We’re really excited to let the cat out of the bag and tell you all that we are going to be attending this year’s World of Learning Conference and Exhibition! Last year’s event was great fun and it was so rewarding to meet new faces and start new conversations about how to breathe new life into boring training. We’re so passionate that learning doesn’t have to be dull and monotonous - it should be fun, enjoyable, joyous… Learning new things should make you go, ‘Oooh!’ not ‘Oh no!’ Injecting fun into learning, both real-world training and online learning, is not as difficult as you might think. We’ve written about it many times - some might say we’re a tad obsessed but we prefer the term ‘passionate’! Here’s what we think in a nutshell: learning doesn’t have to be mind-numbingly dull! With gamification (that’s badges, ‘levels’, awards, leaderboards and achievements) learning can become fun once more. Elements of gamification can be added to both the learning content itself (eLearning modules and classroom training) and also to learning platforms, like our Academy Platform Learning Management System. With gamification, learners turn from demotivated zombies who drag their heels, complain about their training and just can’t wait to escape the classroom into engaged, motivated and joyful learning superheroes who are passionate about their development! Read more about gamification by downloading our free white paper called ‘The Secret of Engagement’! Come visit us! We’re so looking forward to meeting you! Our stand this year is E80, so come visit us and have a chin-wag! We’ll have lots of badges and other goodies available to demonstrate just how awesome gamification is in all environments. In fact, a little birdie told us that there will be a magical mystery box appearing on the stand containing a super-secret prize that only the most awesome attendees will be able to open… Keep your eyes peeled for more information on how to open the mystery box! Before we forget, we’re also delighted to announce that we will be part of this year’s ‘Technology Test Drive’ area. This means that you’ll be able to try out our Academy Platform Learning Management System and get a taste of how gamification makes a huge difference to online learning experiences. You’ll also discover why our Learning Management System has been crowned the best Gamified LMS in the world (not to mention the best Next Gen LMS in the world!) by Craig Weiss, who is the closing keynote speaker on day 1 of the event! We really can’t wait to meet you. If you feel the same and think that this might be a match made in heaven, you can pre-book a meeting with us at the World of Learning Conference and Exhibition, RSVP to a webinar tour of our Academy Platform or you can simply lie back and get us to do the legwork by clicking the button below and filling out the form!  

This week’s Learning Hero is Mario Herger! As the CEO and founder of Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC, Mario is an authority on using gamification to make businesses better. As a company which understands the power of gamification, we can only salute him! Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC was founded in 2013 by Mario and three other gamification experts (namely Yu-Kai Chou, Roman Rackwitz and Marigo Raftopoulos). The aim of EGC is to help companies improve by using gamification to drive engagement. Whether the aim is to engage the employees or the customers, gamification will have a role to play in the solution and EGC are there to make it happen. Before founding EGC, Mario was the Senior Innovation Strategist at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California as well as being the Global Head of the Gamification Initiative at SAP for 15 years. If that doesn’t already make him a legend, then we don’t know what does! In his time he has been a chief flag-waver for gamification and all of the benefits it can bring. He has sought to drive awareness about gamification and regularly organises workshops and events with the sole purpose of telling the world how much better life becomes when you gamify it. Of course, anybody can knock something together on Powerpoint and get up on stage to talk about it, but it won’t automatically be an interesting presentation. Part of the reason for Mario’s inclusion in the (much coveted) Growth Engineering Learning Hero Hall of Fame is that he doesn’t just talk the talk. When he gets up there to talk about the power of engagement, he does it in the most engaging way he can and if that means throwing plush Angry Birds around or encouraging the audience to snort like pigs, then by God that’s what he’ll do! We’d definitely encourage you to have a look at some of his talks over on his website, not just because of the quirky gimmicks, but because he clearly knows what he is talking about and he gets his message across in delightfully Austrian-flavoured English which, as we all know, is the best accent for emphasising academic authority! If you want to learn a little more about Mario, visit his website or check out Enterprise Gamification Consultancy LLC. You can also find Mario on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin or Youtube. If that still isn’t enough information for you, you should click that confident-looking button below to download our whitepaper about using engagement to deliver a real return on investment from your learning management system.  

