Posted by Allen Interactions on Tue, Apr 09, 2013
Tuesday, April 30, 1:00 - 2:00 PM Central
Nearly everyone, particularly learners, expresses frustration with the limited range of interactivity found in many e-learning programs. Arbitrary multiple-choice and true-and-false questions, even when masquerading under flashy game-like interfaces, fail to engage learners’ attention. Worse yet, they usually fail to teach.
Too often designers feel bound by the limits of actions available to the learner—senseless button clicking, random dragging, confusing entries. But, even working within the constraints of low-level authoring tools, it is possible to design e-learning activities that will engage, motivate, and captivate the learner’s imagination and enhance post-training performance.
In this webinar, Ethan Edwards will present 6 simple and easily achievable transformations to make your e-learning interactions more impactful. The intent is to provide designers across the board with tangible strategies they can implement immediately.
In this session, you will learn:
- to recognize and avoid the weaknesses inherent in meaningless actions
- to identify the characteristics of impactful gestures in e-learning interactions
- six simple and graduated techniques to improve e-learning interaction design
Join Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist, on Tuesday, April 30th at 1:00 PM Central for this 60-minute webinar.
Posted by Richard Sites on Thu, Apr 04, 2013
I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Trish Uhl.
As CEO of Owl's Ledge, a learning and performance and project management consulting firm, Trish travels the world speaking, coaching, and consulting with people and organizations about “professionalizing the learning profession” through the adoption of professional standards and skills-based assessment.
Trish and I met last year when we each presented at the ASTD-Memphis Employee Learning Week conference.
From dishing on training design and development, to pontificating on performance, we’ve kept the conversation going from Memphis to Malaysia, from ASTD to Training Magazine (and other training-related events in between) and we’ve decided that the dialogue would be richer, and even more lively, by adding other voices—like yours!
That being said, I’ve captured our conversation in a series of blog posts, starting with the one today.
Join us! We would be delighted if YOU—our learning-pro peers—dialogued with us on the state of the training industry and the learning profession; specifically, on what has changed and is changing for those of us who design learning (and, subsequently, for our peers who deliver training). Share your thoughts in the comments below!
RICHARD: Trish, we have discussed so many things about training and development over the past months, from content to processes to certification. One thing you say that always gets me thinking is, “What got us here won’t get us there.” I absolutely love how succinctly this describes our current state.
So tell us: What do you mean by that?
TRISH: Well, Richard, there are lots of critical transitions happening in the world of learning right now, and I believe we need a coalition of champions raising its voice in a chorus of “tough love” because…YES! What got us here won’t get us there.
What do I mean? I mean, it’s no secret, right? We’re at a point in time where we’ve spent years contending with a down economy in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. We’ve had training budgets slashed and training staff downsized. Our training departments have been viewed as cost centers, rather than investments in the vitality, development, and growth of the organizations we serve.
We’ve had to do more with less—leverage technology, cut costs, go global, compete globally, keep overhead low, stay current, get things done (GTD), AND—simultaneously, somehow—drive positive organizational outcomes by improving human performance.
In many, many places, it’s not working. We are adrift, rudderless—without orientation of up, right, down, left, or center. The question is, WHY? Why are things so “out of whack?”
Let’s take a look at the evolution of adult learning theory—starting with Behaviorism from the early 1900s (yes, I said 1900s—the BEGINNING of the last CENTURY!).
Behaviorism looks at delivering training in a traditional classroom based upon prescribed objectives. “Learning” (conditioning, really) is achieved through the use of outside stimuli. Ultimately, mastery is measured by determining whether or not the learner has achieved the desired behavior.
Think about how the principles of behaviorism influenced training design and delivery in the early 20th century. Behaviorism provided the framework for who we were.
As trainers, we were experts in front of the classroom, dispensing our knowledge, expertise, and experience to the participants primarily through lecture. They, in turn, sat on their hands, smiled, and passively took it. (This is important! This means that is what our audiences EXPECT training to be! And some folks get horribly upset when you mess with their expectations, like, when you, say—design training to be more interactive. They, quite literally, don’t know how to act because it’s so far removed from their experiences and expectations.)
