Want to make your first Knowledge Guru game roll-out a success? While the platform itself is easy to use, a bit of planning and preparation goes a long way. The following "keys to success" will help you make the right decisions before you start designing your game… and help you make your game content instructionally sound. 1) Choose the right game "type" for your endeavor. Knowledge Guru offers you two options: Quest or Legend. Each one can a give you an impactful learning experience, and sometimes either option is equally good. Here’s a few of the major things to consider: Do you HAVE to support IE8? If so, use Legend. Quest will not work within Internet Explorer 8. If users cannot switch to a modern browser (IE9 or higher, Chrome, Firefox), then you’ll have problems. Do you want people to play as part of a live event? Either game type can be used. Legend is the optimal choice if you want to break up game play throughout the day and have players focus on a single topic per play session. Quest is a strong option if you want the game to serve as an overall review of the day. You can have players complete a single world within the game, which would include all the day’s topics. They can then finish their games on their own - getting two additional repetitions of your content following your live event. Do you have a theme? Legend gives you 8 different themes to select from; Quest gives you three. Some customers even opt for a custom-made theme. Which one is right for your event/learning experience? Do you want to incorporate video? Use Quest. Legend does not support video within the questions. Do you want to include "performance challenges" as well as the question/answer format? If so, choose Quest. For more detailed comparisons, you can check out these  Knowledge Base articles that do a detailed comparison of Legend and Quest. 2) Make your game smaller as opposed to bigger. Both Legend and Quest are designed to maximize learner retention of content. However, if you overload your game with too much content, you will hurt your players’ ability to remember.  Novice authors can go a bit crazy on crafting questions and suddenly find themselves with 8, 9, 10 or even 11 question sets within a single topic. The result is player fatigue and overload on their brains. They end up remembering very little. If you truly have lots and lots of content to cover, consider crafting several "mini-games" that can be spaced out. The Legend game type is particularly good for designing this type of solution. You can have a highly effective Legend game that has only three topics with three question sets in each topic. 3) Get good at writing question "sets" The single biggest challenge novice game creators have is recognizing when they are not writing iterative questions. Our Knowledge Base has a great article on how to write iterative questions. We encourage you to read it before you create a game, or to evaluate a game you’ve already created. Here’s a terrific formula to think about when you craft a question iteration: Make the  question on the "A" path (Legend) or "A" world (Quest) a recall of the fact. This can be done as a true/false or a multiple choice option. Widget A has three benefits. Two of these are durability and low cost of operation. What’s the third? Make the question on the "B" path or world a bit more difficult by crafting a fill-in-the-blank or having them reference. When you sell Widget A to customers, you need to share three benefits: ______ , ___ _____ of operation, and _____ease of________. Make the question on the "C" path or world scenario based. Have them incorporate the fact into a job situation they would typically encounter. You are meeting with Joe at ACME construction. He is concerned about replacement costs of Widget A. Which of the three benefits below is the one you should communicate to Joe? (NOTE: The answer would be durability. The distractors would be the other two benefits.) 4) Make your questions contextual to the players’ jobs and personal to them. We all care about what matters most to us. So make sure your questions place your players in their jobs whenever possible. Here’s a terrific "formula" to think about when you craft a question iteration: You are in a lab…. Your manager wants you to…. Your customer asks…. 5) Incorporate visuals and video. People respond well to images and they like watching short videos—just think about the popularity of YouTube. If you can show them instead of tell them, do it! Here are things you can do with an image, even one made in PowerPoint: Give the player a context or "setting" for a scenario or a visual of what a customer might look like. Present data that a player needs to analyze before responding to a question. Show the flow of a process or the steps in a process. Present a vignette of a selling situation, a feedback session, a customer inquiry, etc. The post 5 Keys to Success With the Knowledge Guru Game Platform appeared first on .