Encouraging learners to sit in front of their computer, log on to their Learning Management System and work their way through eLearning units is not always easy. If your organisation has a Learning Management System, you’ve probably come up against quite a bit of trouble getting enough traffic to the LMS to justify investing in it. Or perhaps you’re a learner who has had numerous bad experiences with your company’s Learning Management System. Either way, you’re familiar with how goshdarn hard it can be to get learners actually logging on and learning. Whether you’re training on compliance, new product features or soft skills, learners are often too busy to sit through eLearning - they just don’t consider training to be one of their top priorities. But what if we told you that it doesn’t have to be this way? You don’t have to force learners to undertake eLearning modules - you don’t have to stand behind them, monitoring their progress and poking between the shoulder blades when it looks like they’re slacking off. There is another way, you know… Goals and Rewards Did you know, difficult goals lead to higher levels of productivity than no goals, vague goals or easy goals? It’s true! Whilst it might be nice to set yourself easy goals - say, of eating one portion of fruit and veg per day - you’ll find that it’s not all that motivating in getting you to eat more healthily. On the other hand, if you set yourself the rather daunting goal of eating six pieces of fruit and veg per day, you’ll suddenly be significantly more motivated to put down the chocolate bar and pick up the carrot! By making your goal more difficult, you’ve gone from maybe achieving your goal of one portion of fruit and veg to six portions - all because you set the bar higher! So you see, setting goals motivating in and of itself… can you guess what happens when you add rewards into the mix? Learner Engagement Yup! Tricky goals coupled with rewards for achieving them make for a very engaged learner (or healthy eater). That’s why we at Growth Engineering put rewards and recognition at the heart of what we do - we make learning fun and engaging by giving recognition to learners when they do something which may not be intrinsically all that exciting or enjoyable. The special ingredient we sprinkle on all our learning and weave into the very fabric of our Learning Management System is: Gamification For the uninitiated, gamification is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios (i.e. eLearning modules) to make difficult tasks (i.e. learning) more palatable (i.e. fun). If you want to find out more about gamification and how it brings goals and recognition together (go on, you know you do!) then download our free white paper by clicking the button below!  

Awards, Certificates and Diplomas We at Growth Engineering are really proud to offer a variety of prestigious vocational qualifications from the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM). The ISMM is the worldwide representative body for salespeople. To help the salesmen and women of the world succeed, they offer a full range of qualifications in sales, marketing and sales management to jump-start your career and boost your progression! And studying online with Growth Engineering (via our sister site, Sales Superstars) is a fantastic way to achieve these remarkable qualifications that are recognised the world over. Let’s look at what qualifications are available in a bit more detail… Vocational Qualifications Vocational qualifications - i.e. work-related qualifications - are made up of ‘units’ of study. You can study units at your own pace, in your own time, simply by logging on to an online platform and working your way through eLearning modules and completing assessments. These units can then be built up into whichever qualifications are right for you. Here’s how it works: each ISMM unit has a ‘credit’ value which tells you roughly how long it takes to complete - generally, one credit represents ten hours’ work. Units can be combined to gain ‘Awards’, ‘Certificates’ and ‘Diplomas’. These don’t represent the difficultly level, but rather how many units are involved in each qualification. Generally speaking, the more units involved in a qualification, the more valuable it is to your professional development. Gaining an ‘Award’ involves studying a single unit, whereas a ‘Certificate’ is gained through a combination of units to make up a total of 13 to 36 credits (130 to 360 hours’ learning). Finally, ‘Diplomas’ are the big daddy: they are made up of 37 units (370 or more hours’ learning) and, like Certificates, involve some mandatory units of study in order to pass. Note that the higher the ‘Level’, the more credits are required to gain the qualification. Let’s take Level 4 as an example. Qualifications at this level are designed for sales professionals in an operational sales role, often managers or those involved in allocating resources. The difficulty of study is equivalent to a first year degree or Higher National certificate. At this level, learners need 17 credits in order to gain the Certificate, of which two units are mandatory. For a more in-depth look at each qualification, check out this link. So, what do you think? Are you ready to jump on board the eLearning rocket ship and blast your sales skills into the stratosphere? Click the button below to try out a demo Level 3 ISMM eLearning module!    