As instructional designers and course developers, we carefully designed for this method of delivery. And it served us well for ~ 100 years in the Industrial Age, when work was simpler, straightforward, and solutions were well known. Back then, an employee’s job was to show up on time, act as “order takers,” and execute on whatever they were told to do, whenever they were told to do it, according to how they were told to get it done.
But, what worked in the early 20th century is not working for us now in the throes of the 21st century. Now, we’re trying to fit this model and make it work in a world which is no longer the same. We attempt to take a subjective-centered approach to figure out creative ways to cram in as much content as we possibly could in ever-shrinking amounts of time. We’ve all been here: “Can you take this week long class and do it in two days? Can you do it in one day? Can you run just a 90-minute brown bag lunch.”
RICHARD: Trish, I see what you mean by “What got us here won’t get us there,” but we live in a world where people still equate delivering content with training. People—even those in learning and development—believe providing content is training (whether they admit it or not).
So we, those members of the tribe, need to have an understanding of how the beliefs of others impact our work. As we attempt to shift from designing content-focused training to performance and behavioral-focused instruction, we must recognize we will meet resistance to 21st century theories, methods, and models simply because they don’t match people’s habituated mental models.
TRISH: Yes, Richard, correct!
The problem is compounded by the fact that our sponsors (those who pay us to design and develop the training) expect it to be content-centric; and our audiences (those who receive the training we’ve designed) expect to remain passive as the training is inflicted upon them.
These perspectives are even more entrenched than we sometimes realize because we—instructional designers, trainers, learning professionals—forget that people expect training to mirror their earliest experiences with education.
Simply put, people equate training with the educational experiences they had growing up. They expect training to look and feel like how they were taught.
As social media guru, Jane Bozarth (aka the World's Oldest Millennial) has observed in her work, people will continue to hold these mental models and have these expectations until they have no longer grown up with this educational model.
Baby Boomers and Gen Xers were educated using a behaviorist approach, and as such, they were conditioned to believe that “learning” means recitation and rote memorization.
You and I fall into this group. We were rewarded in our academic careers by learning how to sit still during content-driven lectures. We were tested on knowledge recall and basic comprehension—“In what year was the Magna Carta signed? Who was King John of England?”
As such, we follow (old) training models based on antiquated and outdated teaching models.
RICHARD: So, if the foundations of our profession are built upon this type of behaviorist, content-driven training, are there other legacy structures we’re dealing with as well?
TRISH: Yes! Lots!
For example, simple, common models that we use today—like ADDIE—are phase-by-phase linear processes where you complete one phase then “fall” into the next.
We gravitated toward ADDIE and its attendant methodologies because it was akin to how the world worked in the Industrial Age. The problem is, the world doesn’t work like that anymore.
The Industrial Age is over.
The world has changed; work has evolved. Hierarchical top-down control has been replaced by matrices (cross-functional workgroups where leadership prays every day for nimble, adaptable, responsive teams). People spend less time in their day-to-day focused on routine, standard operating procedures and more time on the unstable complexities of cross-departmental project work.
Yet we haven’t changed; we’re still using the same old tools.
“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” as Abraham Maslow said,
Our “hammer” worked just fine in the stability and routine pace of the Industrial Age—but those days are long since over. We are in constant states of chaos, complexity, and change. Our “new normal” is a VUCA world – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Work is dynamic, with shifting priorities that require problem solving as situations continue to evolve.
To survive, we have to think on our feet and respond appropriately to challenges as they present themselves. There is no more waiting for someone “from on-high” to come downstairs and tell the worker bees what to do, how to do it, and when to get it done. People need to figure it out on-the-fly. They need to be INNOVATIVE.
That’s how people survive; that’s how organizations will remain vital and competitive.
“Work is no longer ‘pre-figured,’ it is configured,’” to quote Fred Nickols.
