Predictive Learning. 70-20-10. Gamification. MOOC. These are among the buzzwords in the learning industry today. Which, if any of these, creates or leverages a truly synergistic learning experience? Wikipedia defines synergy as "the creation of a whole that is greater than the simple sum of its parts." In Stephen R. Covey’s classic The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, the sixth habit is "Synergize." In its simplest form, every successful learning experience where two or more people gather or interact creates some level of synergy. Everyone, including the instructor, learns from one another and all leave the experience more enriched for having participated. But can (or should) learning be designed and facilitated with synergy being an integral part of the experience? Many learning experiences are simply knowledge or skills transfer, with an expert directing novices towards new levels of achievement. Creative designers and facilitators will design and facilitate team activities to leverage group dynamics. This creates one basis for synergy—but how can that synergy be captured, channeled, and catapulted to yield exponential payoffs? There are three primary areas designers and facilitators can focus on to achieve this return: content, curation, and cultivation. A fourth "C" that should thread through the previous three Cs is "collaboration." Content Content should be more than a simple "data dump" where an instructor or web lesson pontificates knowledge and resources. Lessons and activities should be mutually interactive and encourage participation and collaboration among learners wherever possible. Building in this collaboration will help to drive synergy. Be careful, though, that activities are not so rigidly designed as to restrict or inhibit the unique group dynamics that will emerge as the training event progresses. To allow these dynamics to "bloom" in a productive and synergistic way, it’s better to plant seeds instead of trees when weaving content into the delivery plan. Offer a framework, but not a specific mandate, for collaboration. Encourage participants to suggest and modify group activities where appropriate. This not only increases buy-in among participants, but it also gives facilitators and designers an opportunity to learn from the learners and generate more productive outcomes. Curation Curation of collaborative participant contributions and insights should be done in such a way as to ensure both relevance and accuracy. The balancing act and challenge of effective curation is encouraging collaboration while filtering out erroneous and extraneous information. When curating information from collaborative activities, event leaders should be sensitive to remaining inclusive and encouraging when soliciting information and resources. Some degree of "self-policing" by participants will also help minimize any impressions of favoritism by the instructor that might arise as the learning advances. Employing polling among the participants can give insights into which information nuggets, job aids, or other resources the group finds most beneficial, while the instructor, subject matter expert, or other training leaders will be charged with ensuring the accuracy and relevance of the resources submitted by the group. Cultivation The purpose of successful cultivation in learning is much the same as it is in farming—to ensure high yields with minimal waste. The "harvest" of the learning event should not only yield increased knowledge and skill levels among the attendees, but also living and growing performance support systems as well as a "seed crop" of resources and learning insights that training leaders can employ in future sessions. Cultivating collaboration—especially ongoing collaboration—is much like cultivating crops—a cyclical and ongoing process. This is where Covey’s seventh habit of "Sharpen the Saw" comes into place. Leverage the knowledge of experts, value the insights of peers, and proactively (Habit 1) solicit the experiences of participants to grow dynamic, rewarding, and truly synergistic learning events and experiences. Continuing the Conversation Let’s make this post synergistic with an active and ongoing discussion. What have you learned from your learners? What collaborative methods have worked best for you in creating two-way or even 360-degree learning? Post your thoughts, comments, and ideas here, or tweet to @gpcorp using the hashtag #trainforward.