This week’s Learning Hero is Pat Flynn, founder of the Smart Passive Income Blog. We chose Pat because we think he embodies the power of collaborative learning. Today, Pat makes a living from affiliate marketing and from writing successful blogs, but once upon a time, he was studying architecture. When he was studying for an exam in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), he started a blog to keep track of what he’d learned. At this point, he had no intention of attracting web traffic - he simply found that using a blog helped him to link information in meaningful ways. Of course, Pat wasn’t the only person studying for the LEED exam and in creating a study aid for himself, he’d managed to accidentally create the best resource available online. It’s at this point that Pat’s interest in online marketing started to blossom. When Pat was laid off from his job at the architecture firm, he explored his options and found ways to generate income from the traffic on his website. It turned out that he was pretty good at it and now he is the man-with-the-answers as far as web marketing goes. The collaborative learning element is what started Pat on his course, so it’s only right that it should continue to play a part in his work. He runs a regular podcast called Ask Pat which has attracted over 9 million downloads to date. In these 10-15 minute episodes, Pat chooses one of the many questions that his listeners ask him and gives the most concise answer he can. Although Pat’s niche is centred around passive income, his advice is useful to anybody interested in developing the online presence of their business. The issues he deals with range from speeding up website loading times to managing time effectively and he usually gives examples of how he has applied the principles. If you want to read a more complete version of Pat’s journey, you can check it out here. You can also listen to the Ask Pat podcast on his website, or you can download it through iTunes. If you like what you hear, you can also find pat on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or LinkedIn. Pat has seen the possibilities of collaborative learning, but did you know that it can also make your business run more efficiently? Growth Engineering’s Academy Platform Learning Management System is designed to encourage collaboration and social learning. To find out how to unlock the potential of your employees, click the button.   

It’s easy to create a pants piece of eLearning… but what goes into creating a really exceptional eLearning unit that will motivate, engage and delight learners? You may not realise it, but creating 1 hour’s worth of excellent eLearning content is usually the result of over 200 hours of behind-the-scenes work! So when we say we put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into creating awesome gamified eLearning that blows socks off, we’re not lying! And not to toot our own horn too much (just a little), but it’s also the reason we keep winning awards left, right and centre. We put a heck of a lot of work into creating our eLearning modules - from bespoke eLearning for clients to ISMM (Institute of Sales and Marketing Management) units which can be taken by individuals or preloaded onto our super Sales Academy. Let’s break the production of eLearning down into separate roles so you can get to grips with just what goes into creating such fantastic eLearning. We’ve included a video here too so you don’t feel like reading, just click ‘Play’!: The Project Manager aka the Overseer The Project Manager puts in about 10 hours’ work to managing the whole project, creating the plan, making sure everyone is sticking to it and pulling the team back on course if they deviate. It’s a pretty important job and requires a lot of patience and organisation. The Instructional Designer aka the Professor The Professor is seen as the ‘brains’ behind the operation. And considering they input about 75 hours of work into an eLearning unit, that’s a lot of brains! The ID crafts the learning to ensure that it facilitates the acquisition of knowledge - in other words, they make sure it’s interesting, entertaining and that it ‘sticks’ in the brains of our learners. Of course, they also make sure the eLearning is relevant and satisfies the ‘learning objectives’. No deviation allowed, Mr Prof! Multimedia Designer aka the Artist It’s not enough that an eLearning unit has great learning content - it also has to look appealing and be a joy to navigate through. This is where the designer comes in. They spend about 30 hours sculpting the module to reflect the look and feel we want. They have a huge wealth of knowledge of different multimedia tools. eLearning Developer aka the Builder Now that the content is there, the eLearning module has been designed and everyone’s happy, the course has to be built! The developer will spend around 75 hours creating a learning unit to spec , bringing the Instructional Designer’s vision to life, putting the course together and making sure there are no bugs. We want a smooth experience for the learner, after all! Quality Assurance aka the Nitpicker Once the eLearning module is created, it needs to be checked. Luckily we have some pedantic - I mean, focused - individuals who just love putting in 15 hours’ work to check through eLearning modules to spot errors, inconsistencies and bugs. It’s like making sure the icing is perfect on a wedding cake. You can’t scrimp on the details! Want to find out more about how to create truly exceptional eLearning that excites, delights and engages learners? Click the button below!  

