Presenting material to learners in a two dimensional format is common in most types of online learning programs. Most E-Learning companies provide this basic format, but at Designing Digitally, Inc. there is always the option to enhance this basic experience by adding virtual worlds and 3D simulation training to any online learning experience. Virtual worlds have several benefits over basic 2D types of E-Learning experiences and are very applicable to any type of training program.

Experiencing The Training

Rather than just learning about a specific technique, skill, protocol or procedure, virtual worlds and 3D simulations allows the learner to actually learn about and experience the learning objective. In a 3D environment the learner can have an avatar that interacts within the virtual world much like the experience of being in a video game. The avatar can try out different options in the game and, through correct and incorrect choices, have a much more complete learning experience.

People that have the option to experience learning rather than just reading about the concept ultimately have a better understanding. The human being learns through the results of what the avatar does in the program.

Adding Socialization

Having the option to include multiple learners in an online training environment within a virtual world has benefits to all learners. Chat systems and interactive features between learners in the game provides opportunity to talk about the experience, reinforcing the learning. It is also a great way to allow people from all over the company, agency or organization to take the same training at the same time without the need for travel. Everyone can experience the training virtually through the environment created online.

This immersion in the 3D environment has additional benefits. It is possible to provide some healthy competition by adding a scoring element in a game type of format. Serious games and simulations that are scored will allow co-workers to compare scores and continue to strive to become better at the skills and learning objectives built into the game.

Adding a Sense of Space and Environment

Virtual worlds are really a great option since they allow the learner to have a sense of space and environment in the learning process. It is not flat and abstract since the E-Learning developer can make an environment that is very typical of the environment in which the skill or learning experience will be carried out. This is also a great way to ensure that the learner is able to use the skills learned appropriately and within the protocols that are required by the specific organization or agency.

The entire E-Learning module doesn't have to be part of the virtual world or simulation. It is possible to place a 3D element within the 2D training so traditional types of material is presented plus the learner gets to experience and practice the skills. This is a great combination of learning modalities that is sure to reach all learners and engage them in the training.

On behalf of everyone at Designing Digitally, Inc. we just want to give you all a heads up that there will be a bit of commotion during the end of April here at the Designing Digitally, Inc. office.

As you may know Designing Digitally Inc. has steadily grown year after year into the innovative company that we are today. Due to our innovation and growth we have come to realize that we now have outgrown our current office location, as a result we will be moving our office headquarters to a new and larger location.

If you are a current client, or have been in communication with our team, understand this will not affect your deadlines or meetings.

Once the dust has completely settled, and our entire team has been migrated over to the new office location, we will have a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a social mixer at the new location. Stay tuned for more information on when the ribbon-cutting will take place!

Please update your address book with the following address for Designing Digitally, Inc.

Designing Digitally, Inc.
8401 Claude Thomas Road, Suite 30
Franklin, Ohio 45005

The Work World & Serious Games – What MyScienceWork Has to Say on the Subject

MyScienceWork is an interesting website (www.mysciencework.com) chock-full of fascinating research, news and reporting an all manner of scientific studies and findings – ranging from agriculture, archaeology & astronomy to computer science, political science and psychology. We came across a very timely piece on their website not too long ago and thought we’d share a distillation of that article’s main points with our dedicated readers.

Titled Gaming and Working: When Two Worlds Collide, the sub-title of the article is what first clued us in to the accuracy and understanding that these guys (just a phrase here dear readers – we’re not implying that only men are writing for this site!) are imparting via online reporting. Video Games as Training Tools is that sub-title, and it sounds like the kind of blog post we’d routinely write for our blog. Yes, yet another online entity out there that really gets it about serious games, and boy do they have some affirming facts and statistics to pass along to their readers!

While the article starts out by pointing-out that children and video games can be a bad mix if overdone due to onscreen violence concerns, the writer quickly switches gears and explains that specialized professional skills such as surgical hand-eye coordination in adults can be enhanced with serious games, and from there the article really gets interesting.

As the article goes, “This raises the question of the evolution of teaching and training, not only during formal education, but also in a professional environment. Nowadays, there is a real market for games called serious games whose primary purpose is not pure entertainment, but training, advertising, simulation, or education. They took off in the mid-2000s, when small game companies needed to find a new way to survive, as they couldn’t compete with their big competitors on the pure entertainment market. Several companies, public administrations and the defense department use these kinds of games.”

Some of the highly affirmative and exciting information in the article on serious games includes these details:

• In 2003, C. S. Green and D. Bavelier showed that playing action video games was able to radically alter visual attention processing. Since then, gamers have proven to have better reflexes, spatial attention and hand-eye coordination.
• On February 27, 2013, G. Patrizi, D. Giannotti, G. Di Rocco, A.R. Vestri and C.P. Semproni showed that a Nintendo® Wii™ training program had a positive impact on laparoscopic surgical skills. The doctors who regularly played three Wii™ games requiring visual concentration and hand-eye coordination for one month performed surgery more successfully.
• Scientists at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, led by lead author Dr. Sam Kilic, reported that teen gamers are “better at virtual surgery than medical residents.”