Innovations in core HR over the past few years have made many new, world-class human capital management (HCM) solutions available. As a result, organizations are increasingly adopting and integrating the talent management modules these product suites offer, paving the way for more complexity and advancements in the field of talent management. External enablement, talent development and retention, and compliance are just some of the objectives organizations are now seeking to address. Even Gartner has responded to this shift—they have not provided a Magic Quadrant for corporate learning systems since 2011. Instead, they have looked holistically at talent management suites to plot leaders in the marketplace. While the goals of organizations certainly span the entire talent management spectrum, learning continues to be the leader and still has the strongest influence. Learning acts as a key connection point for talent management and all related processes by linking training with performance objectives or enabling employees as part of a formal succession plan. It is the engine that drives virtually all other HCM processes. Because of that, it is important that leaders within learning and training organizations ensure the LMS gets the focus it needs now more than ever. After all, the LMS is a cornerstone of HCM strategy because learning is so ubiquitous throughout the talent management process. If your learning strategy is strong and well-aligned, it will affect performance and goals, succession, and other talent processes. Consider the following best practices to ensure you’re leveraging your LMS optimally this year: Determine how learning can be incorporated into all aspects of your organization’s talent management strategy and use it! Even if you don’t have a full talent management suite or have not yet formally integrated your LMS with existing talent management modules, you can still utilize learning to support the complete employee lifecycle, from recruiting and engagement through succession and transition. Find a way to support the talent management processes by way of curricula and programs (like new hire training) in the LMS, take advantage of reporting capabilities to obtain details for performance reviews, and use MOOCs to find and onboard new employees. Ensure your processes are defined, aligned and accurate before implementing, upgrading, migrating or expanding functionality. Too often, the momentum that comes with moving forward on a new organizational learning initiative can result in important steps being skipped. While it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement that comes with changes like a new system or a strategic integration, jumping in without laying the foundation for "process" can lead to misalignment. This might not be obvious from the start (although sometimes it is), but not having processes defined and documented for your systems will lead to inconsistency and a lack of necessary structure and governance to keep them running efficiently and effectively. It is often assumed that everyone within an organization fully understands these processes; and while many key players and stakeholders have some level of understanding of business processes and how they are implemented in systems, rarely do all involved understand all the processes, how they interact, and how they align with talent management objectives. Leverage social learning. While there is a lot of attention paid to formal talent management processes, social learning is one of the most powerful tools that organizations can utilize when engagement and performance improvement are the goals. Social tactics put learning in the hands of the learners. In fact, executed successfully, the learner will not even realize that they are learning, even though the result of their interaction with the social learning offering will leave them armed with new information or skills. With blogs, videos, collaboration tools and social media like Yammer and Twitter, learning can be engaging and relevant to an individual when they need it. Providing an informal learning environment also supports the needs of younger generations entering the workforce that have expectations around flexibility and interaction. As you proceed with your 2015 talent management strategy, ask yourself some key questions. Is the LMS the centerpiece of your strategy?  Is it shaping the decisions being made across your organization?  Is it being included as a key factor when you’re working with other talent management phases?  If your answer to any of these questions is no, you may want to see how you can leverage or integrate your LMS to provide the best value for your organization.

Let’s bring the art back into training with some creativity in how we think about design. All too often we get bogged down with the content or the deadline that we limit our creativity to a pretty header bar and some flashy navigation buttons. But if we take the time to focus on four key areas, we can bring some creativity back to our training solutions. This blog post will give you some ideas of how to be creative about your content, templates, interactions, and assessments. CONTENT What you have to say is important, so don’t just dive into the content. Take a step back and look at the overall message you are looking to convey. What is it that you want the learner to get out of this training? Not just the specific bits of knowledge, but what are the abstract ideas? Do you want them to feel connected? Do you want them to feel like they are on a journey? Consider those themes as you develop your objectives, section breaks, and transitions. Objectives don’t have to be formal; they can be something that helps engage the learner. For example, if you are creating a change management piece, consider a travel theme. Maybe your objectives become destinations, and your section breaks become postcards or roadside attractions to focus your learner on the journey. Consider the feeling you want the learner to have and apply that to how you present your content. TEMPLATES When you create your templates, think carefully about your color scheme, graphics, and interface that you use. Colors can be warm and welcoming, or can put people off. It’s not always necessary to stick with corporate branding. Much like decorating a home, sometimes you can find an inspiration graphic that can guide your