Fall is in the air. For us at BLP, that means it’s DevLearn season. DevLearn is the premier learning conference for emerging trends and technology. Our team has attended DevLearn for years to learn about the latest, greatest learning solutions before they "hit the shelves" for most of our clients. Since 2012, we have attended the conference as exhibitors to show off the latest releases of our Knowledge Guru platform. Each year we have attended DevLearn, Knowledge Guru seems to have grown so much from the previous year. But while we have added features and functionality, the core value proposition (help employees learn and remember things like product knowledge, policies and procedures) remains the same. Here is where we’ll be, and what we’ll be doing, at this year’s DevLearn conference: Pre-Conference Workshop: On Tuesday 9/29, BLP President Sharon Boller partners with Dr. Karl Kapp to deliver their acclaimed workshop, "Play to Learn - Designing Effective Learning Games." Participants will spend the second half of the workshop building a paper prototype of their own learning game. More Info. Expo: We will show off the latest features of our Knowledge Guru platform in Booth 216 of the expo. You’ll be able to catch a glimpse of our soon-to-be-released smartphone app for Knowledge Guru as well as see the latest custom learning solutions we have created. One attendee will win a Knowledge Guru subscription each day. Let us know you’re coming. Gamification Panel: Sharon Boller is a featured panelist for "The Past, Present and Future of Games for Learning" at 3 pm on Wednesday, 9/30. Learning Stage Session - Serious Games + Smart Implementation = Win: My session takes four case studies from organizations that have successful used Knowledge Guru games and distills them down to seven practical implementation tips. It’s on Thursday, 10/1 at 10 am. DemoFest: We will show off "Password Blaster", a mobile game used as part of a large Info Asset Protection curriculum, at DevLearn DemoFest. DemoFest is on Thursday, 10/1 from 4-6 pm. Lessons from the Trenches of Digital Game Design: Sharon Boller will give her concurrent session on digital game design on Friday, 10/2 at 10 am. Follow the Action: Can’t attend DevLearn? We’ll be sharing some of the content we are discussing and presenting from our Knowledge Guru twitter account. Will We See You at DevLearn: If you are coming to the conference and would like to meet, drop us a note. The post BLP Teases Knowledge Guru Fall Release at DevLearn appeared first on .

I was speaking to a client the other day who said only 10% of her workforce completes the training they are supposed to take on the LMS. She thinks training completion is low because the content isn’t engaging and wanted to know if a learning game could fix it. I told her that there is no "easy button," and games are not a cure-all for for boring content or bad learning design. Game-based learning can improve learner engagement, but only if you start with a strategy. Years of research shows that game-based learning can increase not only learner engagement, but drive both higher retention and completion rates. Industry professionals are now spending less time debating what the research says about games, but many organizations still struggle to correctly implement games that drive meaningful results. Adding a learning game to the mix just to ‘jazz things up’ could be like putting a Band-Aid on the problem when surgery is really needed. How do you implement a true game-based learning strategy that will actually work? A strategy where learners actually learn and retain at higher levels? A strategy that drives measurable results? Here are some key points to keep in mind when creating your strategy: 1. Know your audience Key stakeholders often get this wrong. I had a seasoned training director tell me that since his audience was mostly women, games just wouldn’t work. Really? According to the Entertainment Software Association, of the 155 million gamers out there, 44% are women. There are marketing games that tout a player demographic of 52% women. 2. Make it relevant This is where many game-based learning strategies fail.   First, learners want activities that are relevant to the learning material and their job. If the game is relevant to helping them retain material or gives them time to practice with material they will use often, then it’s worthwhile. If not, learners will reject it. If you’ve tried a game before and it wasn’t adopted well by your learners, this might be the culprit. Avoid drawing the conclusion that games won’t work with your learners if this is the case. 3. Make learning the focus Many folks want serious games to be, well, less "serious." They want more action, more sound, more addictive qualities to the game. The problem is that the more complex the game design or game-play is, the less cognitive space is left to learn the knowledge and skills you designed the game to teach in the first place. 4. Timing is everything Learning games work best when implemented as part of a blended learning approach. At Bottom-Line Performance, we’ve implemented games as pre-work to a larger training event or instructor-led training as well as post-work for multi-module eLearning curriculums to help learners reinforce what they learned—particularly material they really need to know from memory. 5. Measure the outcomes To drive measurable results, you have to know what you want the desired learning outcomes to be and have a way to access the data you need to measure those outcomes. If your LMS reports only completion, choose a platform that can deliver reports detailing how players performed. Of course, implementing a strategy at your company will involve many more steps than what I have shared here, as well as testing to gauge the response a game-based learning approach has with your learners. Whatever your desired business outcomes are, make sure your game-based approach is based on sound instructional design. The post How to Create a Game-Based Learning Strategy appeared first on .