We love TED Talks over here at GE HQ. A few weeks ago we compiled a list of our favourite educational TED Talks, and now we think it’s time to tackle the best motivational talks! So without further ado, here are 5 of our favourite TED Talks that increase our motivation, productivity and eagerness to learn new things and work to the best of our abilities: 1. Dan Pink: The Puzzle of Motivation In this talk, Dan explains how what might seem motivating - financial rewards, for instance - actually cause poorer performance. You’ll have to watch the video to see why, but essentially Dan highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation over rewards. In other words, we are more motivated to do something because it interests us, because we’re invested in it and because it’s part of something important than because we get £5 or £5,000 for doing it. 2. Shawn Achor: The Secret of Happy Work We’re all about making work more fun and enjoyable, and Shawn really hits the nail on the head with this talk. He explains that we shouldn’t all strive to be average - instead, we should find our individual skills and focus on them. Find what makes us different and sets us apart, and expand on them. 3. Sarah Lewis: Embrace the Near Win Sarah explains that it’s not necessarily the success of something that matters - it’s being able to replicate the success. True mastery isn’t, as she says, hitting the bulls-eye once, but hitting it consistently. Therefore it’s important to celebrate the times that you nearly get it right, because you’re that much closer to getting it right all the time. 4. Nigel Marsh: How to Make Your Work-Life Balance Work I’m sure we’re all guilty of working too hard at times. Investing too much in our professional selves and neglecting our hobbies, relationships or down-time. It comes with the territory of being successful businesspeople who strive to make a difference in their industries and organisations. Here’s how he says to handle it: 5. Diana Nyad: Never, Ever Give Up What does it take to persevere? To accomplish a dream you’ve been chasing for 40 years when all around you have failed? In this TED Talk, Diana explains the training and will it took her to swim 111 miles from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida. It’s really an incredible achievement! What do you do to motivate yourself to pursue your dreams, further your development and accomplish what you set your mind to? While it’s perhaps not as incredible as swimming over 100 miles, we consider our Academy Platform Learning Management System a bit of a labour of love. A lot of blood, sweat and tears have gone into creating the world’s Best Gamified LMS. Want to see it for yourself? Sign up to a free webinar tour!  

If you’re at all interested in the shape of the eLearning landscape (which we certainly are!), you’ll have heard of Christopher Pappas - this week’s Growth Engineering Learning Hero. For those not in the know, he is the founder of The eLearning Industry’s Network. This network is made up of over 75,000 professionals interested or working in the eLearning industry, so Christopher really is a big player in the online learning world! In fact, eLearning Industry - and Christopher - has fingers in all sorts of pies. Here are just a few of his related groups and projects: The eLearning Industry website: over 150 bloggers on all things eLearning come together to post their articles here. We’ve wiled away hours reading all the excellent articles on eLearning Industry. In fact, we found them so valuable that Juliette Denny, our Managing Director, decided to contribute some articles of her own to share her not inconsiderable knowledge! So far she has written three articles for the website; Gamification: Your Learners Deserve to be Delighted and Excited, A Culture of Empowerment: Beat the 70:20:10 Problem and Secure ROI, and Gamification: Engage Your Learners and Boost Return on Investment. Of course, in addition to running eLearning Industry, Christopher also contributes regularly to the wealth of articles posted there. So not only has Christopher created a platform from which industry experts and interested parties can get their voices heard and contribute to the conversation, but he also knows a thing or two about the subject too. He really is an all-knowing oracle of eLearning expertise! But Christopher’s contributions to the eLearning world don’t stop there. Aside from running an exceptional repository of all the best information surrounding eLearning, he also runs eLearning Feeds, an RSS collection of the best eLearning blogs around. Connected to this is the Top eLearning Blogs leaderboard, which we feature on - the clever badge below updates every day to let us know how we’re doing! So thank you, Christopher Pappas, for making the world of eLearning so accessible and interesting for us all! You’re truly a Learning Hero (or should that be eLearning Hero?). Why not follow Christopher on Twitter, check out his articles on eLearning Industry and connect with him on LinkedIn? To find out more about eLearning and the contribution we’re making to shaking up the online learning landscape, download our free white paper on how to make eLearning enjoyable by clicking the button below!  