creativity. If your color scheme or theme doesn’t look good, nothing else will. Use the colors and graphics styles consistently throughout your training, from the accent text to the navigational buttons. This will help immerse the learner in the training to keep them engaged. Think about your theme when you create your navigational buttons. If you’re on a journey, maybe your navigation can look like the navigation in a car to keep the learner immersed. INTERACTIONS Clicking the next button is SO 1999. This is where your creativity should kick into high gear. We want to keep the learner engaged and active during the module. This should not be limited to just clicking on items on the screen to display more information. How can you take the content and create an activity, a scenario, or a mini-game? Interactions are where your creativity is limitless. If you’re on a journey, have them collect souvenirs along the way to give the learner motivation to continue. Consider small games or activities, like roadside attractions, to allow the learner to work through the content. ASSESSMENTS But it’s not all about fun; we need to make sure that they learned something, right? Actually, the fun doesn’t have to stop for the assessments. Consider mini-games for learning checks and scenario-based activities. Maybe all of those items that they gathered along the way become a part of the end of course assessment as they drag each item to its correct location. Remember that this is your last chance to impart knowledge as well, so include feedback and distractors that will help drive the points home for the learner before they leave the learning experience. In closing, there are many ways to bring creativity back to training. The four takeaways are to: Review your content before you begin to develop a theme to engage the learners. Create templates to be consistent and in alignment with your theme. Create engaging interactions to keep the learner active throughout the experience. Create fun and engaging knowledge checks at optimal intervals.  

Let me paint you a scenario: You are accountable for the safe, reliable, and environmentally responsible operation of a fleet of power plants. Your day-in and day-out responsibilities focus directly on achieving the key performance indicator (KPI) targets that are important to your organization, and that includes ensuring all employees are provided with the proper technical training to do their job safely and effectively. Your workforce is mixed with different locations, work cultures, capability levels, and job experience. Some workers are new hires and some are experienced journeymen, and your job is to make sure employee training is streamlined across your entire fleet. Easier said than done in most cases. What are your traditional options in order to deliver effective, high-quality technical training that is cohesive and organized across your entire organization? Typically the options are as follows: Do everything on your own; offer several train-the-trainer sessions internally to make sure each trainer at each site is following the same "mold." Outsource this training to provide site-specific, instructor-led training from a selected vendor to administer to your employees. Both options would work, but let’s face it; they are typically expensive and time consuming. Additional costs required to dedicate employees to traditional classroom training include time off the job, overtime pay, lost production time, material costs, and more. There is another answer that seems to be getting much attention these days, especially with the advancements of commonly used technology in most organizations. The answer could be virtual instructor-led training (VILT). VILT isn’t a new concept, but with recent advancements to popular meeting tools like WebEx, Adobe Connect, GoToMeeting, and the like, VILT has become an extremely effective and increasingly popular solution. This solution could be used to provide technical training across an entire fleet at a fraction of the financial and time cost of traditional classroom delivery methods. Properly developed and delivered VILT can be extremely engaging, and it offers many of the same elements that traditional classroom training offers, including instructor-trainee interaction, company-specific scenarios and incidents, and practical exercises designed to drive home relevant concepts. VILT can offer valuable interaction between students and instructor across great distances and can help to streamline the message across your organization. VILT also offers opportunities for student-to-student interactions to share best practices and the availability of company resources. There are four key aspects crucial for successful VILT deployment: Instructor and Facilitator - They need to be engaging and personable, and need to win the audience’s attention and respect. The facilitator acts as the "gatekeeper" and helps to enhance the instruction by engaging the students through monitored polling questions and keeping the instructor on pace. Content - Just like any training, VILT needs to be set up with proper instructional design in mind. The engagement factor of students needs to be valued at all times. Proper interaction throughout the use of graphics, animations, short video clips, polling questions, whiteboard activity, surveys, and open and closed questions should be included for value add to the message, not just a temperature reading on the audience but providing actual educational significance. Software - The tool used to present the training needs be user-friendly. This is critical for your organization to understand the culture, what tools are supported and used regularly, and students’ level of comfort with this technology. Trainee - Of course with any technical training the level of experience of each student needs to be understood. What are their computer skills and are Internet and computer access attainable resources? Where are the students located? These seem like basic questions; however, consideration of each is a must for success. VILT can be a powerful, cost-effective solution at almost any organization if properly planned and blended into existing hands-on training. This option is taking on the training industry by storm with new ways to engage the learner. Through a thoughtful delivery and by using the right tools and resources, VILT can be successful.

