• Newsletter Subscriptions
  • Magazine Subscription
    • Image
    1. Residential HVAC

    National Comfort Institute Announces New Training Class Measurement System

    Sept. 30, 2016
    This data is displayed in an easy-to-read format on all technical training course description pages on the NCI website.

    Imagine sending your HVAC field personnel into specific training and certification classes, knowing for sure they will improve their knowledge by a certain percentage point. Would that be worth the investment of time and money? National Comfort Institute (NCI) believes it would be, and has recently launched a new training class measurement system that does just that.

    This new course metrics/review/rating system is based on real data gathered from more than 20,000 students that NCI has trained over the last 20 years. This data is displayed in an easy-to-read format on all technical training course description pages on the NCI website.

    Contractingbusiness Com Sites Contractingbusiness com Files Uploads 2016 05 Combustion Safetyand Co Ratings2 0
    Based on a process known as the Kirkpatrick Four-Level Model of Training Evaluation, the NCI metric display actually shows knowledge increase percentages. This is accomplished by giving students a “pre-test” before the class begins (see red column in Figure 1), and another test after the class ends (see green column in Figure 1) and then calculates the increase or decrease of their knowledge based on the class topics.

    The rating/review system looks like and works similarly to other online rating systems including Yelp, Amazon Customer Reviews, and TripAdvisor. Besides the knowledge increase, it shows the average rating using a five-star system based on nine evaluation questions.

    NCI — which trains HVAC field installation and service technicians on the proper way to install and service HVAC systems, based upon the mantra, “If You’re Not Measuring, You’re Just Guessing" — believes this measurement system illustrates that it is, "putting its money where its mouth is."

    “We now quantify our training metrics that not only shows students and their employers how well our training works, it also enables us to share with other HVAC Industry stakeholders looking for empirical evidence of the impact of our training," says NCI Chairman Dominick Guarino.