If you're looking for a fun exercise on communications and problem solving, this game is a fun one with some powerful lessons.

It's free to The Key subscribers. Simply go to Entelechy's Free Stuff page at http://unlockit.com/freestuff/index.html, enter your name and email address, and provide the download code of ZIN (uppercase). At the bottom of the Free Stuff listing you'll be able to click on and download this fun and revelational game.

Entelechy has used this with intact teams, departments, sales account teams, and non-profits. You can do the exercise with one team of 5-8 participants or pit any number of teams against the clock and each other to answer the question in the allotted time.

Enjoy!

• Prepare participants for learning.
• Determine whether participants thought our training was worthwhile. Logic tells us that if participants believe that the training was useful, they're more likely to apply the skills and knowledge presented in the training.
• Determine if participants actually learned something.
• Determine if we actually taught something!
• Determine if our materials were effective.
• Determine what may need to be taught again to this group of participants.
• Identify and quantify the changes in knowledge and skills that result from our training.
• Define the impact that our training has on the participant, the department, and/or the organization.
• Justify the investment that the participant and organization made in the training.
• Modify - or justify - our training design and approach.
• Justify our existence.
• Solve world hunger!

Okay, so maybe I got carried away and maybe evaluation CAN'T solve world hunger, but every other benefit of evaluation listed above is real.

I'm putting the final touches on Entelechy's newest eGuide, Evaluating Training. This eGuide presents four levels of evaluation and how each can be used to gather and use important information about your participants, your training materials/design, and your training delivery. You'll learn to create tests and other assessments that actually measure what you want to measure!

Evaluating Training is NOT a theoretical dissertation on evaluation methods. In this eGuide, we provide tips, techniques, guidelines, and hints for using evaluation in your training - we focus on the practical. We punctuate our discussions with real examples being used today. For more in-depth and theoretical discussions on evaluation, we provide a listing of resources in the appendix.

After reading this eGuide and applying the principals and techniques, the internal trainer will be able to use evaluation to improve training and link training to on-the-job performance. HR professionals, OD experts, and other corporate and organization decision makers will be able to use their knowledge of evaluation when evaluating training programs and when interfacing with internal clients. External consultants and training contractors will be able to use evaluation to make a case for training or other performance interventions - and close the sale!