As the quoted Dr. Kilic observed furthermore in the article, “As we see students with enhanced visual-spatial experience and hand-eye coordination that are a result of the technologically-savvy world they are immersed in, we should rethink how best to teach this generation.”

At Designing Digitally, Inc., we couldn’t agree more, which is why we’ve invested a great deal of technology and staff hiring in the direction of serious games development, which we feel is the next wave of employee training and empowerment for the technical and digital age we find ourselves living within today. Give us a call or contact us using our form fields and get your company or business started in serious games for training and education. We can help you to understand their value and efficiencies for the 21st century workplace.

Read the full MyScienceWork article on serious games here.

In the training industry the word virtual trainer is often used loosely. Some refer to the narrator as a virtual trainer and some see virtual trainers as actual people training online. But what does it mean to have a virtual trainer in an e-learning project according to Designing Digitally, Inc.? I know you all are very eager to hear our explanation, so let’s get started.

In the realm of e-learning development, Designing Digitally, Inc. views the virtual trainer as a reliable replacement for the Instructor Lead Training (ILT) you will currently find in most classrooms. Often with ILT, lessons are planned consistently, but rarely delivered as planned. By using a real live instructor, there will be variables regarding how well the experience went for each individual. Much of ILT is dependant on the instructors themselves. Each learning experience will be determined by the instructor’s effectiveness in the classroom, their delivery of the lesson and their personal health and mood. These variables can lower the learning experience of each person in the classroom if the instructor is sick, grumpy or late to class.

By using virtual trainers within E-Learning Designing Digitally, Inc. those variables and inconsistencies are blasted away. The virtual trainer will be there to present information, and guide you through the learning experience just as an instructor would, but without human error. The virtual trainer will never get sick, never get tired, and will never be in a bad mood. The virtual trainer is designed within the E-Learning environment using 2D or 3D animations and Artificial Intelligence (AI), providing dynamics to the virtual trainer never used before in our industry.

The virtual trainer within the programs created by Designing Digitally, Inc. not only presents information, they determine what you have done right or wrong and suggests the best strategy to move forward in the learning experience. This is not an easily created linear e-learning program. Our complex systems such as serious games and training simulations incorporate AI technology to ensure it’s not the simple “hints and tips” brand of virtual training. AI technology provides a more true to life training experience using decision making capabilities to determine what the virtual trainer will do next based on your decisions.

In conclusion, we’re not stating ILT is being replaced by our virtual training systems we build into e-learning. What we are stating is that you can have a development created with a complex AI driven virtual trainer that will never get tired, or have a bad day. This will keep the learning consistent for each and every learner throughout the organization. Overall, we are not suggesting the virtual training systems we build into e-learning are replacing ILT. We are simply stating you can have a program created using a complex AI driven virtual trainer that will never get sick, tired, or have a bad day, thus maintaining a consistent learning experience for every learner throughout an organization.

It only makes sense that as more and more consumers throw away their landlines and go wireless, there will be more and more applications developed for the handheld society of the 21st century. Shopping apps, direction & guidance apps, image capturing & manipulating apps... there are so many applications being developed for the expanding world of cellular technology that it’s almost mind-boggling. Indeed, according to Wikipedia, the number of applications for the iPhone alone has reached 700,000 as of September 2012 – an astonishing number of possible utilizations!

As a forward-thinking interactive development company, Designing Digitally, Inc. has been working on developing serious games, 3D training simulations, virtual worlds, and E-Learning programs for some time now – always with our ear to the ‘beat of the street’ when it comes to new trends and possibilities powered by the Internet and computer technology. Mobile learning solutions are our latest foray, since handheld devices offer so much freedom of movement and access and we are very much into the power of E-Learning for the new generation of workers, trainers, HR professionals and employees coming out of schools currently.

As Andrew Hughes, President of Designing Digitally, Inc. puts it succinctly, “the benefit of mobile learning applications is that we can build fidelity and presentation experiences that you could normally only see on the computer, straight for your phone. This opportunity opens huge possibilities for time savings, training efficiencies, best practice consistencies, as well as overall convenience never before experienced in technology-based training. It’s quite fantastic.”

From providing workmen and maintenance people with near-instantaneous mobile applications on how to perform new repairs and conduct procedures to educating in-field sales people on new processes or products, custom mobile learning applications from Designing Digitally, Inc. can revolutionize the way new hires and seasoned pros learn on-the-job. With cellular phone use as well as tablet and laptop computer use growing exponentially each year, it’s just common sense to invest in this burgeoning technologic innovation to help keep your company or business on the cutting edge of training and education for a well-developed workforce. Designing Digitally, Inc. can help.

Learn more about our mobile learning development service here. Then reach out and contact us to get started on your first mobile learning application for training and HR purposes. We’re waiting to hear from you.

Models of Mobile E-Learning for Training and Education

With the advent of PCs, then the Internet, and then the near ubiquity of cellular phones in just a very few short years, it was not long until some bright person realized the cross- pollination potential of these disparate technologies. Thus mobile learning was born.

