This week’s Learning Hero is Steven Anderson, speaker, blogger and advocate of awesomeness! What makes Steven such a hero then? Well if you think of the average educator as a run-of-the-mill policeman, then Steven Anderson is Robocop. As a recognised expert in the fusion of learning and technology, Steven is the go-to guy for the next step in the evolution of the classroom. With technology moving forward at such a dizzying pace, no industry can afford to stand still, and this is no different for education. Steven completely gets this and he has made it his mission to guide his fellow educators through the brave new world of the Web 2.0 connected classroom. Along with Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Tom Whitby, Steven co-founded #Edchat, a weekly Twitter free-for-all inviting educators from around the Twitosphere to join the conversation. Hosted every Tuesday, #Edchat focuses on the integration of teaching and technology and how this marriage-made-in-heaven can inspire and engage learners as well as educators. Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom Steven’s blog is subtitled ‘A blend of technology and education’, but calling it that is like calling a book ‘A thing with words in it’. Like most bloggers, the constant demand for frequent content forces Steven to really explore the boundaries of his specialist subject - and this is where we find the real treats. A quick browse through Steven’s blog will churn up posts covering such topics as the best Apps for learning on the go, Twitter tips for educators and rules for attending a conference. With a lot of blogs, this box-of-chocolates approach can indicate that the blogger really hasn’t got a firm grasp on their subject. This isn’t the case here - on the contrary, we see a blogger with such a widespread knowledge of integrating technology and learning that he can write with authority on whichever topic he chooses. Either that, or ‘Steven W. Anderson’ is the pseudonym of a collective of experts. Of course, this wouldn’t surprise us at all because Steven (if that is indeed his/their real name) has plenty of other things to keep him busy. A prolific social media enthusiast, he has won the Edublogs Best Individual Tweeter in both 2009 and 2011. What little spare time he has is taken up with speaking engagements at a variety of educational conferences and he regularly appears as a guest on the BAM! Radio Network (online radio focusing on education). We, at Growth Engineering, are cheerleaders for the power and potential of social learning and we love to see people encouraging a collaborative learning community with initiatives like #Edchat. If you like the sound of that, then you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve barely scratched the surface of social learning. To find out a little more, click that button and download our social learning white paper!  

It’s now more important than ever to make your onboarding process effective, pain-free and smooth. Good first impressions are vital, after all - a difficult start to a relationship doesn’t bode well for the future, and high employee turnover is costing organisations more than ever. Luckily, online learning is just the ticket to keeping your new - and current - employees happy. It’s the perfect way to introduce the company’s policies, get the newbie up to speed, get across your organisation’s great culture and show the inductee that ‘this is the way we do things around here’. Here’s why Learning Management Systems work for onboarding: Prep for the first day Even before the new employee arrives in the office - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and clutching a takeaway coffee in sweaty palms - they can be introduced to the company culture. Generally speaking, employees will have to work a month or three months’ notice at their previous organisations, which opens up a fantastic opportunity to get the newbie acquainted with how your organisation does things. Industry knowledge If your new employee is entering an industry they’re unfamiliar with, or if your organisation is a unicorn in a herd of horses, then online learning is the perfect way to get them up to speed with a basic level of knowledge. Their first day won’t be so daunting or full-on if they have a Learning Management System preloaded with all the relevant documents, policies and eLearning modules. Housekeeping There’s a lot to take in on your inductee’s first day. Don’t overwhelm them with details or make them take notes all day long - chances are they won’t be able to read their own scribbles! Instead, all the ‘housekeeping’ duties can be done on the Learning Management System. An ‘FAQ’ section can tell them things like where the cafeteria is, what the sickness policy is, who to go to for first aid and where the spare notebooks are kept. Plus, you never know whether other employees who have been with you for longer will need to be reminded of this information! Introductions There are two great things (actually, there are more like a bazillion) about our Gamified Social Academy. One, employees can get to know each other before they officially start work. We’re all about encouraging communication and conversation, and it’s so easy for employees to ‘chat’ or at least introduce themselves before their first day. The second benefit is that the Academy allows employees to keep in touch after the induction. In big organisations with thousands of employees, it can be tricky to stay in the loop with other departments or offices, but the Academy is searchable by division, job role and name. Never lose a potential friend again! Competition We’d be lying if we said we didn’t feel a little bit of joy in seeing learners on our LMS fight it out to reach the top spot on the leaderboard… and it’s sometimes even more fun when they’re new! Gamification on the Academy - badges, points and achievements - encourages employees to really engage with their new LMS and the onboarding content. They’ll be super motivated to watch the health and safety video, read the disciplinary procedure forms and complete the ‘how do I work best?’ eLearning unit. Everyone likes being top dog, and new employees have a lot to prove - gamification really motivates them to make the most of the onboarding resources available to them. They’ll soon be up and running thanks to online onboarding! We’d love to show you more of what our Gamified Social Academy Platform LMS has to offer! Why not jump aboard one of our weekly webinar tours? It’s free and easy!  