Every year, Deloitte surveys HR leaders worldwide to gauge what is keeping them up at night. The recently published report, Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2015, reminds us of the large trends affecting our work lives: globalization, the omnipresence of technology and social media, the 24/7 nature of work, demographic changes and our shifting needs as employees. The top challenges that emerge in this environment have remained roughly the same for several years: leadership, culture and employee engagement top the list, followed by learning and development and the need to "reinvent HR." Overhauling traditional performance management approaches and making better use of data and technology round off the list. It will not come as a surprise that, of all these top issues, leadership is the one organizations feel the least prepared to address. While respondents to Deloitte’s survey give leadership an importance rating of 78%, the readiness rating is only at 42%. Ice and Snow It is interesting to see that on balance, HR and business leaders will rate engagement and culture as on par rather than leadership in terms of importance. This is like saying the symptom is as important as the cause. To try and separate leadership from culture and engagement is like trying to divide ice from snow. If leaders are not engaging those around them to deliver on business priorities, and in doing so building a culture of high performance, then what are they up to? Poor engagement and dysfunctional culture are the byproducts of poor leadership. Leaders, as the saying goes, "get the culture they behave" and culture in turn "eats strategy for breakfast." You cannot address one without the other. Individual Performance For the majority of the workforce today, employers are looking for more than just cranking the handle and getting the job done. The expectation is that each individual will also contribute ideas, make day-to-day judgment calls and continue to learn and develop. Ultimately, culture is the collective sum of individual behaviors and each individual can make an impact. We believe every individual is looking for work that is interesting to them, meaningful in its impact and look for jobs that achieve the right work-life balance for them personally. With this assumption in mind, helping people get engaged with the goals and strategy of the organization means empowering and coaching them to higher levels of satisfaction at work while also aligning and coaching them to higher levels of performance. This is the key to achieving—and sustaining—high levels of employee engagement. Retention Concerns Employee engagement is often directly associated with retention, and the two are very closely correlated. But being engaged is not a complete guarantee that an employee will stay. Today in the US the number of layoffs has been steady at 1.2% since early 2013.[1] The number of people quitting on the other hand is steadily rising and now stands at 2%. This increased workforce mobility should be a concern to employers: While paying people more money or providing more workplace perks may keep them for a while, a much cheaper and longer-term strategy would be to focus on creating a workplace that they want to be part of. Again, this is the product of focused and deliberate leadership. Performance Management Overhaul Over the last year, we have seen an acceleration of a trend highlighted in the Deloitte report: Organizations are keen to find an alternative to the traditional performance management process. Most organizations agree that the traditional "rank and rate" performance management approach does not work, but few alternatives are put forward. When new research in neuroscience demonstrated how counterproductive these annual sessions were, many CEOs asked, "What would be the impact if we just stopped doing performance management altogether?" The answer: very little. Those organizations that dropped the practice (or in some cases pared it back significantly) found that it took a lot of stress out of the system and saved a lot of time and energy. Next, those organizations started to focus that time and energy on having more productive, forward-looking conversations about interests, ambitions and personal development. The relationship between the manager and the direct report shifted quickly from authoritarian to a coaching partnership focused on higher performance. This fundamental change in the approach to performance management has a fundamental and very rapid impact on the culture of the organization and employee engagement at all levels. If your organizations are not currently following this trend, we strongly suggest you look into it. A Holistic View GP Strategies™ looks holistically at the need for learning, development and performance improvement in organizations. We consult with clients around these very topics as the following model illustrates. Working from a defined strategy, we address the interplay of specific roles, leadership, culture and individual engagement to help raise the level of performance and therefore drive business results.  