With cellular technology powering hand-held access, users discovered they could do more than just talk on their phones and send text messages – they could access the Web and view websites, which soon were being designed to offer a variant design for cell phones and their smaller screens and more limited capabilities. In a feat that seemed oddly counter-intuitive, users were willing and even began to choose to access the Internet from a perspective of convenience rather than from sophistication and complexity. Much in the same way that vinyl records gave way to the more compact CD format despite surrendering visual artwork appeal, and in the same way that many if not most of today’s young people listen to music using the tiny speaker systems built into their laptops or via ear plugs instead of with large and loud, complex speaker systems, Internet users traded the larger visual displays and functionality of PCs for the convenient on-the-go access of the Web via their smart phones, etc.

Like all good capitalistic ventures, once the need was identified then the marketplace adapted – soon smart phones and Androids, etc. began to feature applications that enabled their phones to do things only their computers could have done previously, and then some. Navigational apps, voice and image and sound recognition apps, even mobile-enabled websites that were specially designed to function on mobile phones began to be developed to accommodate this new market segment. The time was ripe for mobile learning in earnest.

Today there are three main forms of mobile learning being practiced. The Web model of mobile learning requires “students” of all types to access blogs and websites via their hand-held device. Learning through the reading of website content, 3D simulations, the watching of videos…these are all examples of mobile learning using the Internet and websites as the main tools. In the App model of mobile learning, users download apps or applications – basically, software programs designed for mobile devices – that provide a very specific function such as a foreign language exercise, mathematics flashcards or a visual logic exercise for learning and development. The use of graphic QR codes to access apps for various exercises is another example of an evolving technology used to speed- up processes and procedures. The cellular model of mobile learning incorporates the use of the cell phone’s basic features for a learning exercise. “Telephony” functions such as listening to audio broadcast messages or engaging in text message-based testing procedures are examples of cellular mobile learning.

With the proliferation of the Internet to all corners of the world and the relative lack of expense for cellular phones, expect mobile learning to continue to grow in popularity and use. Options for phone-based and tablet-based learning will continue to expand and be offered by more and more companies, with some businesses presenting all their educational resources via this milieu especially for younger, tech-enabled workers.

Designing Digitally, Inc. offers E-Learning development and mobile learning development services for smart companies with their eyes upon the future. How can we help your business to become more agile and efficient in the 21 st century? Contact us and we’ll be glad to tell you more.

Due to rapid growth within the company, Designing Digitally, Inc. has recently expanded into a new office! Based right here in Franklin, we’re an award winning development company specializing in creating E-learning modules, 3D training simulations, and virtual worlds for businesses and government agencies. Our mission is providing top-quality services that ensure our clients’ goals are met.

We invite you to join us for our Ribbon Cutting and Open House event on Tuesday, July 16th from 4:00pm-5:30pm. You will have the opportunity to see our new office firsthand and meet the team who made this expansion possible. Samples of our past work will be available for your viewing enjoyment, and we will provide alcoholic and nonalcoholic refreshment as well as light appetizers during the event.

We look forward to seeing you on July 16th. If you know you are attending, please RSVP by the end of the day on July 11th. To RSVP, just follow this link (no registration required): http://www.evite.com/event/0077CIYT2I2JAACHKEPC3EATQLYWRQ. For more information, please call (513) 698-8142 option 8 to speak with our administrative assistant, Rae Niehaus.

Our new location is:

Designing Digitally, Inc.
8401 Claude Thomas Road - Suite 30
Franklin, Ohio 45005

For all of you that cannot attend. Please feel free to click to view some of the panaramas taken at the new location below:

Serious game and simulation developer Designing Digitally, Inc. will use HTML5 and the Unity Development Platform to design serious gaming to teach and expose students to home assessment skills which are difficult to teach in traditional classroom formats.

Franklin, OH June 21, 2013 – Designing Digitally, Inc., a full-service interactive design company, has partnered with Rutgers University (formerly The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey) to create an interactive serious game utilizing the award-winning Unity3D development platform that will allow learners to edit virtual homes to be barrier free. Rutgers Professor Dr. Karen Huhn is spearheading this effort in collaboration with the team at Designing Digitally, Inc. When talking about this effort, Dr. Huhn stated, “This serious game will provide the opportunity to practice a skill (home assessment) in several simulated environments in a fun, interactive manner.”

This effort will allow students to interact with elements within virtual homes so they can be converted into barrier free living spaces. The learners will be able to walk throughout the virtual homes and select features of the home that need to be remodeled to be fully accessible. For instance, in some of the homes learners will be able to change the height of the countertops or even change the width of the doorways to accommodate a person who uses a wheelchair.

Andrew Hughes, President of Designing Digitally, Inc., indicated that they “...partnered to create this serious game because it is a skill that is difficult to teach in traditional classroom format. Using 3D gaming allows us to simulate multiple home environments in real time and allows the learner to test his or her strategy in a safe, cost effective way that could not be done in the traditional classroom setting.”

Once completed, the 3D serious game will be available for purchase from OpenSesame for integration into school's learning management systems. The game will be available sometime during the fall of 2013.

