Year End Musings, Reflections, Predictions and Thoughts: Part One

I have been meaning to do a comprehensive posting about 2011 and what happened during the year and then follow up with thoughts on 2012 with some predictions thrown in and have decided to combine both and create a series of postings combining both. Here is the first one.

Lack of Engagement

Not sure if its the general state of the economy or the state of most e-learning courses or even the state of too-fast, too-much-to-do organizations but I’ve heard from many people that employees just don’t seem engaged or enthusiastic about work. In fact, my colleague and friend, Kevin Kruse co-authored a book about the problem called We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement
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I find this in the e-learning I review, it tends to be page turning boring stuff which is dis-engaged from the learning process. We tend to decontextualize learning. We take the learning away from the application and then wonder why we have “learners” who go through classes or modules but still don’t “get it.” The answer is that we’ve removed reality from the training, we’ve given “training” a bad name, it is now not acceptable to have a “training” event, instead we need to have a “learning event” but training at least has the thought of application of adding the knowledge to the act of doing something. We may have lost an important sub-text by madly switching to the concept of “learning” and away from “training.”

The movement, much aligned by many, toward gamification is a direct back-lash against non-engaging learning events, mostly on-line but in face-to-face classrooms as well. What people need to learn, as one group of my students so elegantly indicated this year is a combination of cognitive, behavioral and affective domains covered in learning objectives. And, I’ll add psychomotor practice as well. Without practice in training or learning, nothing sticks! We need more instruction based on things like cognitive apprenticeships.

Gamification 

Huge discussion broke out on this blog on the concept of Gamification (see In Defense of the Term “Gamification” as used by Learning Professionals and follow the discussion.) This is in direct response to item one, lack of engagement, but it goes beyond lack of engagement, video games and game-based thinking provide many elements that make “learning by doing” possible.  Game elements add the context to the learning process. This is a process that allows learning to matter and to be applicable. People don’t like the term “gamification” because they think it only means rewards and points and then they tend to give up “we’ll its complicated to get it right so…let’s not do it.”

Well if we don’t do it, what is the alternative? More non-engaging learning. We are educating people (not just kids) who are playing games in almost every spare moment and we are going to consciously choose to ignore motivational, cognitive and affective methods of conveying knowledge because its complicated. No way, learning and training professionals are smart enough to figure it out and we need to so that learning can be engaging and meaningful.  Adding elements like challenge to the learning process is one game element that will make a difference. Even points, rewards and badges have their place, if done well.

I have consulted and discussed with too many organizations looking for context in learning to know that gamification is important and will make a positive difference.

Virtual Worlds are Not Dead (although some are)

Another virtual world has bitten the dust in 2011, Teleplace.  I was curious one day when the blog for Teleplace was not up dated for months and gave a shout to Maria Korolov over at Hyergrid Business who then wrote an article about Teleplace shutting down. It seems that when they launched the Open Qwaq project, it was basically a closing out of the commercial end of the business.  Here is the article Teleplace gone; 3D ICC steps in to help customers and here is a detailed article about Teleplace closing its doors.

On the other hand, ProtoSphere by ProtonMedia released a new version this year that looks a slick as ever. They’ve released version 2.0 with a ton of new features and have expertly carved themselves an effective niche in the 3D space. Not an easy space to occupy as many corporations are just now realizing the importance of these spaces for learning and collaboration and the adoption rate has been slow.

It looks like ProtonMedia is executing a well crafted “Crossing the Chasm” strategy that, I believe, will pay off handsomely for the organization. Well done in 2011. ProtoSphere continues to be a force in the 3D collaboration and learning space.

Another 3D vendor doing well is VirtualU. They have a great product and have worked in the conference space and even created some awesome immersive concerts and historical locations. Digitell CEO James Parker and creator, along with his brother of VirtualU have just done some really fascinating work on the educational side of virtual 3D worlds.

Second Life has gone back to its consumer roots while simultaneously raising educational prices. Disappointing and their customer service is still…disappointing. Seriously considering dropping Second Life from our curriculum.

As I indicated in Gamification, Virtual Worlds and The Gartner Hype Cycle both technologies (virtual worlds and gamification) are working their way through the cycle and are going to be main stream corporate learning (read “training”) and collaboration technologies in the not too distance future.

Stay tuned for more year end musings, reflections, predictions and thoughts in the next few days….