RICHARD: Again, Trish, you have pinpointed the key issue. Our processes don’t adequately support what we should be, or could be, doing.
Whenever I write or speak about SAM (Successive Approximation Model), someone always says, “This is the same thing as ADDIE.”
While there are many differences between the two approaches, the key difference is that ADDIE (or whatever process you are following and calling ADDIE) does not start with the goal of changing learner performance.
Widely used instructional development processes are, instead, centered on the dissemination of content. The outcome of these processes is often boring, content heavy “training” that concludes with a multiple-choice quiz.
And why?
This type of “training” is easy to build and simple to track. It allows for everyone to give their two cents on the words being used and for learners to demonstrate their “completion.”
But this type of instructional self-validation does nothing for learners or performance improvement. These “courses” never come close to answering the question learners most want answered: “What does performance look like for me so I can be successful at my job?”
Therefore, there’s no value, other than the false pretense that, yes, someone can check a proverbial (or literal) box and say that “training” was provided.
TRISH: AGREED! But, what’s happening today is even worse than that, Richard!
Mobile learning guru Sarah Gilbert (meLearning Solutions) and I recently talked about exactly what you’ve described!
Sarah pointed out that not only do these types of courses typically end in useless (and meaningless) multiple-choice quizzes, but learners are “on to us.” They often review the quizzes first, then go back through the “course” to ferret out just enough content to be successful in selecting the correct answers on the quiz questions to get a passing score.
It not only accomplishes nothing of value to the organization; it also insults our learners’ intelligence, wastes their time, discredits real training programs, and, frankly, discredits real training professionals.
RICHARD: Ouch.
TRISH: Yes. Ouch. It’s time to for all of us to come together and start having real conversations rather than pandering to the status quo. It’s time to start actively and honestly “slaying the sacred (and antiquated) cows.”
What got us here won’t get us there.
We need to get rid of what no longer serves.
RICHARD: Agreed. Wow—lots to talk about!
Trish, in the next blog post, I’d like to get your thoughts on why we continue to hold these assumptions in our industry when we should know better.
On that note, we should put out a call-to-action to our training & development and learning-pro peers—we want to hear from YOU!
Please use the comments section below to let us know what you think!
- How has the role of the instructional designer or trainer changed for you in recent years?
- Does continuing to design and deliver training using a behaviorist, content-driven approach provide anything of value?
- Which instructional design models are you using? Why?
- How are you designing or delivering meaningful, memorable, motivational learning moments?
Posted by Allen Interactions on Mon, Apr 01, 2013
![Allen Interactions Iterations: Content Doesn't Make Learning [Ep. 3]](/Portals/55048/images/Iterations3.jpg)
In this episode of Iterations, Richard Sites, vice president of client services and Angel Green, senior instructional strategist, discuss why learning experiences based on content are not adequate for the modern workplace. Join the discussion about knowing versus doing, why it is so prevalent, and its impact on your organization’s training efforts.
Richard Sites
vice president - client services and co-author of Leaving ADDIE for SAM
Follow Richard on Twitter ▶
Angel Green
senior instructional strategist
Follow Angel on Twitter ▶
Posted by Allen Interactions on Thu, Mar 28, 2013
by Christopher Palm, media artist
Hear that? It’s the faint sirens of the branding police speeding their way to this blog at this very moment. Quick! We don’t have much time before they shackle us with their “branding guidelines” and force us to endure long recitations of the importance of their brand to the very existence of humanity.
Should we run? Maybe we can give them the slip once or twice, but before long they’ll release the hounds and drive us into submission.
Can we hide? It’s possible to have our creative design go unnoticed, but the brand police are still out there, making their rounds, and it is just a matter of time before they pick up our trail or find something suspiciously out of place in their world ruled by the Style Guide.
Maybe we should just turn ourselves in from the get go and do it their way. After all, it’s their world we’re designing in, right? That wouldn’t make for a very exciting blog, though, would it?