About Designing Digitally, Inc.:
Designing Digitally, Inc. is a full-service interactive design firm and serious game developer. Located in Franklin, Ohio, Designing Digitally, Inc. has developed a number of serious games and simulations, virtual worlds, and E-Learning solutions for companies around the country and the globe. Designing Digitally Inc.’s overall goal is to add value to the clients that they serve by creating engaging, educational, and entertaining learning solutions.

Contact:
Andrew Hughes
Designing Digitally, Inc.
513.698.8142
http://www.designingdigitally.com

About Rutgers (Formerly UMDNJ):
Rutgers University is a leading national public research university and the state’s preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Rutgers is dedicated to teaching that meets the highest standards of excellence; to conducting research that breaks new ground; and to turning knowledge into solutions for local, national, and global communities.

Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences (RBHS) is the health care education, research, and clinical division of Rutgers University, comprising nine schools and their attendant faculty practices, centers, institutes, and clinics; New Jersey’s leading comprehensive cancer care center; and New Jersey's largest behavioral health care network.

When the Serious Game conversation turns to dollar and cents the chatter around the design becomes muted. Designing Digitally, Inc. knows the two are mutually exclusive and need to be addressed prior to investing some significant coin. We already know that stakeholders and decision makers must factor in the value of the investment with any learning programs created, and Serious Games are no different. We also know that we need metrics and artifacts to help inform our client of the true value of their educational product.

However, the metrics we can glean from a Serious Game are far more data rich than what we could expect from just a regular E-Learning module residing in an LMS. This provides an opportunity to delve more fully into comprehending how the current design of a Serious Game is improving transfer of learning and where it may be hindering it.

The goal of a Serious Game is to impart knowledge, facts, concepts, and processes in a contextually meaningful way. The design provides opportunities for the learner to move through levels and/or reach goals. This typically occurs through interactions with the game elements such as other players, the environment, and/or objects. The standard goal and hope is for learners to apply their newly acquired skills and/or information outside of the game and in appropriate situations.

For example, a sales representative practices objection-handling techniques inside the game with various customers. The goal behind the Serious Game is to get the sales representative to actually utilize those techniques in their real-life sales calls. Are increased sales of the representative the only method of showing the game was worth the investment? It could be, but it wouldn’t be looking at all possible analytical options.

So where can you go to gather data? You can start with their Learning Management System (LMS). Any LMS can show you a few things about Serious Gamers, such as the gamers’ start and end times for the game as a whole or levels within the game and what was achieved (passed or failed). This can provide you with a surface comprehension of game use, but it still doesn’t tell you if game use was meaningful towards achieving the goals of the Serious Game. Gathering additional metrics on social interactions, routes that users took to achieve a goal or how a user leveraged an acquired game item to reach a goal or level would inform designers and stakeholders about the value of the investment. These new data points move away from just showing achievement, by actually capturing how something was achieved.

This additional information provides insight into the ROI discussion. Was the investment into this game worth it? Did the learners not only achieve what they should in the game, but did it also translate those achievements into actual accomplishments outside of the game? Given the previous example on objection-handling, what if the sales representative never used many of the techniques in real-life that they learned in the game?

If you only had start and stop times and pass/fail information you might be at a loss for why the Serious Game did not yield the result you had wanted. On the other hand, having the extra data points may tell you that cues from the game to socially interact with a peer or manager did not occur. Another example may be that perhaps the use of a game item, such as a clinical study to support a sales approach to objection-handling, was not leveraged. Determinations can then be made on whether the design of the Serious Game needs adjustment.

How can you get at this type of useful data? An upcoming option for gathering the more finite details from a Serious Gaming system is to use TinCan API which can be used in conjunction with an LMS. It does everything we just discussed with respect to data collection. It provides the ability to record any learning experiences of a learner or group of learners and their individual and collective learning paths. This translates into the ability to compare job performance to training data to determine effectiveness.

When deciding whether or not to go with a Serious Game make sure the conversation includes a balanced discussion around ROI, first from the perspective of the learner and then the investor. Ask what defines success for the learner when using the Serious Game. Then outline a strategy that will engage the learner and provide the/an opportunity to achieve each identified “success” in the game. Within that strategy, flag all aspects of the learner’s engagements and interactions that will help to build a data set for analysis.

For the investor side of the ROI, delineate what success looks like in a contextual sense. By this we mean, given the Serious Game, what do you expect the learner to be able to do with what they achieved? Is it to be more efficient, increase sales, heighten awareness, or decrease accidents? Revisit what was flagged for data collection and determine if more elements within the game need marked to ensure that all ROI specifications have attributable metrics.

As a final point, our discussion here focused mostly on what could be quantified from the Serious Game and from future performance of a learner. However, much is to be said about gathering qualitative information on the experiences of the users in the Serious Game. Aspects of motivation, self-efficacy, decision making, and other components of human behavior are difficult, if not impossible, to quantify as they are subjective and tend to be individually driven. These facets may be just as vital to the design of the Serious Game and the future performance of the learner.