Are you getting the most from your Learning Management System? For many people, the answer might be, ‘Sure, I guess so,’ but what if we were to tell you that you could be missing out on some amazing functionality that could send your training and development into overdrive? That sounds almost too good to be true, but we’re not even finished - what if this functionality involved no additional eLearning and happened all by itself? You’re intrigued - we can tell! Let’s first introduce the 70:20:10 problem. We’ve covered it before, but as a quick refresher, the 70:20:10 problem covers the way in which we learn. In your working life, you’ll learn most of what you need by rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty, i.e. 70% of your learning will come from on-the-job experience. If we skip the 20% for now, 10% of your knowledge will be gleaned from formal learning. By that we mean courses, reading material and eLearning. Along with reporting and skill gap analysis, most Learning Management Systems with deliver this without any problems and, since that’s what they’re designed to do, that is the least you can expect. But what about that 20%? This portion of your training and development will fall under ‘social learning’, a concept which we capitalise on at every stage of our Academy Platform LMS’s development. What is ‘social learning’ though? Social learning, like on-the-job experience, is a type of ‘informal learning’ which covers the experience you gain from interacting with colleagues, discussing work related matters and sharing any knowledge you might find outside of the formal learning framework. 20% is no small proportion of anything and it can count towards a truly valuable learning experience. In today’s interconnected world, people have developed their natural inclination towards social interaction. You’ll already have noticed that this covers everything from the TV we choose to watch, to the holiday photographs we take, all the way to the food we eat. So why not include it as part of our professional development? With our Academy Platform LMS, you have all of the benefits you might expect from an online learning environment - the reading materials you’ve painstakingly gathered, the resources you’ve put together and the eLearning you’ve worked so hard to produce. We’ve gone one further and included several nifty features that encourage learners to share their knowledge and teach each other. How much effort does this require from you, the manager? That’s the best part, folks - this requires exactly zero hours of work! If you think of that in terms of money, any mathematician will tell you that any additional learning achieved through this channel counts as a proportionally infinite return on investment! How can you say no to that?! In any business, the employees themselves are the most valuable asset, so it seems very inefficient to waste such a large resource. If you want to find out more about how Growth Engineering can help them become the superstars they were born to be, get in touch with us today. You can also learn more about the benefits of social learning by downloading our white paper. All you have to do is click the button!  