Don’t get me wrong, brand guidelines are a wonderful thing. They establish a company’s image and persona, and give it a consistent and familiar face by which to be recognized. But it is that familiarity that may preclude brand guidelines from being useful to learning. Actual learning happens when the learner is engaged and motivated, and media is vital to keeping the veil of immersion cast upon our audience for as long as possible.
Which would you rather explore?
This encounter in the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword styled to a [pretend] Nintendo® brand guideline
—Or—
The actual game where the style emerges organically based on the context and content
Granted, your e-learning project will probably not have nearly the same budget as a mainstream video game such as Nintendo’s Zelda franchise, but there are definitely similarities that can be drawn to how we should approach the visual design of our e-learning courses.
Go ahead and fire up your favorite video game of choice, just about any game will do (even mobile). The first thing you may see is a couple opening credits and logos. That is a pretty standard approach. But then something changes as you move into the game’s main menu. Suddenly, we see a screen that looks completely different from the company’s brand—a screen that is tailored to the content of the game it precedes.
Exactly!
Let’s go a little deeper. Press any key!
In Clash of Heroes, the menu screen vanishes and we’re now launched into the gaming environment. Around the edges of the screen we may see specific interface elements. These interface elements match the overall look of the content, creating a seamless and immersive environment in which one could easily lose six hours in the blink of an eye. There’s no company logo in the corner, not even a game title—and definitely no sterile corporate blue header across the top. There’s no reminder of who made the game while you’re in the game.
The video game industry has had this method locked down since its inception. 
So, why do we always fall into the polar opposite when it comes to e-learning? What compels us to format our courses like a corporate website or print out? Such methods lead to a dull and disconnected learner experience. But, if you can let the inherent context and challenge of the content run the show, suddenly you’ll be on your way to building an immersive and engaging experience.
Being true to your content is your “get-out-of-branding-jail-free-card” and your media can live life in peace and not pieces.
Christopher Palm is a Media Artist at Allen Interactions with over six years experience in the e-learning industry. As a Media Artist, Christopher is responsible for creating intuitive and well-designed interfaces, interactions, and graphics that lead to an immersive and engaging learning environment.
Posted by Allen Interactions on Mon, Mar 25, 2013
Wednesday, March 27 — 1:00 PM (Central)
Join Christopher Allen, product marketing manager of ZebraZapps, for this 90-minute webinar—Individualized Learning is Easier Than You Think, Wednesday, March 27th, 1:00 - 2:30 PM (Central).
We all learn differently - but wouldn't it be great if the same learning activities could be easily tailored to challenge both pros and newbies? This 90-minute webinar will cover the unique abilities of ZebraZapps Professional to create a learning environment designed to teach software-based tasks with multiple levels of guidance and challenge.
Concepts that will be covered:
- Hotspots
- Using Gadgets
- Arenas
- Asset Import
- Object Replacement
- Event-Flow Basics
The webinar is designed for everyone. Whether you've been working with ZebraZapps for some time, or are a brand new user, you'll find that being able to design a learning environment for anyone is not only important, but fast and simple.
Posted by Linda Rening on Thu, Mar 21, 2013
By Linda Rening, Ph.D., studio executive
.png)
What is e-learning? That shouldn’t be a hard question, should it?
Yet, I’ve posed that question in lots of different way to lots of different people over the last 20 years, and the answers are… um… let’s say... interesting:
Me: Do you have e-learning in your organization?
Corporate Training Department (CTD): Oh yes, hours and hours of it!
Me: Really? That’s fabulous! How have you developed it?
CTD: We record our weekly sales webinars and post them to our LMS. Our sales people are required to take them.
Me: Uh…. Oh… (Wow!)... Hm-m-m…
To be perfectly honest, I don’t remember what I said in response to hours and hours of recorded webinars being considered e-learning. Really, what is there to say?
