Are the learned skills transferrable to the employee's job?
12. Recommendations. Should other people in the organization attend the course?
Many businesses spend huge amounts for staff education and training. The course review is a critical part of validating this investment.
Other descriptive reports in this series are:
- Meeting Reports
- Incident Reports
- Investigation Reports
- Inspection Reports
- Procedural Reports
- Scopes of Work
- Test Reports