Not only is it difficult and costly to take your sales teams off the road for sales training, but most of the time, classroom training doesn’t actually work! So often we talk to organisations that spent thousands of pounds on workshops, tutors and classroom training who just haven’t seen the return on investment they were promised. But don’t worry. We have the answer to these problems: train your sales staff online! Our Sales Academy comes preloaded with an excellent eLearning library of sales modules, meaning it’s now simpler and more effective than ever to roll out sales training to your workforce. These eLearning units are accredited by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM), which means our sales training is almost guaranteed to raise the standards of your sales teams, improve results and drive revenue growth. As a recognised training centre for the ISMM, we enable our clients to deliver SCORM-compliant sales training via eLearning modules on our Sales Academy from Levels 2 to 5 We love working with the ISMM to deliver nationally-recognised qualifications online at a fraction of the cost of classroom training, and we’re proud to offer a highly scalable sales training solution ideal for large, geographically-disperse sales forces. Each unit within the sales eLearning library is structured around an ISMM qualification (an Award, Certificate or Diploma, from Level 2 to 5) and contains all the learning content and the assignment necessary to gain one of the prestigious qualifications. All learners need to do is log on, go through the eLearning unit and complete the associated tasks and assignments. And voila - they’re a Sales Superstar! Using our sales eLearning in conjunction with our online Sales Academy solution means we can assess your staff to ensure they receive the right level of training, map training needs to a development passport of learning, deliver the sales training online via mobile or tablet, test, mark and accredit assessments and then certify the qualification. But that’s not all! In addition to offering these ISMM qualifications as part of our Sales Academy solution to upskill entire workforces, we also offer the qualifications on an individual basis our own award-winning Academy Platform Learning Management System (which was recently voted the world’s best Gamified LMS, best NextGen LMS and best Retail LMS!). We call it the Sales Superstar Academy. You can find out more about it by heading to our sister website, Sales Superstars. Intrigued? Check out what our Sales Academy has done for Aggregate Industries by reading the case study below!  

Vocational qualifications (VQs) are work-related qualifications. They’re designed to allow you to learn in a way that suits you, and give you the skills that employers are looking for. There are lots to choose from, in a wide range of subjects. The great thing about vocational qualifications is that they are completed while you work - alongside your day job. This makes the training relevant, means you can start using it to boost your work straight away, and also means the learning is more likely to ‘stick’. When you consider the fact that 70% of our knowledge comes from work-based, ‘on the job’ learning, it’s really clear just how important vocational qualifications are to your career! (By the way, if you’re wondering: we get 20% of our knowledge by observing and interacting with others and just 10% from ‘formal’ training! Read more about the 70:20:10 problem of learning.) Ideally, the work involved in your vocational qualification will directly reflect the tasks you’re doing on a daily basis and the skills you need to build upon. Sure, you can learn about something different, but it’s a whole lot easier to gain a sales and marketing qualification when you’re actually, you know, closing sales and marketing products! Lots of companies have already benefited from putting their workforce through vocational qualifications using an online approach. For instance, Aggregate Industries put 400 salespeople through a Level 3 Diploma in sales and marketing from the ISMM (Institute of Sales and Marketing Management). The online approach meant that they could complete the eLearning modules in their own time, and then start applying their new knowledge straight away at work the next day. It’s much more flexible and means the business started seeing the positive effects of the training from day one! Here’s a short example of how vocational qualifications really do complement your current role: imagine you’re taking an ISMM qualification online. If you’re working on ISMM Level 3: Unit 301: Planning and Delivering a Sales Presentation, part of your assessment might focus on sales presentations that you’ve given to clients and you’ll be encouraged to create a new presentation, which can then be used in a real situation with a client. See? A vocational qualification focuses on what you need to do to improve your career and helps you get there. It’s pretty great and it really works to improve your career prospects! Want to find out more? Try one of our ISMM demo units for free today!  