The problem is one of vocabulary: Even though e-learning has been around for twenty-some years, compared to other pedagogical methods (think Plato and Aristotle), it is still a new concept. The language simply hasn’t caught up; we don’t have words that everyone interprets the same way. What that means, though, is without a common lexicon and shared meaning there is lots of room for misunderstanding and misinterpretation.
Does e-learning equate to a delivery mechanism and therefore is a synonym of computer-based training? Does e-learning refer to any kind of asynchronous, technology-enhanced learning experience? Or does e-learning refer to a particular set of methodologies one can use to deliver content?
The answer: it depends on who you talk to, and on the context of the conversation.
In the midst of the confusion, what can we depend upon? Well, we still have ADDIE, the classic Instructional Design method, don’t we? With that methodology, we can Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate learning experience irrespective of the audience, topic, or medium, right?
Unfortunately, no: ADDIE doesn’t get us out of the dilemma of conversations that hinge on equating hours of webinars with the kind of interactive, multi-media e-learning we create at Allen Interactions. Both teaching methods happen on a computer screen and may have similar color schemes, but that’s where the similarities end. It’s like giraffes and spider monkeys: both are mammals who like a certain kind of weather, but hardly the same thing at all.
Even with ADDIE, we are still knee-deep in the quandary of not being able to speak to one another using a shared vocabulary. While, it may be possible to Analyze learning needs and learners without talking about the intricacies of e-learning, it is not possible to move through the Design stage without some kind of basic alignment and common understanding among team members. And that’s where ADDIE stalls out. Without an established Design, it’s very difficult to move forward to Develop meaningful learning experiences.
.png)
I’ve worked with other e-learning companies and with hundreds of clients throughout my career, but it has been only in the last 3 years after coming to Allen Interactions that I was part of e-learning projects that consistently went well. The stakeholders and SMEs aren’t different, nor are the learners or learning challenges. What’s different is the way we go about designing e-learning.
Previously, as an instructional designer, I would gather content, analyze needs, and then design an e-learning course. When I submitted a design document, clients were always enthusiastic about my designs and my grasp of the content.
The same thing happened when I wrote scripts for e-learning courses. Clients might wordsmith a bit, but all in all, everyone was happy. So, on we would go to the second of the two D’s: Develop. That’s where everything fell apart.
Clients would be very unhappy, and we’d have conversations like:
Me: But, you approved the script!
CTD: Yes, but we didn’t know it was going to look like that!!
Me: (Uh-oh)
Exit ADDIE; enter SAM…
Our method of Successive Approximations (SAM), with its emphasis on prototyping, circumvents all of the confusion and unhappiness. Because we are able to analyze and design iteratively before developing anything, we can cut through any possible inadequacy of language and collaborate on what interactions will be used to reach learning objectives, and how those interactions will look and behave.
It begins at our Savvy Start. We get together with clients for two days (one day, if we must), and talk about what learners need to be able to do after the training - the desired end state. Once we understand that, we think through contexts and challenges, which brings us to ideas for interactions.
We then have something to prototype. Prototypes start as sketches - think stick-figures on a white board. Anything that is easy to erase or to crumple up and throw away is what we want at this stage.
Once we have an idea of what an interaction might be like, one of our gifted media artists or developers prototype in an authoring tool like ZebraZapps. We’re still not hard-coding anything, just prototyping in a tool that is flexible and easy to change.
From there it’s simple to figure out what everyone likes and doesn’t like. Savvy Start participants come to the screen and point to things, which the person who’s prototyping can change on the spot. Soon there is a lovely silence in the room followed by, “Yes. It should be exactly like that.”
We have just reached shared meaning without a common lexicon and without having to talk about what e-learning is or isn’t.
And, the hard work is done. Now instructional designers know what they are designing toward, media artists know how the e-learning should look, and developers know how it should behave. All that’s left is further iterations to refine and perfect.
Ask five training and development professionals and three subject matter experts, “What’s a click/tell?” You’ll get ten different descriptions and two “I don’t knows.” Imagine how much more complex and confusing are conversations about the immersive simulations we often create in our e-learning courses!