Sometimes, your online learning platform can seem like a sinking ship. Like the Titanic, you smashed the champagne bottle, christened your Learning Management System the Super Great LMS II and set sail with great hope and expectation. You were convinced your online learning plan was going to work this time; your learners had embarked on the learning journey of their lives, the sea was calm, the sun was shining and nothing could go wrong - the lifejackets and lifeboats were just for show. So there you were, steering the ship and soaking up the rays on the poop deck, when all of a sudden an iceberg appeared from nowhere - and we all know how the sad story ended… As the captain - aka L&D professional - you’ve got to make some very important decisions when your online learning programme is failing. But unlike seafarers, you don’t have to go down with your ship. You don’t have to sit by and watch your LMS fail - it’s never too late to make changes, plug the leak and secure success. Here are five ways to save your online learning and prevent your training boat from capsizing: 1.  Add gamification to your Learning Management System You’ve probably heard the term ‘gamification’ bandied about willy-nilly, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. By adding gamification functionality to your online learning in the form of badges, points, achievements and leaderboards, you create a learning environment in which your learners are motivated, intrigued, engaged and eager to learn. You can set up your LMS to award points and badges when learners complete eLearning modules and interact with the platform. Give ‘em the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ badge for using the search functionality, or the ‘Long Haul’ badge for having been logged in for 90 minutes; the ‘Learning Legend’ achievement for completing 3 eLearning modules, or ‘Super Scholar’ for gaining 100% on a test. Far from standing around helplessly on their sinking ship, once you add gamification to your LMS, learners will take an active role in their online learning. And active learners will help to plug the leak in your ship’s hull. 2.  Make it pretty, inside & out People are attracted to things that look nice - it’s a fact of life. But more than just outward appearances, it’s important that your Learning Management System has depth and personality too. You can’t expect your learners to enjoy their learning journey if they’re being asked to use an ugly, badly created platform. You wouldn’t expect guests on a cruise to put up with a filthy, poorly maintained ship, with dead-end corridors and complicated signposts, would you? It’s time to embrace the fact that poor design and bad user experience are very real causes of sinking ships. We’re surrounded by gorgeously designed applications all day long (does the brand ‘Apple’ ring any bells?) so why should learners have to put up with something that looks and feels like it was designed on a PC from the Stone Age? It’s just not good enough these days, when the technology is there to create such stunning digital platforms with fantastic user experience at their heart. 3.  Get social Imagine if you filled a ship with eager passengers, told them how exciting their journey would be and how much it’ll improve their lives, and then cordoned them off in separate areas of the ship, never to meet again. Wouldn’t they feel lonely? Disheartened? Disengaged? Demotivated? You can’t expect to run a successful cruise company if you keep your passengers separated and miserable, so why would you think solo online learning journeys were a good idea? Once you create an online learning platform where learners can communicate with one another, you’ll find your learners are much more enthused and involved in their online learning programme. So create a communication hub or a dialogue stream and watch the water drain away and buoyancy return to your ship. 4.  Get interactive How interactive is your online learning platform? Can learners explore the LMS, pick up badges and points on the way, talk about their achievements with other learners and share badges on social media? Or is your LMS basically like an expensive data store, where learners log in and see only the courses they have to complete and tests they need to take? Are all your ship’s doors locked, with ‘No Entry’ signs all over the place? When learners are able to interact on and with their online learning platform, they suddenly become more involved and more interested in logging on, taking part and pushing their learning forward. When you make their learning environment fun, interesting and many-layered, they take an active role in their learning. No longer will your LMS will be a cold, lonely, desolate place - it’ll be a hubbub of activity and enjoyment! 5.  Get competitive If you really want to keep your online learning ship afloat, you need to introduce competitive elements. Once you’ve created leaderboards on your LMS (see #1) that display to the whole company how well each learner is doing, you’ll find that their motivation soars. No one wants to be at the bottom of the leaderboard - in fact, coming second can feel pretty bad too, so you’ll find competition is rife at both the bottom and top of your leaderboard. When learners are fighting it out amongst themselves to gain the most points, achieve the most badges and ‘level up’ the fastest, you won’t have to worry about any icebergs on the horizon. — When you’ve put these five lifesavers into play, you’ll find your online learning platform stops sinking. In fact, once you’ve ‘plugged the hole’ (added gamification, encouraged competition and collaboration, introduced interactivity and given your ship a spring clean), you’ll find that it’s your passengers doing the hard work to keep the boat afloat. You can sit back and watch as they bail water without having to be asked - they’ll begin logging on, taking online learning courses and interacting all on their own, using their initiative. And rather than having to avoid dangers in your path, it’s the icebergs that should be terrified of you - such a strong ship full of motivated passengers will surely demolish all that stands in its way! Once you’ve taken steps to save your LMS, you’ll find you’ve created a culture of active learning. And as a captain, don’t you want your passengers’ learning journeys to be as enjoyable as possible? Want to find out more about creating an exceptional online learning experience for your learners? Download our free white paper by clicking the button below!  