This Week’s Learning Hero is Jay Cross! You might ask why we chose him, but then again you might also ask what took us so long to chose the guy who coined the term, ‘eLearning’! Since his first courses at the University of Phoenix, Jay has gone on to become a leading authority on the power of informal learning and the importance of working smarter. For those who don’t know, informal learning covers everything that happens outside of the formal training structure. This includes things like hands-on experience and knowledge learned from colleagues and co-workers - basically anything you can’t find in a book. Though many companies rely on formal learning when it comes to T&D, the larger percentage of knowledge retained comes from informal learning. In the orchestra of Informal Learning, Jay Cross is a conductor, waving his baton with enthusiasm. Jay is committed to helping businesses achieve more, and achieve it more efficiently, by applying more human-friendly practices. He has hit many milestones along the way including the founding of Internet Time Group, serving as the CEO of eLearning Forum and writing a column for CLO magazine. His book, Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance, is one of the most comprehensive resources available on the subject and the Working Smarter Fieldbook 2011 is full of tips and tricks to turn your traditional training model on its head. His other duties as ‘Chief Unlearning Officer’ don’t stop with writing books and articles. He’s a popular keynote speaker, often attending conferences and in-house sessions. In his talks, he often draws on his knowledge of business, cognitive science, technology and psychology to present an inspiring package to help businesses and managers discover what is truly possible. The best thing about his talks is that he can actually take these fairly heavy topics and put his ideas across in an amusing and engaging way - proving that his advice about engaging learners isn’t just empty rhetoric. Check out this video to see what we mean. If you need to inject a bit of life back into your company culture, or encourage new ways of thinking, you can visit Jay’s website, or you can also get in touch by email, on twitter, facebook or Google +. Like Jay Cross, we know the enormous benefits that can be gained from tapping into informal learning and exploiting these resources which are basically free. As more and more business leaders are waking up to this potential, the landscape of training and development is changing dramatically and it’s up to trainers to change too. To find out more about the changing face of learning, click on the button to download our white paper.  

The Goal of Learning & Development Securing great return on investment is an essential - but often seemingly unachievable - goal of an L&D strategy. We often speak to Heads of HR, L&D and Company Directors who had great expectations of their Learning Management System but who just haven’t seen the return on investment they were promised. Their training programme is just not the exciting, intriguing and behaviour-changing godsend it was supposed to be. Their grand plans have failed, the promises have come to naught and they’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. The reason that training programmes fail to secure ROI is that they generally focus on only a small proportion of learning. The ‘70:20:10’ problem of learning explains that while 70% of what we know we learn by rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck in at work and 20% we gain through observation of others, only a small 10% is gained through formal training practices, like workshops, eLearning modules, lectures and textbooks - and it is this that most training programmes focus solely on. Do the Math It’s no wonder that organisations aren’t seeing a return on their investment - they’re investing 100% of their resources (not just money, but time, effort, accountability and support too) in just 10% of their employees’ knowledge. Of course the sums don’t add up! What is needed is a culture of empowerment - a culture in which employees are empowered to develop themselves over and above the formal training programme that they are enrolled on. In other words, rather than spending all of, say, a £20k training budget on a Learning Management System chock-full of eLearning modules to secure 10% of learning, organisations would be far better off spending £30 or £40k on an LMS that can tap into all forms of knowledge acquisition and secure 100% of learning. It seems like a bargain when you think about how much extra you’re getting! Forgetting Curve Of course, even if you manage to reach the ultimate 100% of learning, there is no guarantee that you’ll see behavioural change - and without behavioural change, your ROI will amount to zilch. This is because of the ‘forgetting curve’ of learning. It’s the idea that we lose up to half of what we learn if we don’t work to actively retain it, by which I mean unless we use and apply the content, it’ll leak out of our brains like sand through our fingers. Which is sad, really. In order to not only hit the elusive 100%, but to also make sure none of that learning is lost, we need to empower employees to take charge of their own professional development. And how do we do this? The answer lies within your Learning Management System. The technology is already there; you just need to give your learners the means to take the reins. Communicate and Collaborate It’s often all too easy for learners to log on to their LMS, take an eLearning unit and then ride off into the sunset, armed with a certificate of completion but without having interacted with anyone else during the learning journey. Not only is this a lonely existence, but it’s bad for learning. Remember the 20% of learning that occurs through observation of others? There’ll be none of that if learners can’t get together, talk, discuss the learning content and build upon the knowledge they gained during the formal eLearning module. Social Learning The answer is to build a dedicated communication and