Participants will learn how to:  

• Identify why “teach-and-quiz” methods persist.  

• Recognize and promote contextual learning.  

• Apply adaptive leadership to shift learning mindsets.  

• Support real-world learning in the workplace.  

The post Changing Mindsets! Replacing Teach-and-Quiz with Contextual Learning appeared first on Learning Guild.

Many organizations have long based their decision to create eLearning materials on costs. But this is an old-school, defensive perspective. eLearning initiatives shouldn’t be based on price lists, but on the added value to the organization.

In this article, I’ll pay attention to that cost perspective but I’ll also focus on the more constructive outlook of value.

Creating eLearning costs a lot

Creating eLearning costs a lot of time and money. Research by Raccoon Gang shows that it can take 100-160 hours and incur $8,150-$36,205 to create just one hour of content.

But the costs don’t go away once you’ve published your course. The need to update content over time is inevitable in a business. In fact, it would be a costly mistake to invest heavily in content that can only make an impact once. To create content worth the time and money, we’ll need to think about value creation.

Time and knowledge are the new currency for any organization

A report by Panopto revealed that 60% of employees find it hard to obtain necessary information, spending 5.3 hours a week waiting for it. Imagine the value of adding two or more productive hours to each employee’s week just by providing the right information at the right time. From our perspective, that’s a more productive pursuit than calculating the cost of eLearning.

We understand that L&D can’t meet every learning need bubbling up each minute. Still, these knowledge gaps exist. So how can we identify the right learning intervention needed to fill them?

Reframe the content creation process

The solution I suggest is to change the way we view the content creation process by considering a bottom-up learning approach known as Employee-Generated Learning (EGL). Under EGL, any employee can create and share their tactical knowledge with their team and beyond. In return, this shifts L&D’s role from being a central team that pumps out content to one that’s responsible for overseeing the knowledge-sharing process instead.

With EGL, there’s no longer a need for the following:

• Seeking input from SMEs to validate content
• Using a complex instructional design authoring tool
• Involving trained developers, instructional, and graphic designers

Instead, subject matter experts (SMEs) will serve each other, accelerating the circulation of knowledge throughout the organization while saving L&D time and money. L&D can, instead, take on a more supportive role, providing infrastructure and guidance to empower SMEs.

For a closer look at the value of EGL, I’ll break it down into four main components: strategy, people, tools, and content.

1. Strategy: EGL streamlines your organization’s learning strategy in multiple ways, all of which leave a positive impact on your business:

Bottom-up approach: Unlike the top-down approach where L&D is responsible for creating learning content for the organization, EGL enables a bottom-up approach where employees create content for each other. Employees can apply their firsthand understanding of their peer’s needs in a way a central L&D team can’t. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Relevant content created by SMEs who share the same viewpoint as their learners
• Up-to-date information because the business maintains the content
• No time wasted on exhausting business planning and designing learning

Employee-driven: When employees create learning content based on their experience on the job, their peers have immediate access to tried and tested information. This also significantly reduces the time taken to transfer knowledge. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Correct information at the right time in a suitable format
• No time wasted on hard learning

Time to market: When information comes straight from SMEs, there’s no need to validate its accuracy externally, which can be time-consuming. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Timely delivery because content is created at the speed of the business
• No delay in launches due to unfinished learning content
• No time wasted on validating the efficacy of information

Business impact: Because EGL empowers employees to meet their own learning needs (and more accurately so that L&D can), this leaves a positive impact on their jobs, associated KPIs, and the business. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Learning content aligned with business goals
• No time wasted on mapping business goals to employee performance

2. People: Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Lew Platt once famously said, “If HP knew what HP knows, we’d be three times more productive.” This is the crux of EGL.

L&D: As employees take the lead on content creation, L&D can take on a more supervisory role, providing employees with any support they may need along the way. This also gives L&D more time to focus on other projects. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Knowledge is captured and shared openly and transparently, which ensures business continuity even when SMEs leave the company
• L&D gets more time to focus on important projects that can’t be handed off to employees
• No time wasted on hiring instructional designers, developers, graphic designers, or third–party vendors
• No need to liaise with SMEs for input

Employees: As subject matter experts and active players in daily business operations, employees are more qualified to create, publish, and maintain the knowledge ecosystem organically. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Up-to-date information for employees, by employees.
• No time wasted searching or waiting for information on-the-job
• No time wasted asking for help or even duplicating content

3. Creation process and tools: Next to having an effective strategy and the key players to drive it, you’ll also need the right tools to create and maintain your learning content.