It’s always interesting to read what media pundits think of our industry from an outsider perspective, as their understanding about Serious Games, their purposes and value help us to develop more targeted communications about the TRUE purposes and value of Serious Games. We’re then able to help the wider world “get it” about the great educational and training possibilities inherent in fun and interactive gaming programs for people of all ages.

A recent article from the BBC actually hits the nail on the head pretty well in terms of a big picture narrative about how Serious Games can be used and the diversity of subject matter they can address, citing such disparate topics as the ongoing Middle East conflict, the end of the Petroleum Age, and sexual coercion among teenagers. Talk about putting the SERIOUS in Serious Games, right?

Addressing one of the biggest strong points of Serious Games – their ability to engage young people in contemplation and learning on subject matter in a way that holds their attention effectively and experientially – the BBC article cites a sex education program being tried in some schools in England.

“’One of the things that's very striking when you spend time in a classroom of teenagers is just how easy it is for them to get bored or distracted,’ says Dr. Katherine Brown, leader of the Sash Research Group at Coventry University. ‘The more innovative you can be with what techniques you use, the more likely you are to be successful in delivering the education you are trying to get across. Having that technology does instantly engage the young people in the classroom. It's completely novel to them that their teacher would use this kind of technology to deliver a lesson on sex education.’”

Considering the rather alarming rate at which American youth are diminishing as champions in academic achievement compared to youth in several other countries globally, the use of Serious Games may be an effective tool to get bored and disenfranchised teens and young adults back on-track interest-wise. We certainly hope that this is the case – that’s one of the reasons Designing Digitally, Inc. is here!

Due to rapid growth within the company, Designing Digitally, Inc. has recently expanded into a new office! Based right here in Franklin, we’re an award winning development company specializing in creating E-learning modules, 3D training simulations, and virtual worlds for businesses and government agencies. Our mission is providing top-quality services that ensure our clients’ goals are met.

We invite you to join us for our Ribbon Cutting and Open House event on Tuesday, July 16th from 4:00pm-5:30pm. You will have the opportunity to see our new office firsthand and meet the team who made this expansion possible. Samples of our past work will be available for your viewing enjoyment, and we will provide alcoholic and nonalcoholic refreshment as well as light appetizers during the event.

We look forward to seeing you on July 16th. If you know you are attending, please RSVP by the end of the day on July 11th. To RSVP, just follow this link (no registration required): http://www.evite.com/event/0077CIYT2I2JAACHKEPC3EATQLYWRQ. For more information, please call (513) 698-8142 option 8 to speak with our administrative assistant, Rae Niehaus.

Our new location is:

Designing Digitally, Inc.
8401 Claude Thomas Road - Suite 30
Franklin, Ohio 45005

For all of you that cannot attend. Please feel free to click to view some of the panaramas taken at the new location below:

"We will transform the way we train people by giving real-time access via their smartphone, tablet or laptop to this 'gamification' concept to heighten and speed up learning and training at all levels."

That, according to technology forecaster Daniel Burrus, is one of the main points to ponder for the future of business and one of the big firework explosions in an amazing article we found on CNN about serious games and mobile learning. It’s a very exciting time for our industry, as the proliferation of gaming, the appreciation for mobile apps and all they can accomplish, and the ascendancy of technology in the workplace are all coming together and giving the collective business world an epiphany about what IS possible with the virtual world for the future of Business. And we’ve known it all along.

When major news players like CNN are able to cover our industry and report on practical insights and potentials, you know that a tipping point has been reached. It’s taken a bit of time – since the 1930s in Russia when a war game was adapted for their business practices according to the article – but we’re seeing interest and enthusiasm from both the education and economic worlds about the use of serious games and mobile applications for E-Learning. People are experiencing the “light bulb” moment of insight that is needed for real transformation to occur.

A few of the sparkling “revelations” in the CNN article include:

• "’Games can be an amazing leadership tool,’ says Steffen Lofvall, senior consultant at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). ‘And there are quite a few studies documenting that you learn at a deeper level when you add the digital element,’ he says.”
• “At CBS, there is a focus on expanding the use of games in their masters and executive programs. Currently twenty games are being used or have the potential to be used; some are virtual strategy games while others are simple board games like ‘The Leadership Casino,’ which challenges the leadership abilities of the students. After the first semester of use the games resulted in an average class improvement of 14% and an 8% improvement in the perception of the leader, according to CBS.”
• “In a study on the link between education and employment, global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company suggested that serious game simulations could become the apprenticeship of the 21st century. It says games and simulations can offer detailed, practical and real-world scenarios to large numbers at relatively low cost. ‘The future of hands-on learning may well be hands-off,’ the report notes.”

We are delighted and super excited to see serious games, E-Learning and mobile learning being reported upon with deep understanding and vision by vetted and respected news organizations like CNN. It’s a very exciting time to be in our industry, and we look forward to sharing our expertise with both academic and business organizations that want to take their organizations to the next level of evolution and efficiency. If you’re ready to get going with various E-Learning applications for your enterprise, please contact Designing Digitally, Inc. and we’ll answer all your questions succinctly and professionally. We’re here for you in the 21st century!