collaboration area on an LMS. Ideally, learners should log on to their LMS, take the eLearning module and then - instead of kicking up a cloud of dust behind them in their haste to leave - they should enter the communication area and talk about what they just learnt. This kind of ‘social’ learning is the answer to the 70:20:10 problem. Learners have already smashed the 10%, so just the 70% and 20% are left to tackle. They know they can dive into the 70% once they’re back at work, but here’s the crux of it: they need to have a level of knowledge before they can do this. Sure, they can learn some things from zilch, but imagine being thrown in at the deep end with no prior knowledge of what you might need to learn… It’s daunting, demotivating and disempowering! In order for employees to effectively learn at work, the first step involves social learning: the 20%. Once learners have become all-knowing beings through both formal and social channels, they can then set to work continuing to learn when they’re back in the office. Gamify Social Learning We learn best when we’re having fun: that’s why learning should be gamified. ‘Gamification’ is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios to make difficult tasks more palatable. When we’re talking about gamification of eLearning, we mean awarding points and badges for moving through the module, getting answers right and completing units. And when it comes to an LMS, it means awarding badges for interacting with the Academy and other learners, moving through ‘levels’ (like Newbie to Sales Superstar) and climbing up a leaderboard to be crowned #1 Best Cleverclogs in the Whole Wide World. Gamifying social learning is slightly different. It involves rewarding learners for collaborating, sharing knowledge, helping each other understand tricky topics and answering questions. When learners interact and share information in their dedicated communication and collaboration area, they become recognised as experts in their chosen field; the go-to guy for Telesales and the must-ask madam for fire safety. And doesn’t everyone want to be at least a little bit famous? Empowerment So you see, once you empower employees to take an active role in their own training and development - not only by giving them the means to do so but by rewarding them for doing it - learning will evolve in unique and unexpected ways. Knowing that there is a dedicated area where they can talk about their training means learners will keep returning once they’ve discovered something new; all aspects of the 70:20:10 problem will come together and complement each other. When employees learn something new at work, they will be motivated to log on to the LMS and tell other learners about it - for which they’ll get some experience points and move up the leaderboard, reinforcing their expert status. And when other learners read about this new skill, they can then apply it when they’re back in the office. You’ll be able to forget the forgetting curve all together. Rather than learning being discrete and lonely, an empowered culture allows learning to become social, interconnected and enjoyable. And, as it happens, far more effective. The key to securing return on investment lies in an empowered learning culture. Once learners are given the means to learn socially and informally, there’ll be no stopping them. You’ll have created a culture of continued professional development - and have an ROI to really write home about. Want to find out more? Check out our white paper on how to secure ROI on your Learning Management System by clicking the big button below!  

This Week’s Learning Hero is TeacherGaming! You can’t deny the genius behind creating wonderful things, but there’s also ingenuity in repurposing things that already exist. TeacherGaming aims to create ports of existing video games designed specifically with a classroom environment in mind. For too long, educators have been reluctant to use video games in their lessons, taking the hackneyed stance that video games are the enemy of education. Students have been let down by empty promises of ‘fun educational video games’ that turned out to be programs to teach them how to type. TeacherGaming burst into existence in 2011 as the lovechild of educators and programmers. The company directors, Santeri Koivisto, Joel Levin and Aleksi Postari, represent the new generation of educators, people who have ‘wasted’ their childhood on video games and thus know what differentiates a good one from a dull one. Their mission was to revolutionise the way digital gaming was incorporated into classrooms. The key to engaging kids in the classroom was to take something that they already love and adapt it to a more educational purpose. It was here that MinecraftEdu was born. Unless you’ve been in a cave or reading a really long book for the last couple of years, you’ll already be aware of Minecraft. For those who don’t know, Minecraft is an open-world environment developed by Swedish producers, Mojang. The easiest way to describe it is a 3D first-person Lego set in a world made entirely of 1m³ boxes which can be collected (mined) or placed. It’s a pretty simple concept, but its simplicity means that this world can be adapted to almost any situation, making it particularly useful in a teaching context. Officially endorsed by Mojang, MinecraftEdu allows teachers to craft their own 3D teaching environment to suit their needs. Just like the standard version of Minecraft, the scope and potential is limited only by the teacher’s imagination. The platform has been taken up by over 20,000 schools worldwide and it has been used to teach concepts as diverse as public housing, democracy, geometry and how the global food market works. The philosophy of TeacherGaming places great weight on the importance of engagement when it comes to imparting knowledge that really sticks. This principle is as true for adult learning as it is for schoolchildren. At Growth Engineering, we consider engagement to be the key that unlocks the potential of learners. To learn more, click the button below.  