Process of creating and maintaining content: When your employees take ownership of knowledge sharing, the creative process becomes straightforward. SMEs create, share and maintain the content themselves without the need for input or separate review sessions. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Business takes responsibility of knowledge sharing and learning
• L&D doesn’t need to spend time creating and validating learning content
• L&D saves time in the long run with low content maintenance needs

Tools: With employees being both the creators and consumers of knowledge, there’s no need for complex authoring tools with fancy, interactive features. They’ll need authoring tools with a zero-learning curve in order to create effective content quickly and meet on-the-job learning needs. Value-added/Cost saved:

• Accelerated content creation
• No time wasted learning fancy tools with complex features

4. Content: To add structure to the way you can share knowledge, I propose three primary content formats based on experience:

• Short courses: Provide a quick overview of a subject in short, digestible chapters
• Resources: Provide short and focused job aids that help accelerate on-the-job performance
• Assessments: In case L&D wants to validate employee knowledge for compliance reasons, provide basic quizzes to assess learners’ knowledge

Value-added/Cost saved:

• A live, transparent body of corporate knowledge in multiple formats
• No time or effort wasted in storyboarding, in-depth content planning, graphic design, and content maintenance

The value of eLearning outweighs the costs

In short, eLearning can bring major organizational value that far outweighs its costs. By replacing the time-consuming process of creating specialty eLearning courses with a scalable approach like EGL, you’ll be able to fulfill your employees’ learning needs more easily with a fraction of the costs. In return, this empowers them to create even more value for your organization.

The post eLearning Content: Cost or Value? appeared first on Learning Guild.

Last year weconducted a large-scalesurvey (n=259) ofL&D professionals. We combined these findings with in-depth discussionswith learning managers from Nielsen, Kellogg’s and Unilever—organizations thathave implemented successful bottom-up learning programs. The results showedthat step one to changing your learning approach is changing the stakeholders’mindset. If you want your L&D department to shift from top-down tobottom-up models, start by teaching stakeholders the inherent advantages andconvincing them to buy in.

Whichstakeholders are these? Our respondents pinpointed three groups whose mindsetsthey wanted to change: upper-level management, direct colleagues in L&D,and employees. The real challenge is addressing preconceived notions abouttraditional learning approaches and what’s expected of L&D departments.

In thisarticle, we offer advice on creating a business case with these keystakeholders, so they all embrace collaboration and an employee-driven learningculture as the best way forward.

Learningculture and employee engagement

According tobestselling author Kevin Kruse, there’s a direct correlation between engaged employees and astonishingbusiness outcomes. In recent decades, we’ve witnessed major cultural shiftswithin many organizations. Traditionally, companies created a culture thatreflected their core values or mission. Today, most successful firms definetheir culture through the lens of employee engagement. This started changinghow employees are valued and treated, which has led to greater employeeengagement and stronger business outcomes.

How can HRdepartments promote engagement at a time of cultural shift? By ditchingoutdated, top-down engagement strategies. Smart HR and L&D teams arealready moving towards a bottom-up learning culture.

Whatare bottom-up learning models?

Bottom-uplearning is managed by the employees themselves. It addresses the 80 percent ofknowledge that is needed 20 percent of the time. This is particularly importantin organizations dealing with constant change. Bottom-up learning is cheaper,more responsive, less controlling, less patronizing, and altogether more intune with the times.

An emergingmodel in this space is employee-generated learning (EGL), in which employees orsubject-matter experts (SMEs) own part of their learning needs and create theirown training content. In this model, L&D partners with employees andempowers them to create content and share their knowledge. The idea is based onco-creation,collaboration, and knowledge sharing. It triggers engagement by making employees instrumental in driving,voicing, and creating the flow of knowledge.

As employeesgain recognition for their knowledge-sharing efforts, they establish themselvesas experts. This results in empowerment. Employees are empowered bycontributing and making a difference in their areas of expertise. Empowermentis the best form of employee engagement because employees drive the businesswhile managing personal and business priorities.

Introducing EGL

Whatdoes it take to introducean employee-driven learning model like EGL, and how can you convince thestakeholders?

Business leaders

With EGL,employees create and maintain learning content themselves. Content creation isfaster and cheaper because there’s no dependency on external parties likeinstructional designers or third-party suppliers. Putting employees in chargeof creating content ensures that business leaders are aligned with businessproblems and relevant learning solutions.

