Learning to evaluate multidisciplinary crisis-management team exercises

Training of multidisciplinary crisis management teams is becoming more common practice. Nevertheless, the value of these trainings and exercises is questionable. Scenarios are quite often realistic and challenging to the trainees: the team members are heavily engaged in doing their jobs in a multidisciplinary context. But the degree to which they can really learn from these experiences depends on more than just the realism. The training situation may be too complex or hectic to get a good understanding of the team’s performance. A solid evaluation afterwards is therefore of utmost importance. However, an effective evaluation requires expert-evaluators. In many cases evaluators are themselves experts in the field of crisis management. But that does not automatically guarantee them to be expert-evaluators. They need to be able to not only observe and diagnose the team’s performance (with respect to taskwork and teamwork), but also to give feedback in an effective and structured way, and to guide the team in their evaluation process. Improving the competencies of evaluators is therefore conditional for increasing the effectiveness of multidisciplinary exercises from a learning perspective. Supported by the Dutch Home Office, we developed a six-day course combining practical experience and results of scientific research. In three blocks of two days, the trainees learn more about observing multidisciplinary team performance, conducting an evaluation with the team, and writing an evaluation report. Hands-on experience is combined with short theoretical reflections. Afterwards, the trainees follow an interactive examination during which their performance is assessed by two independent examiners. Up to now, three courses have been conducted. Every course is evaluated based on which the next course is improved. Trainees come from first responder organizations, the military and other organizations (e.g. municipality). In the paper we will describe the structure and contents of both the course and the examination, and share our experiences.