But, with SAM and its iterative process, no one needs to be able to describe a click/tell, a simulated environment, or even define e-learning. Everyone has been involved in defining outcomes and determining solutions. Everyone has walked through the various approximations. Everyone has had a hand in creating learning experiences that are meaningful and memorable.
Learn more about Leaving ADDIE for SAM Workshop presented by Dr. Michael Allen in Toronto on April 9.
Posted by Allen Interactions on Mon, Mar 18, 2013
In this episode of Iterations, Richard Sites, vice president of client services and Angel Green, senior instructional strategist, recap some of the conversations and questions they addressed around SAM (Successive Approximation Model), Savvy Starts, and ZebraZapps at last week’s Learning Solutions Conference in Orlando.
Richard Sites
vice president - client services
Follow Richard on Twitter ▶
Angel Green
senior instructional strategist
Follow Angel on Twitter ▶
Posted by Steve Lee on Thu, Mar 14, 2013
by Steve Lee, strategic relationship manager
Dr. Michael Allen says, "Success is getting people to do the right thing at the right time.” However, bridging a learner from successfully completing training to performing like an expert is often harder than we expect.
Dr. Allen has also been known to say, "There are two things you can't teach someone, what they already know and what they don't want to know."
Yet most e-learning requires learners to go through training they don’t need, compounded by the fact that learners have a tendency to think they already know better and training won’t help them. So how can we avoid spending time and resources teaching people things they already know, and not motivating them to understand the importance of what we are teaching?
First, consider the 70/20/10 learning concept that was developed by Morgan McCall, Robert W. Eichinger and Michael M. Lombardo from the Center for Creative Leadership. This philosophy states that people learn:
- 70% from real life and on-the-job experiences, tasks and problem solving (this is the most important aspect of any learning and development plan)
- 20% from feedback and from observing and working with role models
- 10% from formal training
Therefore I propose that we should design e-learning that goes beyond the “formal training” tradition and instead mimics the actual job environment by utilizing:
- scenario-based, job-task emulations
- access to a coach/mentor, reference materials, demonstrations and formative immediate feedback
- forced completion of each task, even after mistakes are made
- mastery-based scoring requiring learners receiving feedback or help to retake the task—allowing experts to test out on the first successful attempt
- a dashboard/balanced-scorecard approach at the end of each task to provide guidance for the next attempt, as well as measuring their PPP Learning Style:
- preparing with resources and demonstrations before an attempt
- attempting to complete each task until a point of need and pausing to access guidance, or
- just plugging away by guessing—hoping to get the correct answer in feedback
These training activities should assume everyone (except those who “already know”) needs more than one attempt to succeed. In fact, training activities should be so authentic and engaging that students will want to try over and over again to hone their skills. The activities should include extremely difficult or even impossible situations (the Kobayashi Maru for the Star Trek fans out there) to allow students to learn how to handle the no win situation providing not just competency training, but confidence based training as well. This approach of hyper-practice to mastery is used by skilled athletes, pilots, the military and most other high risk/high reward professions.
Mom always said to try and try again. You learn from your mistakes and that practice makes perfect. Perfect Performance!
Are you in the Denver area? Join me as I present “Practice Makes Performance” at the ASTD Rocky Mountain Chapter Meeting on Monday, March 18 at 5:30.
Posted by Angel Green on Tue, Mar 12, 2013
by Angel Green, senior instructional strategist | @LearnerAdvocate
“We’ve got some initial numbers to share with you. You’re not going to believe this.”
He was right. I sat there, staring at the screen thinking something must be wrong. These charts surely couldn’t be accurate. “Are you serious?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
“Yep,” he replied with his signature chuckle. “Pretty good, huh?”
Here I was, one of the staunchest advocates of the power of e-learning—stunned. “We build learning to change performance” I say when meeting with new clients. “What do you want your learners to be able to do?” I ask them. And yet, even I wouldn’t have guessed we could move the needle so dramatically—especially since the course was a “soft skills” course.