Howto make it happen?

• Communicate thepossibilities and benefits of EGL with leaders and get them involved asco-champions for change.
• Use proven bestpractices to build a stronger case.
• Assure themthat EGL aligns content with performance, which directly impacts businessresults.

Employeesand subject matter experts (SMEs)

With EGL,employees are more engaged than before because they actively co-create relevantlearning content to meet business goals. By equipping their colleagues withknowledge, they can achieve more with fewer resources. EGL also providesopportunities for SMEs to develop their own careers by establishing themselvesas experts on the topics they’re most passionate about.

Howto make it happen?

• Treat employeesnot as learners but as co-creators of learning content. Employees create andmaintain the content, so L&D must encourage them to take ownership of theprocess.
• Encourageself-initiatives and don’t penalize mistakes. Employees will only be motivatedif they’re rewarded for effective performance.
• Provide theright conditions and collaborative software tools (a rich, searchable intranet,forums, wikis, blogs, best-practice communities, etc.).

L&D

EGL freesL&D to focus on strategic initiatives because it shares their work withSMEs who are qualified to develop content. Instead of sitting down with SMEs tocreate content, L&D plays a behind-the-scenes role, offering guidance andsupport. This self-service model works perfectly for L&D departments withlimited budgets and shrinking teams, allowing them to steer changes from thebottom up.

Howto make it happen?

• ReassureL&D colleagues about their evolving role from content creators to coaches.Encourage them to be more strategic and flexible within this new model.
• Encourage themto think like a start-up and act like a product manager to begin making small changes in a truly employee-engaged style.

Conclusion

For years,educational institutions and employers have controlled employees’ developmentand failed to develop a self-learning, peer-sharing workforce. However, thanksto ubiquitous, affordable technologies, today’s employees are far moreindependent and social in how they learn and work. This reveals a mismatchbetween the spoon-fed culture and self-regulated practices. To create the rightculture that fits the workforce, it’s time to embrace their autonomy. Empower your employees. Provide them with the motivation, the means, andthe opportunities to leverage their strengths. Your company’s culture shouldmatch that of the outside world, in which social sharing and autonomy areessential elements. Employees will feel comfortable in this environment andwill be able to excel. This will bring about the change in culture that leadersdesire.

Resources

Insights. “Engagementis a culture change.”

Spiro, Kasper. “BoostEmployee Engagement with Knowledge-Sharing.” Modern Workplace Learning Magazine. 27 March 2018.

The post Change Learning Mindset from Top-Down to Bottom-Up appeared first on Learning Guild.

That makes knowledge sharing the ideal L&D solution.Startups can now introduce learning solutions that harness cost-effective andtime-efficient knowledge-sharing models.

Let’s explore five out-of-the-box learning practices thatyour startup can put into practice right away. These practices benefit yourorganization with continual workforce development—without breaking the bank.Ultimately, they build a rich pool of job-relevant knowledge.

1. Tap into a modern mindset 

Today’s startups are thriving with employees who prefer autonomouslearning experiences. This is perfectly compatible with our definition oflearning. This model is often referred to as self-regulated learning, in whichthe learner is responsible for his or her own learning and career growth, andthe learning process may not have a formal structure. We recommend tapping intoyour employees’ self-motivated interest in learning. Curate a variety ofresources for employees to refer to, so they can learn at their own pace.

 How to make ithappen:

Technology: Provide an organized, searchable body ofknowledge that employees can easily access in a variety of ways (intranet, weblinks, PDFs, etc.).

Didactics: Curateand publish job-relevant resources and courses online. Ask employeesfor their feedback and gather analytics to continually improve what you offer.User feedback can come from a variety of sources, including comments on aninternal social network, ratings on the quality of a course, emails, andin-person conversations.

2. Promote in-house mentorship  

You are an expert in your field and are hired for yourknowledge and expertise. Why should you let your colleagues reinvent the wheelwhen you’ve already gained the necessary knowledge first hand? Save time andresources by mentoring your colleagues on best practices, so gaining knowledgebecomes less of a hurdle for newbies to overcome.

Mentoring goes deeper than training, because mentors providetheir protégés with a repertoire of common values and goals, building afoundation for mutual trust and respect.

