Yesterday, I walked through a framework I have been refining for years called the Prove It Framework.
For anyone who missed the session, you can watch the full recording here and view the session slides here. Below is a quick summary of what we covered.
The measurement gap
LCvista does a great job of capturing the compliance side of learning. Attendance, completions, and CPE hours are tracked accurately and consistently. That work matters, and it frees L&D leaders to focus on a different set of questions, the ones leadership actually asks. Did they learn it? Do they still know it? Did their behavior change? Can they do the work?
Compliance metrics confirm that training happened. They cannot tell you whether the learning stuck or whether anyone is better at their job because of it. Closing that gap is what the Prove It framework was built for.
The four levels of 'PROVE It'
LEARNING: Did they learn it? The evidence we are after is that knowledge increased. Assessments are the workhorse. A pre and post assessment is ideal because it isolates the training variable, though a single post-assessment still gives you useful information. If you are already launching attendance polls for compliance reasons, make them real checks on whether the last chunk of content landed rather than a "is the sky blue" question.
RETENTION: Do they still know it? Knowledge fades fast. In one example I shared during the session, a post-assessment score of 86 percent dropped to 62 percent 30 days later without reinforcement. The forgetting curve is real. Retention boosters and microrefreshers bring learners back to the content and signal that the information matters.
APPLICATION: Did behavior change? The evidence here looks different. Manager observations, work product reviews, action plans, and practical application activities all help answer whether a new approach is showing up in real work. If you rolled out a new methodology and the work product still looks the same as before, application has not happened yet.
READINESS: Can they do the work? Application asks whether someone is doing it. Readiness asks whether they are doing it well. The best evidence comes from anything that gets close to the real work environment while still being controlled, like simulations or structured observation. The point is to give people a safe place to practice and make mistakes before those mistakes happen on a client deliverable.
There is a fifth piece, business impact, that sits just beyond the framework. Readiness is what L&D measures. Business impact is what readiness enables.
Where to start
The framework has four steps. The judgment behind it is where things get interesting. You will always have tradeoffs to consider around what to measure and how much.
My advice from the session still applies. Pick one question your organization cannot answer today and try one tactic against it. Maybe that means adding a post-assessment to your next program, or scheduling a reinforcement touchpoint a couple of weeks after a session. You do not need to do everything at once.
A few highlights from the Q&A
How can we create retention boosters in LCvista?
Several options work well, depending on what you are trying to learn. At Spiirall by LCvista we use Conferences i/o asynchronously. We also use LCvista Activities, and sometimes whatever the client already has available like Microsoft Forms or SurveyMonkey. The platform is usually the easy part. The harder question is what you are trying to learn from the booster, because that shapes the questions you ask.
How would you approach training if people aren't retaining or applying what they learned?
My first reaction is to resist the assumption that training is the problem. If people are not retaining information, the issue may be that reinforcement is missing. If they are not applying it, they may not have had real opportunities to practice. Managers may not be reinforcing the new behavior. The underlying process itself may be creating friction. Training is one possible intervention and rarely the only one. Understand where the breakdown is happening before deciding to redesign the training.
How can we alleviate the burden on our SMEs?
This is one of the biggest reasons firms work with Spiirall by LCvista. We do not want SMEs spending their time writing assessment questions or designing learning activities. A good learning designer can interview the SME, pull out the critical knowledge and decision points, and build the assessments and reinforcement touchpoints around that expertise. The point is to focus SME time on what only they can offer.
If you want to talk about anything from this session, reach out to your account manager. New to LCvista? Amanda Hollingsworth (ahollingsworth@lcvista.com) is a great place to start.
Thanks to everyone who joined!
