THE COMPARATIVE EFFICACY OF IN-PERSON, ONLINE-LIVE, AND ASYNCHRONOUS-ONLINE TRAINING PROGRAMS

As employers increasingly shift to remote work in a post COVID-19 pandemic economy, the necessity of in-person training should be questioned. This quality improvement study evaluated the comparative efficacy of a highly technical training program pertaining to water well log validation and data entry in Michigan; delivered in-person, online-live, and online-asynchronously. After successful completion of training and a minimum 60-hour working probationary period, the subject group (n=21) participated in an anonymous online survey that including a knowledge and skill quiz categorized by critical job proficiencies. This survey included a series of demographic questions to relate quiz performance with candidate factors such as level of education, cumulative GPA, major or area of study, training delivery type, and enrollment in college level courses since March 2020. Data were analyzed to compare training knowledge retention across these demographic factors, as well as to compare quiz performance across the three training delivery types and proficiency categories. The frequency distribution interval modes by total scores reflected the best performance and moderate consistency among the in-person trained group, moderate performance and the least consistency among the online-live trained group, and the worst performance and the most consistency among the online-asynchronous trained group. The average of total quiz scores reflected minimal difference in performance between in-person trained and online-live trained groups, with those trained online-asynchronously achieving scores on average 10% lower than their counterparts. With the impracticality of continued in-person training for this particular employer in conjunction with the results of this study, it is recommended that a secondary study be conducted to determine plausible cause for the difference in performance between online-live and online-asynchronous trained groups to aid in the selection of a singular, permanent training method. The of this study may assist in applicant interview and testing selection, potentially increasing performance, decreasing turnover rate, and ultimately saving temporal and monetary resources of the employer.