Don’t forget that startup employees often fulfill multiplespecialized roles. That means they must learn the ropes on a variety ofsubjects outside the scope of their main job. Formal classroom training cannotcater to all these diverse needs at once, and multiple training sessions aretoo costly and time-consuming. The solution is to identify multiple experts(go-to people) who can mentor their colleagues on the job.

How to make it happen:

Technology: Equip mentors with simple authoring andknowledge-management tools to capture their knowledge in short, tangiblecontent pieces.

Didactics: As experts, mentors know better thananyone which concepts or best practices are most useful to their colleagues.However, they may not always know the best didactic form or format forpresenting that content. Help them with key resources, including industry bestpractices, on how to start creating training content. Provide them withexamples, brand and graphics guidelines, templates, and direction on how toshare their finalized content.

3. Facilitate peer-to-peer learning 

Like mentoring, peer-to-peer social learning doesn’t happenin the classroom but on the job. From everyday job-related queries to in-depthanalyses, most workplace challenges can be solved by enablingemployees to learn from each other and carve out a path together.

If you want to be seen as an expert in your field, you haveto be vocal about your professional expertise. You must demonstrate it in a waythat benefits your colleagues and enhances their expertise too. If your skillsand knowledge can aid your colleagues and team, your presence is surely valued.This establishes your reputation as an authority.

 How to make ithappen:

Technology: Provide easy-to-use, collaborativeknowledge-sharing tools that allow employees to co-author, curate, and shareknowledge. Choose tools with built-in feedback channels, so authors cancontinually improve the quality of their content.

Didactics: Develop a central hub where users can findand share knowledge on how to create and share content. Make it as appealingand easy to use as possible, whether it’s a wiki, an intranet page, or a WordPresssite.

4. Make curation and knowledge sharing a habit 

Any insight or resource that has helped you on the job willlikely help others too. Nothing deepens your own knowledge more effectivelythan sharing it. The key is to “curate” or carefully select and arrange theknowledge you share. This is crucial for efficient training as it saves youfrom having to create all-new content from scratch.

Content curation involves finding, grouping, organizing,and sharing the best content on a specific subject or domain. By curatingand sharing the most relevant, thought-provoking content, you establishyourself as an authority or thought leader in your area of expertise.

Learners (your colleagues) crave handpicked, curatedcontent, because they know that curators are experts in their fields and theyvalue the content these experts share

How to make it happen:

Technology: Give employees the tools to curateknowledge on their own.

Didactics: “Teach them how to fish,” as the oldsaying goes. When it comes to knowledge-sharing,that means teach them how to curate meaningfully. For example, selecting linksand resources based on clear criteria and putting their own spin on the chosenlinks enriches the quality of the content. By putting links into context, theyshare essential, real-life knowledge that benefits their colleagues.

5. Walk your talk

Show employees that you mean this and create some earlysuccesses. Start creating and publishing content yourself and try to involvesome of your company’s leadership in your first initiatives.

How to make it happen:

Technology: Use a software-as-a-service-basedauthoring tool, so you can collaborate with your company’s busy leaders tocreate the first pieces of content or courses. Take the lead to drive theseleadership initiatives and create practical examples that have an impact. Thiswill inspire your workforce to follow the same route.
Didactics: Ask your senior leadership to create a content base to getnew employees up to speed. Then, curate the best content to create a simplecourse, if you like. In our experience, senior leadership is always short ontime, so create courses on topics you know are close to their hearts and askthem to review and edit.

The post Five Best Practices for Knowledge Sharing in Startups appeared first on Learning Guild.

Everyday personalization

There are several ways to define the concept. It may mean:

• Learning that is adaptive to each individual’s level of learning;
• The delivery of targeted content to meet individual knowledge gaps based on assessment outcomes; or,
• Identifying and directing individual learners to what they will need to know before they look for it on their own. 

Personalized learning may be all of these things. What theyhave in common is recognition that individuals are in control of their ownlearning. For example, suppose Sarah wants to learn a language; this is easy toarrange—there are countless websites and apps to help her. Or, if Mark is inthe mood to cook or bake something that has a complicated recipe—he can searchYouTube and he’s sure to find several home-made videos that will walk himthrough the steps. If a person completes enough searches around language andcooking, the next time that person begins a search for a related topic on YouTubeor Google, what shows up in the search results will be determined in part bythose previous searches; no two people will necessarily see the same choices inthe same order.

The value of data capture and customer analytics is clearfor Google, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube. The more information theycapture, the better they can help returning customers find, quickly and easily,what those customers want. This is personalization in our daily lives.  