The GP Strategies Organizational Excellence Framework An integrated and holistic approach to aligning these four powerful forces creates swift and sustainable impact on the organization’s ability to consistently perform at a high level—ultimately to deliver the desired business results. [1] According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics

Internally, many organizations are looking to throw away the waterfall ADDIE model design and development process for a more AGILE approach. In an outsourcing arrangement, this can lead to challenges related to expectations and scope, opening up organizations to risk. At GP Strategies™, we have developed a modified AGILE process that takes those concerns into account to set both you and your vendor partners up for success in your next training initiative. During the recent GP Strategies’ 20-minute webinar, A Modified Agile Process for Outsourcing, I reviewed a modified AGILE approach, how to implement the AGILE methodology while mitigating some of the risks in an outsourced partnership and gave recommendations for success, including: Social contracting to set expectations Defined sprints to develop the content Checkpoints to provide stakeholder acceptance Product backlog prioritization using SharePoint solutions After the presentation, a number of questions came up, and while we were able to address many of them, we weren’t able to get to all of them due to time. Below are those questions and my best answers. This is an ongoing conversation so I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page or join the conversation on LinkedIn and Twitter. Q: Does the Agile process apply to eLearning development?­ Do you find Agile methodology works better with eLearning than with Instructor-Led?­ A: Agile works well for anything that has a product as an end result.  It’s a way of expediting the design phase through the use of rapid prototyping.  Instructor-Led is actually even easier since most of those deliverables are in a very editable format.  Q: I had an instance where I had to combine both Agile and Waterfall approaches. The project started with the Waterfall approach and then shifted to Agile as the project required rapid prototyping at the development stage. Do you recommend this approach? A: I do!  Essentially our modified Agile process blends the two philosophies together. My best recommendation is to find what works best for your team.  It’s all about the partnership.  Q: ­In order to successfully utilize the Agile methodology, what emerging skills are required?­ A: It comes down to communication.  Being able to not only clearly communicate, but ask questions and have candid dialog.  That is the secret to your success.  Q: What types of companies are moving to Agile methodologies?  What is the adoption rate of Agile?­ A: I find companies are talking about Agile, but there  isn’t as much adoption as you might think.  Many organizations are still in the experimental phase, and I encourage exploring Agile and making it work for you before diving into it.  Q: ­How do you manage hitting your learning objectives of the course when you may not receive finalized content until further along in sprints? A: This would be incorporated into your checkpoints.  As you meet each checkpoint, make sure that you have met the requirements for the training need.  Q: Is the development time typically faster using the Agile process - or is the time saved taken up with collaboration?­ A: It depends on the rate of change.  If you know what you want and you make the right choices early in the process you can absolutely expedite your timeline.  However if you rethink the design completely, you may find more time is lost than saved.  Q: ­Are there any particular tools you find helpful in implementing the Agile process? A: There are a plethora of tools available to facilitate the Agile process, SharePoint for example.  However, the best tool in your toolbox is still good old fashioned communication.  It’s not the technology that will make the difference, it’s the people. 