The adage “cart before the horse” seems appropriate in a few conversations that you can have around E-Learning developments, but there is purpose and value to these seemingly backwards conversations. In particular, Designing Digitally, Inc. prefers to discuss Return on Investment (ROI) during project initiation. Analyzing this prior to creating an award winning product means post-product deployment data collection and analysis should move along a bit easier, giving you those ROI answers you are seeking. However, two things must happen: 1) the initial conversation on what constitutes ROI for your company and 2) the administrative and logistical aspects of collecting both quantitative and qualitative data.

One of the best ways to drive an ROI conversation in the beginning is to look at the objectives of the learning program. The objectives of the E-Learning development should culminate into one goal that the learner is to achieve. For example a company may seek to improve safety or yield better production numbers on the manufacturing floor. A learner that cannot reach the objectives will impact the projected ROI. This means the design of the training must ensure that the objectives are being met during design and development and after implementation.

To achieve success in meeting objectives, strive to create contextually meaningful scenarios and activities. Bedding the learning in a familiar manner improves retention and transfer of learning to an actual work environment. However, it’s important to make sure to align roll out to maximize transference. Deploying new training on Friday provides little opportunity for the learner to demonstrate application until Monday. Retention rates diminish after 48 hours, so make sure consideration is given to the timing of deployment.

We would be remiss if we did not discuss the most popular form for gathering data: surveys. However, surveys are not just for post-implementation; they can be used while designing and developing the educational product as well. They do not have to be complex or overly in-depth. They can be targeted and simple and be just as effective.

Let’s use our example of creating contextually meaningful activities. Say we have just provided you a prototype of your Serious Game and are encouraging you to have some of your SMEs or learners test it out. A basic question of, “Does this relate to the work you do on a daily basis?” with a scale of agreement (Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree), and a follow up text-based inquiry of, “Share up to three aspects of this training that relate to your job,” will give insight into whether or not the objectives are being met through the design created, as well as if the learners are, in turn, identifying with this design.

Even the design of the E-Learning development can incorporate a pre- and post-survey into the training to gather information on perception, value to the learner, established knowledge versus learned knowledge, and so on. Just remember, surveys do not have to look like surveys. They can be part of a storyline or in the form of a quiz or game among other things.

Obviously a vital area to examine for ROI is skill development. After all, this is one of the main reasons for the investment to improve or enhance the learner’s capabilities to perform their job. We can have all of our metrics revolve around the creation, implementation, and post-learning, but we would be missing the mid- to long-term metrics that may tell us more than the immediate data we collect.

However, much like our encouragement of starting early with gathering metrics, this aspect only provides as much useful data as what was put into it prior to the training. That’s right; we need baseline data on our learners so we can see the difference in performance post-learning intervention. Not just immediately after, but months after and even up to a year after.

Lastly, as you begin to create your plan for ROI analyses, don’t forget other variables that may greatly impact your numbers. Some of the more key factors to consider are:

• the time of the year when the training was deployed,
• if the company has undergone any major changes or even within the learning group that will receive the training,
• the company’s culture and attitude,
• dynamics of teams and groups within the learning audience, and lastly,
• the economy.

These factors can all have a positive or negative impact on the learning experience and on the ROI. For example, if the ROI was intended to measure sales growth and the economy is weak for this particular market it may be hard to expect the results that were intended. Another factor is timing the training deployment. Disseminating training after the high season for sales may only show marginal results as opposed to the project ROI. Even tension between colleagues and team members or the uncertainty of a company’s stability given changes can impact intrinsic and extrinsic factors of the learner and ultimately the ROI bottom line. So, even if you have your ROI cart selected, just be sure to pick the right team of horses to pull it through to success!

Everyone at Designing Digitally, Inc. is excited about the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference that starts today! Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education is a global community event which focuses on education in immersive virtual environments.

This virtual conference is organized by educators, for educators, to provide an opportunity to showcase the learning that takes place in this community of practice. Special Thanks to Kevin Feenan of Rockcliffe University Consortium, and the team at AVACON for spearheading this event!

Educators will be sharing the achievements and challenges that they face in developing within virtual worlds. Whether you are a career educator, interested in new developments in education or looking for great ideas to apply to your own areas of work, this is a conference Designing Digitally, Inc. suggests you check out!

The conference dates are July 24-27 and it is held across multiple virtual worlds (Second Life, OpenSim, and Cloud Party). If you have a passion for virtual worlds, check out this free conference at: http://www.vwbpe.org/

You can also view the schedule here: http://www.vwbpe.org/conference/vwbpe-2013-schedule/

We hope to see you there!

We are happy to announce that the team at Designing Digitally, Inc. has been selected for the 2013 TrainingIndustry.com Content Development Companies Watch List.

“This year’s Watch List includes a combination of growing and mature companies, each providing an innovative blend of solutions to their clientele,” said Ken Taylor, Chief Operating Officer, TrainingIndustry.com. “These companies are not only increasing their presence within the training and development space, many are advancing the way that content development is delivered.”