Personalized learning will bethe norm

Over the last decade, the Internet, social media,and mobile access have become huge factors in our private and working lives,changing how we interact with information. Now, with information available tous at the click of a mouse or keypad, we have come to expect immediate answers torecreational and job-related questions. This availability of information hasallowed employees to be independent of HR training and IT departments.

One of the results of these changes is that learners today aretaking control of their learning. Learning has become mobile and on demand.Learning knows no place or boundary; it can be on the go, in the office, athome, or anywhere. Learners can now “pull” the information they need, when theyneed it, shifting control from training departments to the learner. Inaddition, learners are beginning to have the expectation that the trainingdepartment should provide content that is accessible and targeted directly toindividual needs.

If Amazon can recommend which book a customer might like to read,and if Netflix can suggest what movie a customer would enjoy based on thatperson’s past choices, so the thinking goes, the learning organization shouldidentify the specific content that will support employees’ learning for jobperformance success.

In response, two things needto happen. First, corporate learning needs to be able to predict individual learnerrequirements in order to support personalized learning. Second, organizationswill need to curate information that learners may seek, and create an index oforganizational knowledge assets. After collection and definition, theinformation is available for direct delivery to the learner, or the learner canaccess it through a search and find feature. 

Preparing the organization

A first step topersonalized learning is to recognize the importance of continuous learning inthe organization. To truly meet the needs of employees and to become anorganization that supports and delivers personalized learning, it is necessaryto create, build, and support a learning organization. A learning organizationis one that:

• Continuallylearns,
• Supportsthe learning of its staff,
• Listensto everyone and openly communicates, and
• Embracesa philosophy of ongoing improvement.

Supporting personalized learning

If organizations are ready to respond to learners who want theability to pull information and knowledge assets when they need them, thereneeds to be a culture and infrastructure in place to support this.

Once an organization recognizes the importance of learning, andaccepts the shift from push to pull learning, the next step to buildingpersonalized learning is to collaborate with learners to understand theircollective and individual needs.

Learner analytics

An organization ready to support and build personalizedlearning needs to begin collecting learning analytics. Learning analytics,similar to business intelligence and web analytics, uses analytical tools tocollect information that the organization can use to improve learning, itsdevelopment, and delivery. This new area of data collection will requireworking cross-functionally between IT and those responsible for learning anddevelopment. The information being sought is the interaction between thelearner, their data output on social media or in learning communities, theinformation they search for, and their activity on educational tools – eLearningcourses, webinars etc.

Experience API

As personalized learning integrates into the corporate space,learners will be able to collect and report on their own learningaccomplishments using the Experience API, also called xAPI or Tin Can. Organizationsand learners can use the Experience API to collect data outside of an LMS fromany learning experience, completed in any environment, on any device. TheExperience API captures completed actions and tasks. It does this byidentifying who completed what action, and how it was completed. It focuses onthe learner, what the learner did, and what he or she accomplished as a result.The functionality of the Experience API will help direct the focus anddirection of personalized learning and will be a major data source for analyzinglearners’ needs.

Contextualized content

The next step, in addition to identifying learners’ needsand knowledge gaps in order to deliver targeted content, is contextualizinglearning content. Putting context around content ensures delivery of specificand targeted information delivered to learners for exactly what they want toknow. Today, contextualizing learning goes beyond this fundamental requirement. 

Location-based learning supports contextualized contentdelivery. It is learning delivered to a mobile device with information directedto a specific need based on the learner’s location.

Another way to contextualize content is augmented reality learning. Webster’s Dictionary defines augmentedreality as, “An enhanced version ofreality created by the use of technology to overlay digital information on animage of something being viewed through a device (a smartphone camera).”

Augmented realityallows a learner to use a hand-held device to find context-specific informationthat helps them make connections and discoveries. Augmented reality iscontextualized performance support driven by the learner.

Moving away from the LMS

A lot of corporations use learning management systems (LMSs).There are many types and variations, but looking closely at any of them shows theyare more about managing learning than about the learning itself. Most currentsystems are about pushing information, courses, and schedules, and about trackinglearner registration and course completion. This supports the learningdepartment, but not the learner and the learning. If LMSs are to survive, theymust adapt the way they capture and track learning, and how they supportlearners who want to find information.

Start-up companies are emerging in response to the needs ofpersonalized learning. These companies are identifying how to tag content andtrack learner activity as a way to merge the two to deliver personalizedcontent. Other companies recognize the importance of adaptive learning.Adaptive learning programs meet individual learner needs by creating learningpaths based on learner assessment outcomes.  