What do you think most managers, supervisors, or other company leaders would say is the most common remedy when an employee commits an error that damages an expensive piece of equipment, leads to an injury, or puts the company in jeopardy with a regulator? In my over 30 years of experience in the Power industry and manufacturing, undoubtedly, the most common response to incidents such as these is to prescribe training. In many instances, training is conducted for large groups of employees, resulting in significant costs to the company due to implementation and lost production. Commonly accepted models of human performance show that training accounts for only about 10-15 percent of employee performance. It’s reasonable to conclude then that training will address only a small fraction of work performance problems. Even when one determines that lack of training was the cause of an error, by prescribing training for an entire department or company, one implicitly assumes that the knowledge or skill gap exists universally. In my experience, this is rarely the case and much is wasted by requiring all employees to complete training to address the performance gap. Numerous factors affect workplace performance. According to Thomas F. Gilbert’s pioneering model of workplace performance, the most significant factors can be categorized as either environment or individual. Environmental factors are related to information, resources, incentives, or consequences. Individual factors are related to knowledge and skills (training), the individual’s capacity, and motivation. When a significant incident occurs in the workplace, one can only be relatively sure of avoiding similar incidents in the future by identifying which factor or factors caused the incident. Simply prescribing training misses the point and has long been recognized as ineffective by experts in the field of Human Performance Technology. Consider an actual example from a client I worked with a few years ago. While interviewing employees from several sites across the United States, I found out that all company employees were required to complete a one-hour, web-based, portable Ladder Safety lesson annually. I asked several employees if they learned anything during the training. A small portion said, "It’s a good review." A majority said that it was not useful; some even reported that they knew the lesson so well that they had memorized photos, passages, and other information from it. Based on my interviews, I questioned why ladder safety training was required annually. It’s not required by federal safety regulations. When I asked corporate professionals with the company, they explained that they had a high incidence of ladder accidents. I asked if they could link increased training to a lower accident rate; they could not. It appeared that at some point, a ladder accident occurred and a company official said, "Everyone in the company must complete Ladder Safety training every year." Have you ever prescribed training in this manner or been required to complete such training? If so, you may be expending valuable resources with little to no return on investment. Human errors are a symptom of a performance gap, which is the difference between the desired and actual performance. Whenever an incident occurs in the workplace that requires action, one should take steps to identify the root cause and ultimately, performance gaps. In my experience, managers often think that a detailed root cause analysis or a training needs analysis is cost prohibitive. But what if a performance problem can be solved with a simple shift briefing or small changes to procedures? Even with the cost of the detailed analysis, these steps are much less costly than training and more effectively prevent the incident from occurring in the future. In my opinion, all managers, supervisors, and workplace leaders could benefit from considering all factors, not just knowledge and skills, when analyzing complex workplace human performance gaps.

Is your company making the switch to the simpler, faster, and smarter Workday system to manage your business? It makes sense since it is touted as easy to implement and intuitive to use, right? However, just because Workday is so easy to use, don’t underestimate the need for communication, business process documentation, training for new roles and responsibilities, and support so employees can make the right decisions when they implement the system. These are all critical functions that need to be addressed with any new system implementation because companies are at risk of their employees not understanding how their tasks fit together to achieve the desired business outcomes. During a recent GP Strategies webinar, Training Alternatives to the Workday Adoption Toolkit, I discussed what to think about when considering how to handle the people-related risks associated with adoption of cloud-based systems like Workday. While your solution should be tailored to the specific needs of your organization, here are some things to consider: Communication becomes even more important. Many organizations are making significant process and role changes to accommodate Workday. The more changes employees must adapt to, the greater your need for communication will be. Plan for effective communication before training, during system stabilization, and when transitioning to each new release. Consider implementing/using a tool to disseminate these communications and measure their consumption. Less emphasis is placed on traditional transactional documentation. Because Workday is so easy to use, you will probably need less of the transactional step-by-step documentation that has been the mainstay of traditional ERP training solutions. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for performance support materials. Consider where you have the greatest risks—key job tasks, large user groups, areas with high turnover, or areas of highest business risk—and provide documentation for those areas. Also consider alternatives to traditional documentation, including innovative approaches like micro-learning. Learning, performance support, and collaboration mechanisms take on greater importance. Unlike traditional ERP systems, where years may pass without a major upgrade, cloud-based systems are constantly evolving. This might be great for the business, but it can be confusing for employees, and it means that your learning, support, and knowledge-sharing solution plays an even more critical role in helping employees to perform their jobs effectively. Make sure you invest time up front to determine how your solution will support performance over the long run. Ongoing ownership of the solution becomes critical. With the learning solution playing a more critical role in long-term performance, ownership of that solution becomes imperative as well. Without fully defined maintenance processes, roles, and responsibilities, your solution content will quickly become out of date with a constantly evolving, cloud-based solution like Workday. As you consider what to invest in your end-user solution, I encourage you to think about: What is the degree of process, role, and responsibilities changes that your organization will experience? The higher the degree, the higher the need for a strong communication, training, and performance support solution. Where are your end users coming from? If they already have experience with a centralized ERP solution, then you can probably get away with a lighter solution. Is your organization traditionally more centralized, or will you be moving from a decentralized approach? The more decentralized your organization has been, the higher the need for a strong communication strategy. If you would like to learn more, the webinar recording is now available for download in our webinar archives. The slides from the presentation are also available so you can learn how to make the most out of your Workday adoption. This is an ongoing conversation so I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page or join the conversation on LinkedIn and Twitter.

