Kirkpatrick Four Level Model of Training Evaluation created by Donald Kirkpatrick

Training on Trial

Training On Trial

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Training on Trial will give you an edge on enhancing the value of the learning and development services you provide—before you’re forced to defend your work.

“Training on Trial should be a required read for anyone in the business of buying, building, and delivering training.”
—Judith Hale, Ph.D., CPT Hale Associates

Why Read Training on Trial?

Compelling Evidence That Training Can Yield Bottom Line Results

As you already know, training budgets are among the first to be cut when economic times get tough. Whether you’re one of the in-house survivors or a struggling consultant, you can no longer coast on lofty notions about continuous learning and employee development. You need to provide compelling evidence that training delivers bottom-line results.

“We do not have a choice but to defend ourselves,” attests Dr. James D. Kirkpatrick, one of the world’s most respected training and management consultants. In Training on Trial, Kirkpatrick and his co-counsel, Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick, guide you through every critical step of making a case for the value of training—whether to your CFO or a potential client. Using a courtroom trial as a metaphor, the Kirkpatricks demonstrate how to refute the charge that training does not make a significant enough impact on business to justify its costs. To help you represent yourself to the jury—that is, whoever has the power to judge your relative value—the authors call on eminent industry expert Dr. Donald Kirkpatrick. Dr. Kirkpatrick’s famous Four Level Evaluation Model has been adapted and applied to provide the foundation for your winning defense.

Steps to Leverage the Kirkpatrick Business Partnership Model

With Training on Trial in your corner, you’ll go beyond spouting training jargon to demonstrating the tactical and strategic business value of your training programs. While working towards creating irrefutable connections between all types of learning and performance, you’ll come to:

Build expertise and become genuinely involved in your company’s or client’s business
Pledge to work together to positively impact a pressing business need or pivotal business opportunity
Ask the jury their expectations and revise your own to be more realistic and mutually satisfying
Develop a plan, targeting the key drivers of performance success after training has taken place
Execute your initiative and deliver a stellar ROE (Return on Expectations)

Case Studies to Illustrate Key Principles

Throughout, you’ll find key action points and business partner tips. To add to the case, the Kirkpatricks spotlight star case studies from their practice, including Georgia-Pacific, Clarian Health, Farm Credit Canada, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Book specifications

Authors: James D. Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick
Pages: 239
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: AMACOM (February 3, 2010)
Cover price: $24.95

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Kirkpatrick Partners is a provider of training evaluation and business partnership training, products, consulting, and impact studies. Our work is based on the Kirkpatrick Four Level Evaluation Model created by Donald L. Kirkpatrick in 1954 as part of his PhD dissertation on the evaluation of the effectiveness of training for supervisors.

Instead of training ROI, we focus on training Return on Expectations (ROE). This is a more holistic measurement of all of the benefits realized from a program or initiative, qualitative and quantitative. We offer courses and workshops on training evaluation and business partnership that equip training professionals to create, demonstrate, and measure the business results and value their training yields or supports.

Donald (Don), James (Jim), and Wendy Kirkpatrick and Nick DeNardo are pleased to be united as Kirkpatrick Partners. Whether you want to earn your Kirkpatrick certification or simply create more value in your organization, we are here to help. Our programs are valuable whether you are a corporate employee, member of government, or an independent consultant.

The Kirkpatricks are the authors of nine books including Evaluating Training Programs, Implementing the Four Levels, Transferring Learning to Results, Kirkpatrick Then and Now, and Training on Trial.