“The 2013 Content Development Watch List represents a tier of companies focused on expanding their reach and continuously improving their offerings within the corporate training market,” said Doug Harward, Chief Executive Officer, TrainingIndustry.com. “With an impressive selection of initial clients and a range of training solutions, many of these companies are poised for steady growth in the training industry.”

On behalf of everyone at Designing Digitally, Inc., we thank Trainingindustry.com for acknowledging all of our hard work and innovation. We look forward to enhancing our clients’ learning experiences during 2013 and for years to come.

You may view the 2013 Content Development Companies Watch List by clicking here!

So, what does it take to create a successful E-Learning project? What are the different types/levels of E-learning and how long does it typically take to create each one? Who is involved in developing successful E-Learning?

These are some of the questions Designing Digitally, Inc. is asked on a regular basis by potential clients. Since the team at Designing Digitally, Inc. loves colorful pictures we thought it would be a good idea to provide you a fun infographic to answer those questions!

Below is a visual representation of what it takes to create high quality E-Learning that will provide you with a positive return on your investment. We hope this helps answer the age old question, “What does it really take to create a successful E-Learning project?”.

At Designing Digitally, Inc. we use gamification in our everyday business practices. Our goal is to create systems and processes within learning experiences that motivate and engage learners. That is, in essence, why gamification is being applied to learning content that might otherwise be dry and boring when approached in a traditional presentation style learning experience.

Gamification is all about using game elements to engage the learner’s competitive nature, using extrinsic motivation to increase intrinsic motivation.

If you can change the behavior of a learner by providing elements used in gaming to make something fun, you’ve immediately increased your chances of the content sticking with that learner.

The team at Designing Digitally, Inc. loves gamification! Take a look at how they can even make coming to work more fun:

Just as family members share similar DNA, gamification and serious games share similar traits. Both are born of game thinking, mechanics, and design. Both are used to solve problems. And both engage users. But just like family members, gamificaton and serious games have their differences.

Let's take a closer look at each of these game-based techniques to see how they differ and how they can be used.

The Game Called Life

Gamification uses game thinking and mechanics in a non-game context to improve user engagement and solve problems. Probably the most common example of gamification is a frequent flyer or loyalty program. By offering rewards or incentives (a game element), these programs engage customers and influence their behavior to buy the company's product or service (a non-game context). While some frequent flyers may consider the accumulation of points to earn free flights a game, loyalty programs are not actually games.

Other forms of gamification tap into people's competitive natures and sense of play to lend a game-like feel to everyday tasks and experiences. For instance, an application like Nike+ helps motivate users to exercise more with rewards and achievements, goal tracking, and social competitiveness. Or a 3-D virtual campus tour becomes a dynamic online recruitment tool with avatars, mini-games, and opportunities to connect with other recruits. Below is a great example of the team at Designing Digitally, Inc. using gamification to make coming to work fun!

Why so serious?

Serious games, on the other hand, are games. But they are games designed for a purpose other than entertainment. Serious games use game environments and techniques to train or educate users or to promote a product or service in an engaging and entertaining way. The "serious" aspect comes from the fact that they are used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion, and politics.

Game-based learning is not a new concept. It dates back to at least the 1900s, and paper-based educational games were quite popular in the 1960s and 1970s. But advances in technology, motion tracking, 3-D gaming, and sophisticated graphic design have taken game-based learning to a new level. For example, a new airline employee can learn directional marshaling signals by playing a serious game that uses Microsoft Kinect. The trainee actually uses the signals to guide an airplane out of the hangar and down the runway, dodging obstacles and earning achievement points. In the simulated environment, the trainee has the opportunity to practice, fail, and improve while enjoying the experience, which leads to better retention of the concepts learned.

Clearly, gamification and serious games share similar traits and even goals. What sets them apart is the context in which game elements are applied. Gamification is more than a serious game as it expands game thinking and mechanics into non-game environments, such as the classroom or everyday life.

Serious games apply game thinking and mechanics to "serious" subjects. Ultimately, the more you make something compelling and fun with gaming elements, the better your chances are for getting the results you want.

For more information on Gamification vs. Game Based Learning you view the PowerPoint created by our President of Designing Digitally, Inc. (Andrew Hughes) for the Society of Applied Learning Technologies Conference that was held August 15th 2013 below:

“SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) need not apply,” said no Instructional Designer ever. We’ve all had a “not so fantastic” experience working with an SME, but as we can tell you at Designing Digitally, Inc. our Instructional Designers value what an SME has to offer. Whether the SME comprehends why they are valuable is another issue, but the bigger problems lie in establishing these critical resources and their importance to project stakeholders. Given an investment in having a vendor develop an educational product there may be the expectation from the client that the vendor has expertise on hand to develop the content to be learned. Whereas the vendor will want to work with a company associated expert on the topic to ensure it meets the learner’s needs and the company’s goals.

So does the Instructional Designer need to be an SME?

In some respects all Instructional Designers have the potential to be an SME and an SME to multiple subjects. A key characteristic of talented Instructional Designers is resourcefulness: learning about the subject matter and formulating ideas and questions prior to speaking with an SME to confirm and solidify content. Sometimes an Instructional Designer is not afforded an SME so they research and familiarize themselves with the subject, any relevant key terms, and current or common topics or issues.