In a recent webinar discussion, we covered the building blocks of training and a method for how to design training by using a process for selecting the most effective modes of communication. If you missed the webinar on rapid technical design, the recording is now available. Here is a quick look at some of the key takeaways offered. A common issue many organizations face is that they don’t always let the content drive how a particular piece of information is presented. So how do we reduce the time it takes to transfer knowledge from a subject matter expert to a learning experience? How do we use the content to find the best presentation method? How do we create a 20-minute module without spending weeks in the design phase? Let’s start by categorizing four different levels of information, as shown in Figure 1, to decide what needs to be conveyed during a training solution.  Figure 1. Information Categories Once we understand these building blocks, we have to look at the content from the subject matter experts and classify it into one of these four levels, as shown in Figure 2. (Each level is color coded to match the building block of training [shown in Figure 1] it best supports.) Figure 2. Training Modalities You can access and download a copy of training modalities by clicking here. This training modalities list can be further broken down into basic, medium, and advanced formats within each level. Basic formats are easy to edit for content that needs to be updated more often while advanced formats take more effort to update and are best  suited for reusable content. Every training group consists of people who benefit from different learning styles, so the best training solutions incorporate multiple modes of communication and should never rely on only one. The Process How do we take all of this information to design training? One method is to use color-coded flashcards for each component. On the front of these cards is the mode of communication and on the back is the label for basic, medium, or advanced formats with a short description. This method works very well in groups by having everyone sit around a table and brainstorm through a process. The great part about using these cards is that it gives everyone a chance to voice what they think is the best option and then provides an opportunity to vote on the best mode. This method also allows those involved to notice if the same cards are continually selected and if they need to be removed from the stack to account for multiple styles of learning. In contrast, it also is easier to notice when one of the cards never gets picked. Case Study We used four examples of different modes of communication to train employees on proper use of forklifts, as shown in Figure 3.  Figure 3. Modes of Communication The following questions came up during the presentation. This is an ongoing conversation and I encourage you to keep the questions coming in via the comments section at the bottom of this page or via Twitter Q: In the company where I work, subject matter experts and the training developers are often one and the same individual. Sometimes this results in confusion when one of the roles begins to take precedence. What is your advice? A: This is a problem that is not unique to any one organization. A lot of times people have to wear multiple "hats" that they might not even have expected. The result is that some people are designated as trainers or subject matter experts that don’t necessarily have that experience. In a past webinar session, I covered something that I call social contracting. This occurs when everyone comes up with an agreement for what each person will be responsible for. This occurs at the end of the initial design discussions, after the decision process, and after the modalities have been chosen. Create a clear line of demarcation for each role. A few examples of these roles include: Approval Content accuracy Technology In many cases, multiple roles are assigned to the same person, but the important part is clear and effective communication between the stakeholders. Q: What is the most commonly used format? A: This tends to change from company to company. Within any organization, there is a tendency to use or favor one modality over all of the others. Unfortunately, one of the most reused is a static graphic with bullets. Outside of this format, the three heavy-hitters are typically: 2D animations Diagrams 3D animations The main purpose of my presentation was to explore different ways to use modalities so they are the most effective. If you’re getting into the details of the components of a turbine generator, you don’t necessarily want to use a 3D animation or a lot of color. You want it to be crisp and clear so it’s easy to view and understand all of the different components and how they all work together. Q: How can I get the cards for my team? A: If you are interested in the cards or anything else, please reach out to us by clicking here and we will contact you shortly.