Improving the performance of specific actions in the workplace—proficiency using a software program, identifying where to place a box of shoes in the stock room, recognizing signs of damage on an eyeglass lens—is tactical. There is a step, there is an action, and there is an obvious consequence. But, negotiating with customers? Using sales techniques to sell a car? These are skills requiring subtlety; a delicate balance of confidence, enthusiasm, and persuasion. I knew e-learning could better prepare learners for things like negotiations and sales, but, could we actually build those skills? Apparently, the answer was yes.
The numbers I referenced earlier demonstrated—very clearly—that what we did was working. And, it was working better than traditional Instructor Led Training (ILT), long considered the only way to teach soft skills.
The e-learning course we developed with our client-partners at AutoNation followed the Allen Interactions CCAF Design Model.
- Context: As a course for newly hired sales associates at dealerships across the country, the e-learning course was set in a meaningful context—a car dealership sales floor consisting of a very busy sales manager and customers looking at the new cars on the show floor.
- Challenge: The learners were given a series of realistic, motivational challenges, like:
- Present an effective benefits statement
- Recognize the concerns of the customer
- Identify the appropriate time to pause conversations with the customers to speak to the sales manager
- Activity: Learners participated in memorable activities to meet these challenges. They strung together sentences, and presented a customer with a benefits statement. They chose responses to overcome the objections of the customers. They determined, while in a simulated conversation with customers, when they should go to speak to the sales manager.
- Feedback: All along, learners were given feedback in the form of consequences of the actions taken. Would a customer smile and respond positively to a statement the sales person made? Would they become angry and walk out the door? Perhaps they would be somewhere in between, with doubt starting to creep in. Would the sales manager ask questions about the customer that the learner had not yet discovered? Would the gross profit remain high, or would it dwindle with each misstep?
Finally, the results were measurable. When we started the project, we asked what success would look like to AutoNation when learners performed better. Their response - new hires would sell more cars, at a higher profit, and stay with the organization during their initial six months. With that, we had a solid set of data against which to measure our success.
At our suggestion, AutoNation set up a control group and a pilot group. The control group went through the existing ILT and the pilot group received the new e-learning course. Three months later, we were astounded by the results. Six months later, we were convinced.
The pilot group significantly outperformed the control group in all three key metrics. Profit per vehicle was higher, more sales were closed per month, and employees were staying longer. Extrapolate this out to the larger audience of new hires each year, and the revenue gain will be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Interested in learning more about the results of this course? Join me as I present “People Skills Through e-Learning? Yes, You Can!” alongside Ken Gregson, Senior Director, Variable Operations Learning & Performance for AutoNation at Learning Solutions this week in Orlando. And, if you can’t attend the session, be sure to check out the course during the SolutionFest on Thursday evening.
Posted by Allen Interactions on Thu, Mar 07, 2013
Thursday, March 28, 1:00 - 2:00 PM Central
Designers of e-learning are often stuck using the same simplistic interaction formats repeatedly. It isn't that these formats are particularly effective or desirable—in fact, most designers are frustrated with the poor quality of the questioning they create. But timelines and the resources allotted for e-learning projects often discourage any design innovation except to repeat exactly what has been done before.
In this webinar, Ethan Edwards will introduce 7 steps which provide a practical, graduated series of improvements you can immediately apply to your own designs using low- to intermediate-level tools. You will follow these practical and achievable 7 steps to insert incremental improvements to standard question types
and focus on techniques you can apply to any project.
In this session, you will learn:
- the primary weaknesses in standard interactions that you should avoid
- how to manipulate context, challenge, and actions when designing an interaction to enhance motivation and meaning
- 7 simple steps to apply to standard interactions to create a greater chance for learning to occur
- to judge interactions based upon how they serve the learning function rather than simply testing knowledge
- a general strategy for designing interactions that balance development time with instructional effect
Join Ethan Edwards, chief instructional strategist, on Thursday, March 28 at 1:00 PM Central for this 60-minute webinar.