It’s not always clear what happiness really is. To some it can seem like a kind of mythological state. Happiness is variable: sometimes we feel more happy than others. Certain situations will influence whether we are happy or sad. Is there really no secret to happiness? No button we can push, no pill we can take, no fluffy kitten we can pet? What is it that makes us happy? What contributes to our enjoyment of life, the universe, and everything? Why is it that once you add ‘fun’ to certain situations (like learning), people are more enthusiastic about taking part? To help us answer these questions, we scoured the TED Talks superhighway to bring you our favourite videos on what it is to be happy. (If you’re looking for our 5 favourite motivational TED Talks, click here.) Let’s get started… 1. Matt Killingworth: Want to be happier? Stay in the moment In the last few years, there’s been an explosion in research on happiness. What are the big causes of happiness? Matt says that the potential answer is the contents of our moment-to-moment experiences. He has come up with a way to measure people’s happiness all over the world, on a moment-to-moment basis. Trackyourhappiness.org uses an iPhone to monitor people’s happiness. What happens is this: people are sent signals at random times and they’re asked to fill in questions about what they’ve been doing, who they’re with etc. The information then shows how their happiness is changing during the day and what factors might be influencing it. Check out his talk below:   2. Nancy Etcoff: On happiness and why we want it We are wired to pursue happiness. We can’t not strive to be happy. In this TED Talk, Nancy, with her background in psychology, explains how our brains are wired to be extremely sensitive to negative emotions, and how our stress response influences how we feel. She goes on to illustrate how standard perceptions of what make us happy are flawed (for instance, that those with a lot of money are happier).   3. Stefan Sagmeister: 7 rules for making more happiness We all want more happiness, right? As we’ve already seen, we can’t help but strive for it! So finding out how to create more happiness is something we’d all like to achieve. Stefan explains in this TED Talk which things come together to make us most happy - such as being in a relationship, doing things we love and being close and invested in what it is we do. Check it out below:   4. Matthieu Ricard: The habits of happiness In an echo of what we’ve just watched, Matthieu, a Buddhist monk, explains that "somehow, consciously or not, directly or indirectly … whatever we do, whatever we hope, whatever we dream, somehow is related to a deep profound desire for well-being or happiness". It seems clear from this and the previous TED Talks that in terms of desire, happiness is not something we really have a choice about: we all want to be happy. So how do we proceed in our quest for happiness? Matthieu has a few ideas… (Grab a cup of tea before you start this one as it’s a bit longer than the others!)   5. David Steindl-Rast: Want to be happy? Be grateful Happiness, says David, a monk and interfaith scholar, is born from gratitude. Most people would not argue that people are grateful to be happy. Grateful for having a fast car, owning their house, having a high-flying job, a happy relationship and healthy children. But is that the correct way around? Is it not our gratitude for what we have that makes us happy? David delves into this issue in the below video:   As you may have guessed from the topic of this blog post, we think it’s really important to be happy, enjoy your life and be motivated and engaged. And of course, that applies to learning new things, too. If we’re happy and having fun, our brains are more active, meaning we can take in more and push our self-development forward at a much faster rate. Check out our free white paper below to read more about why happiness and enjoyment in learning is important!