For the seventh straight year, GP Strategies was a Gold-level sponsor for the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) annual THE Performance Improvement Conference held in San Antonio, Texas. The focus of this year’s conference was bridging the past and the future. This year was no different than previous ones in that the sessions centered on interventions and strategies that work to create achievable, measureable results. In keeping with the theme, this year’s University Case Competition focused on the future, employing massive open online course (MOOC) technologies to open up the competition, embrace more students, and engage more deeply with a broader set of ISPI participants. The result was a resounding success. For those unfamiliar with the case competition, the experience provides graduate students with a hands-on opportunity to develop their consulting skills around human performance technology (HPT) interventions and strategies in the context of a simulated, yet authentic company need. During the experience, the students select a methodology, conduct a rapid performance analysis, recommend solutions, and ultimately prototype a sample of the solutions they recommend. Many of the students receive university credit for their efforts in addition to complimentary conference registration. The Challenge Over the past six years, the case competition has shown great value for both ISPI and the teams, but the approach is so time intensive that it limits the number of participating students and puts a strain on participating judges. We needed to determine how to maintain the rigor and spirit of the experience while creating a sustainable platform that allowed us to scale up our capacity for students. At the same time, we endeavored to increase the engagement of ISPI conference attendees. This year, we decided to design a MOOC that would allow more students to join in the case competition in the weeks leading up to the conference and reengineered our conference sessions to incorporate more participants as judges. The design of the MOOC leveraged a flipped approach as the backbone of the experience. My team provided the progressive business case, but additional content was curated from a range of sources as needed to support completion of the tasks. Over the eight-week period, I met with the student teams to answer questions about the case, share a specific topic related to the case challenge, facilitate interviews with case actors, and collaborate with the teams to evolve the experiences. The Teams, Conference Sessions, and Judges This year’s competition included three fantastic teams: Concordia University in Montreal (team Champs), University of North Texas (team Green Lantern), and Penn State University (team PACE). Each team conducted an analysis and developed a set of recommendations and a solution prototype in advance of the conference. At the conference, they pitched their proposed solutions and prototypes to 35 judges over the course of two conference sessions on consecutive days. The judges were conference participants with a range of experience in the HPT field, including consultants, internal corporate practitioners, military personnel, higher education professionals, and HPT thought leaders. Not only did the teams receive an immense amount of feedback from the judges, but the judges also engaged deeply with the students and received a great deal from the students’ prototyped solutions. "…all teams provided [comprehensive,] well-thought-out solutions…. I am amazed at what they were able to come up with, given the short timeframe." —ISPI conference participant and judge Why Is This So Important? Everyone who participates benefits from this experience. The students gain a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. ISPI strengthens the bond between its deep base of performance improvement practitioners and our emerging professionals. The universities have the opportunity to showcase their students, the faculty, and their curriculum. And finally, GP Strategies gains access to the best and brightest emerging training and performance improvement professionals. "…this challenge pushed us to think critically and apply what we have been learning in our graduate programs." —University team participant How Can You Benefit From Similar Experiences? Challenge-based or failure-driven learning experiences like this can be powerful tools in teaching and reinforcing complex practices. Although creating authentic and effective cases takes time, the return on that experience can be significant—especially when you wrap coaching around it. What are some examples of how your organization has utilized challenge-based or failure-driven learning to develop rich expertise? How do you or your organization help make the learning experience more authentic for your learners?