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Gathering Participant Information
The more effort you can put into getting to know your potential training group, the
more effectively you can design training that meets their needs. Use this space to
list some different approaches to getting to know your audience.
During training, or at the end with the evaluation form, you can also gather
information. Make sure that information that you gather is protected in keeping
with the appropriate privacy legislation. In addition, if you wish to send follow up information (whether
via e-mail or post), you can ask participants for their contact information and their permission to contact
them. Gathering this information is helpful for several reasons: it can allow you to send follow up or
additional information to the trainees (which will further reinforce your training), and you can also let
people know when additional training that might interest them is available.
As a professional practice, you should never, EVER sell, lend, release, or otherwise compromise the lists
of names and contact information that you gather as a part of your professional training.
If you are trying to gather information about participants during training; perhaps to get a concrete idea
of how much they know about a subject, you can design a pre-test. At the beginning of training (or even
a few days before), participants complete the pre-test to get a benchmark of where they stand in terms
of the training objectives. At the end of the day, they repeat the same or a very similar test, and then
will have a concrete demonstration of how much they have learned.