Here are three companies that support personalized learningthrough adaptive learning and data collection of learner analytics. Eachcompany takes a different approach.

Knewtonpresents itself as an adaptive learning platform. It partners with educationalproviders to support their adaptive and interactive course development. Througha three-step process—data collection, inference, and personalization—Knewton analyzescontent and learners, which allows their partners to create the most effectivelearning materials.

aNewSpringis a complete on-line learning solution that allows developers to createadaptive learning courses. Based on learning objectives, it asks learners tocomplete specific activities. The results of these learning activities andprogress toward meeting learning objectives determine the individual learningpath.

Easygenerator providescloud-based eLearning authoring software to create courses that adapt tolearners’ progress based on assessment outcomes. Easygenerator’s approach toadaptive learning is around learner completion of pre-assessments to identifyknowledge gaps. Based on assessment results, it directs learners to content toimprove knowledge levels where there are gaps.

Summary

After examining personalized learning it becomes clear thatit is the next step in how organizations must provide learning and performancesupport to staff. 

As the workforce changes, learners will demand this kind oflearning. Everyone today, from Gen Y to Baby Boomers, is accustomed to gettingimmediate answers and responses on their mobile device to quickly verify whatthey’re thinking, or to find the answer to something they don’t know.

Personalized learning is becoming the norm, and in responselearning organizations need to begin to prepare for it.  

The role of the organization will be to collect its intellectualproperty so that it’s available in tagged, micro-learning chunks that it can easilyfind and share across social networks. The future workplace must keep pace withthe world we live in—which means identifying the right content for eachindividual and delivering it to them however they want it.

Want moreinformation about personalized Learning?

From the Editor: If you are a member of TheeLearning Guild, you can access additional ideas for delivering personalizedlearning in the handouts from these sessions at past conferences in the Conference Archive (requires log-in):

• Dawn Poulos’ session 812 at Learning Solutions Conference & Expo 2013, “Leveraging the Cloud to Deliver Personalized Learning Experiences.”
• Kelli Holmes’ session 304 at Performance Support Symposium 2013, “Using Personalization to Create Next-generation Performance Support.”
• Mark Varey and Sean Wilson’s session 102 at DevLearn 2012, “Creating an Adaptive Content Deployment Strategy.”

In addition, the following sessions at the Learning Solutions Conference and Expo 2014 in Orlando March 19-21 may be ofinterest to you:

• David Kelly and a panel of experts: Featured Session F3, “Redefining Training via Technology: Examples and Perspectives.”
• Eri Kammerer: Session 102 “DIY: Introducing Self-directed Learning to Corporate Learners.”
• Andy Whitaker: Session 308 “Blazing Trails with the Experience API (xAPI): Experiential Learning and Performance Support.”

These are just a few examples of the excellentvalue of Guild membership and of the outstanding content offered at conferenceshosted by The eLearning Guild!

The post Are You Ready to Deliver Personalized Learning? appeared first on Learning Guild.

In this article, wedive into the theory that explains why SBL can be effective, and we give someguidance on how to develop effective SBL.

What is SBL? An overview

SBL is a great way topresent more interactive and compelling skill-based training. In our designs, weuse video and an attractive storyline. Learners gather information throughout anSBL and create solutions based upon their preexisting knowledge and theinformation they find. Until recently it was not possible to create this typeof SBL without expensive custom development, but this changed with the latest generationof authoring tools that make it very easy to create and edit even the mostintricate SBL designs.

In our opinion, the learninggoal for an organization is to increase both the employees’ and the company’s productivity—aninvestment that has to pay off. In order to go from learning to a higherproductivity the learner has to learnand apply his new knowledge andskills. So how do we get that to happen?

Learning begins withmotivation

For starters, thelearner has to be motivated to even begin studying the course at hand. How dopeople get motivated? What is motivation?

Motivation, in short,is what makes a human being act to achieve a goal. There are two types ofmotivation: intrinsic, in whichmotivation emerges from the desire tolearn, to master a task, or to prove oneself, and extrinsic, in which motivation emerges from the rewards gained whencompleting a task in the right way. At first, most learners will beextrinsically motivated. They take the training because it is mandatory, especiallywhen the course is of the “compliance training” type. We find however, that SBLmakes it possible to address the intrinsic motivation of a learner. How?