When it comes to implementing an awesome Learning and Development programme, there are a lot of things to consider: how will the training be presented? Over how many months? How many employees will go through it each time? How will the learning be reinforced (because it absolutely has to be!)? The path to L&D excellence is fraught with these questions, considerations and compromises - but luckily, your friends at Growth Engineering are here to shed some light on Learning Management Systems to explain some benefits you might not yet be aware of! Firstly, did you know that Learning Management Systems can be used to organise real-life training? I know, I know, it probably seems weird that an online learning company is telling you that you can organise classroom bookings through your LMS. The perception is that we’re only enthusiastic about online learning but that’s not true. Sure, eLearning works really well to engage learners and get them changing their behaviours, but we recognise the importance of classroom training, too. Sometimes information is better disseminated in real life. Anyway, with the Academy Platform Learning Management System, you can integrate all the best things about both classroom training and online learning! The Academy Platform can create a beautiful marriage of technology and classic training - book and manage classroom bookings, invite learners, manage invitations, send out pre- and post-learning quizzes, easily incorporate videos and downloadables in the classroom event… The possibilities are near endless! Next up, did you know that Learning Management Systems are social? Yeah, really! Online learning used to be seen as a lonely experience but now the perception is changing. Learning is social nowadays - the best Learning Management Systems out there have communication areas where learners can chat to each other, share their thoughts and bounce ideas off each other. Learning together is much more fun than going solo! Lastly, you may not know this (where’ve you been!!?), but Learning Management Systems these days are FUN! You probably don’t believe us - that’s because the only experiences you’ve had of Learning Management Systems have been negative, boring, mind-numbing and soul-crushingly dull. Well, since then, LMSs have gone through a revolution: they’ve been injected with a fantastic dose of gamification to transform from zombie systems to joyful gamified Learning Management Systems - hurrah! As you may be able to tell, we absolutely love talking about Learning Management Systems and explaining how gamification and social learning work. In fact, we’ve been quite prolific writers on the topics. Take your pick from the buttons below to download some pretty awesome white papers which go into greater detail about all these points. Enjoy!  

Are you wondering what we do when we’re not creating engaging, award-winning online Learning Management Systems and sending learners on a learning journey to paradise? Well, in our down time we go through a magical transformation from Learning Superheroes into stars - film stars, to be specific! Between us, we write, act, film, edit and upload fun, entertaining videos that explain what it is we do here at Growth Engineering. And here’s one of them! The video we’ve featured below highlights some key functionality of our award-winning Academy Platform Learning Management System. It explains how we’ve used gamification to send engagement levels soaring, how we encourage social learning with our awesome ‘Insights’ area and how our gamified Learning Management System can be used to book and manage real-world classroom training, too! So, without further ado, why not check out our latest video all about the Academy Platform Learning Management System - recently ranked the #1 Next Gen LMS in the world and the #1 Gamified LMS in the world! As you can see, we’re all about making learning fun and engaging for learners, but we don’t stop there. We’re also passionate about making it as easy as possible for Managers and Admins to monitor and report on learners’ progress, set up eLearning modules, create tests and manage classroom booking with our ‘Interactive Classroom’ functionality. There really is no other Learning Management System quite like the Gamified Social Academy Platform LMS! When learners log on to the Academy, they forget they’re learning - instead, they just think about all the fun they’re having, the points and badges they’re gaining and how quickly their skills are skyrocketing! We’d love to show you around the Academy so you can get an even better idea of exactly what sets us apart. It’s not just about gamification and beautiful design - the user experience is divine, we’re on the ball with informal learning and social learning, and the Academy is just so easy to use. There are a couple of ways you can see our gamified Academy Platform Learning Management System for yourself. You can either sign up to one of our weekly webinar tours with one of our expert guides (do this by clicking the big button below) or, if there isn’t a time available that suits you, fill out this form to request contact at your convenience. Easy as pie! We can’t wait to talk to you.