There is always a possibility that an Instructional Designer can function as an SME. Perhaps we have an Instructional Designer that has worked many years in the health insurance industry creating training for compliance topics. Given the factual nature of the subject matter, there may be no need to for an additional company-facing resource to assist in confirming the accuracy of the information presented. This also creates a monetary benefit, as having an Instructional Designer that functions as an SME reduces the time from research to analysis, analysis to design, and design to development. It also minimizes the risk of differences in expectations and information shared. This aspect alone can be compounded by communication disconnects and perceptions of job roles.

The limitation to this position is the inability to always comprehend the learner’s perspective based on the organization’s culture and vision. Perhaps Company X embraces a more collaborative, peer-sharing styled environment whereas Company Y has honed a more competitive workplace. How would handling and managing compliance look to a learner from each of these companies? How much value does each company place on compliance? Our Instructional Designer is only an expert on the subject matter, not on the company. This is why an SME can lend additional value to the project. SMEs not only comprehend the subject matter, but they also understand the manner in which their organization finds it significant.

If the Instructional Designer is not an expert in the content and the product to be developed is for new learners, the Instructional Designer can identify with the unfamiliarity of the subject. However, holding this position is better when working with an SME. This way the Instructional Designer will leverage the novice perspective to ask targeted questions about the subject so they can design the content and learning activities to build the knowledge of the new learner.

That is not to say that the SME is completely out of touch with the learner, but given their advanced comprehension of the topic, SMEs tend to over share information that is “nice to know” rather than “need to know,” or they provide very broad brushstrokes to the subject matter leaving the learner with a lot of questions to fill in the gaps. The Instructional Designer re-packages this expert input so that the content speaks directly to the targeted audience. An Instructional Designer’s skills help them to recognize how to set up content and bring a learner down through the material for effective knowledge transference.

Now it probably does not seem like we’re strongly selling that an SME is really warranted given how talented Instructional Designers can morph themselves quite readily to a company’s learning need. However, we can tell you from experience that Instructional Designers like to focus on creating an engaging, effective, entertaining, and educational product for their client’s learners. If Instructional Designers are asked to function as the SME, this fragments their ability to concentrate on where they truly have expertise.

This does not mean that the quality of the product is minimized, but the time and effort for an Instructional Designer to remain comprehensive and neutral on the subject matter can impact the analysis and design of the project. A coupling of the Instructional Designer and SME has several benefits. It can aid in determining the best methods for engaging the learners as the SME will be more familiar with the motivations of the learning audience, while the Instructional Designer will know of strategies that will target those specific reasons. The SME can guide and confirm the accuracy of the content. SMEs can share common situations that a learner may encounter or best practices about the subject, and may even have thoughts about activities that might be useful for teaching and assessing learners. An SME and an Instructional Designer pairing really balances and complements the training initiative by providing an opportunity for both parties to share and collaborate on the subject matter.

While we try really hard to avoid clichés stemming from pop culture in our blog content, we also owe it to our readers AND our customers to stay on top of developing trends that could affect our work in regards to the content and design aesthetics of the E-Learning programs and software we produce.

Much of our work is based on the idea that each proceeding generation is getting more comfortable with technology and expects to interface with it for learning and training purposes. Much like books were the de rigueur technology for learning for centuries, the Internet, personal computers, and tablets and smartphones have become increasingly invaluable for learning. It’s therefore important for us to pay attention to what is being said culturally about these subjects so that we can be prepared for the future.

“Millennials,” sometimes referred to as Generation Y, are the next big thing happening in the workforce, and, coincidentally, are extremely comfortable with technology both for work and for recreation. Video games for hand-held devices, notepads and laptops in the classroom, expansive social media on the Internet, texting and calling 24/7 on cell phones…the millennial generation has grown up with these innovations and EXPECTS to utilize them in most aspects of their lives. This dovetails nicely with our stated mission of customer satisfaction with E-Learning development – Millennials want to learn and get trained using serious games and mobile learning applications because they have grown up with such “toys” already!

An interesting online article we came across recently from Learning Solutions Magazine by Elisabeth Arellano discusses training strategies that can work for millennial employees, and their first two strategies mentioned are...you guessed it – Mobile Learning and Gamification. Music to our ears! Here we are developing these very training tools and the next generation of workers is already expecting to use them. It’s like we planned this or something.

While the verdict is still out as to whether most millennial workers will have the character strengths and weaknesses observed of some of their generation, the case has already been dismissed in regards to their comfort and agility when it comes to using technology – Millennials “get it” and want it. Since some estimates foresee as much as 80% of the workforce being comprised of Millennials within the next ten years or so, smart business leaders who want to tap into this fresh labor force should start planning right now on how to leverage E-Learning development to their advantage for the future. Designing Digitally, Inc. is here to help you do just that.

Check-out this informative Wikipedia entry on Generation Y and Millennials – plenty of information to process and understand on their demographics and potentials. Thanks for reading.