In his flow theory,Csikszentmihalyi (see References) states that intrinsic motivation occurs whenthere is a balance between a learner’s present skills and the challenges he orshe faces. A learner possessing low problem solving skills will only be able tosolve problems with a low challenge. Solving problems will increase the learner’sskills. To keep the learner motivated, the challenge has to increase as thelearner’s skills increase. If the learner’s skills are higher than needed forthe challenge, the learner will get bored quickly, or get frustrated if thechallenge is larger than the current skills can meet. The area of perfectbalance between skills and challenge is called the “flow channel” (Figure 1),which Csikszentmihalyi defines as the state in which a person is fully immersedin an activity. He calls the state of flow a state of maximal intrinsicmotivation. When you present a person with a problem that resides within theflow channel, he or she will be intrinsically motivated to solve that problem.

So you must designscenario-based learning with this theory in mind. You must balance thescenario’s challenges with the skills you can expect of your target audience insuch a way that, in most cases, the problems that need solving reside withinthe flow channel, sometimes even on the edge of it.

Figure 1: Theflow channel

Make it real with emotion

We find it importantthat the learners be able to identify with the scenario and the challengesimmediately, at the start of the scenario. To do this, make the scenarios asreal as possible by using short videos with actors performing real lifesituations. Video makes it possible to use specific emotions as a response todecisions made by a learner.

For instance, in anSBL program that we designed about breast feeding, the learner (in this case, anurse) can suggest that the mother should stop breast feeding and start feedingher baby using a bottle. The mother in the SBL strongly opposes that, becauseshe feels that breast feeding is the absolute best way to feed her newbornbaby. She gives a few reasons in the video. Our goal was to show how strongly amother can react when a learner makes a decision that is emotionally unacceptable.

We found that the mother’sstrong emotion was much more recognizable, even familiar, when using video ratherthan text or images. The learner is able to connect to this real person and therealistic emotions they display (in this case the mother was not an actor, buta real client).

This connection has apositive effect on the learning process. From brain researchers, we havelearned that it is easier to remember things when strong emotions accompanythem. So if you tell a story using a video in which a character shows strongemotions, it will make the story more realistic and familiar and the learnerwill remember its content better.

Getting to application

That is motivation,and it’s how you can improve retention of what is learned. We have the learnerright in the flow channel. But how can we get learners to apply what theylearned? We do this by allowing the learner to “create” within the SBL. Andersonand Krathwohl suggest six levels of learning objectives, based on Bloom’s Taxonomy(Figure 2). The lowest level objective is toremember what is learned and the highest-level objective is to create with what is learned.

Fig 2: Krathwohl’slearning levels

With scenario-basedlearning, facilitation helps the learner use preexisting knowledge, understandit in the context of the training, apply the knowledge, analyze new situations,evaluate, and create new outcomes. In one of our SBL programs, we let sales peopleplay the role of a physician. They all meet a patient (on video) and can askquestions and perform medical tests. With their available medical knowledge,and the knowledge they collect through analysis (questioning the patients,doing medical tests), they must be able to createa plan to help their patients by prescribing the correct treatment and medication.

SBL design uses allpreviously mentioned approaches. The balance between the skill level and thechallenge motivates learners. Learners hear a storyline with support fromvideos, in which actors use emotion and the learners have an opportunity to usetheir knowledge to analyze and evaluate, and finally to create a solution.These methods seem sufficient to let a learner not only learn but also rememberthe content and the way to use it to create solutions.

Prove it!

How do we know that someonelearned something? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so if learnerscan apply it, they have learned it. It is learning by doing.

Before entering a scenario-basedlearning event, however, a learner needs basic knowledge of the topics in the scenario-basedlearning. With our preferred authoring tool, we can easily create adaptivecourses that pre-test learners to find out how much they already know. Based onthe outcome of that test, only those parts of the adaptive course that thelearner is not sufficiently familiar with are mandatory. After completing thisadaptive course, the learner may enter the SBL.

There are numerousways to design an SBL, and how you design it depends on a number of factors.The educational level, the learning topic, and of course the available budgetare important variables. But no matter how you design scenario-based learning, youcan use it for situations that include medical training, sales training, andcompliance training.

References

Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R., et al(Eds.) (2001.) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: ARevision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Allyn & Bacon.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly& Nakamura, Jeanne (2002). “The Concept of Flow.” The Handbook of PositivePsychology. Oxford University Press.

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