Bottom-Line Performance and Ally partnered to win a 2015 Brandon Hall Excellence award. The winning submission won a Bronze in Best Use of Games or Simulations for Learning. The game was created and implemented with the Knowledge Guru game-based learning platform. Knowledge Guru customers use the platform to help employees learn and retain things like product knowledge, policies, procedures and compliance information. Gameplay is linked to learning science so employees retain facts by playing. The platform has won four Brandon Hall Excellence awards since 2014, including two "Gold" distinctions. "We have continued to advance and evolve our product with customers as our guide," says BLP President Sharon Boller. "It’s a wonderful thing when a client has tangible success, whether that’s through our Knowledge Guru platform or one of our custom learning solutions." The entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group Sr. Analysts and Executive Leadership based upon the following criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation, and overall measurable benefits. Read about all four of our Brandon Hall 2015 wins on the Bottom-Line Performance website. The post Ally, Bottom-Line Performance Win Brandon Hall Excellence Award for Knowledge Guru Game appeared first on .

We love creating games at BLP and try to share that enthusiasm as much as we can. But we’ll also be the first to admit that designing a learning game is only the beginning. What if you design the best learning game ever, or work with a vendor who creates a great one for you, and no one plays it? Or what if the roll-out gets botched because no one can figure out how to log in? They say the devil’s in the details, and in the training world "details" often means "implementation." What organizations really need is guidance on how to best position and implement new learning technologies, which might be a game or some other type of new learning experience. Learn from the Success of Others According to Karl Kapp, games work best when embedded into a larger blended learning curriculum. This sounds logical enough, but it is much harder to decide exactly what that curriculum should look like. Fortunately, many organizations have already successfully implemented games into their training. One of the best ways to prepare for a game-based learning implementation is to learn from the success of others. I had the chance to work with four organizations who have been using Knowledge Guru as part of their training programs. These organizations come from a variety of industries (technology, financial services, healthcare) and used the games within diverse functional areas (new hire training for sales reps, product knowledge for sales and support reps and process training for HR associates). What’s interesting about all four implementations is just how similar they are. These organizations independently made many similar choices when implementing game-based learning. The results they achieved speak for themselves. Read the Case Studies… If you saw me present at DevLearn 2015 or ATD International 2015, you have already heard these case studies. Congratulations! You’re ahead of the game. For everyone else, you’ll have another opportunity to learn about how Cisco, Johnson & Johnson, Salesforce Marketing Cloud and a Fortune 500 Financial Services company approach game based-learning in my upcoming webinar with Training Magazine. I’ll explain all four case studies in depth, then share seven implementation tips based on what these organizations’ implementations have in common. …Or Skip to the Tips If you’d rather skip the case studies and get to the point, you need not wait till November 17th. I share my seven implementation tips in a new white paper, 7 Steps to an Effective Game-Based Learning or Gamification Implementation. I hope you’ll join me for the webinar, have a look at the white paper, or perhaps do both. Register for Webinar Access the White Paper The post Serious Games + Smart Implementation = Win! (Free Webinar) appeared first on .

Most sales training professionals will tell you they are working within a "new normal" these days. The products they must train reps how to sell grow increasingly complicated. Customers are savvier than ever and often do most of their research before even engaging with a rep. Procurement departments aggressively look for ways to cut costs. Marketplaces grow more competitive as new players enter the fray each year. And for many industries, the regulatory landscape is harder to navigate with each passing year. The end goal of sales training should be to equip sales reps to be a trusted advocate for their customers. When sales reps partner with their customer and invest in their shared success, the buyer and seller both win. This is obviously a tall order; it demands a high level of dedication from the sales rep and requires that they truly care about their customers’ outcomes. It also demands a lot from the trainers who must prepare sales reps to sell. With such high expectations placed on sales professionals, it’s no wonder that sales enablement has become a bigger focus for trainers. What training and resources do sales reps need to be able to become the trusted partner that customers want? How can important product information, and knowledge of the competitive landscape, be sustained and built upon long after a product launch event or national sales meeting? Unfortunately, many of the sales enablement solutions and strategies organizations use today fall short of their intended goals. They are either unwieldy to access, focused on the wrong information or unresponsive to new regulatory changes. If trainers hope to increase knowledge retention after an initial learning event and engage sales reps with ongoing skill development opportunities, sales enablement tools must be carefully designed and implemented. If your sales enablement tools and strategies have one or more of the following characteristics, they may not be sustainable practices going forward: 1. They are not connected to reps’ daily workflow If your sales reps spend most of their time away from a computer, creating sales enablement tools that are only available on a desktop or even a tablet is a huge miss. Designing tools that are "mobile friendly" is no longer enough: sales enablement tools and strategies must be specifically optimized for the mobile experience. If your sales reps work in a call center environment, the opposite may be true and they will prefer to access tools from the computer they use all day to sell. No matter where your sales reps spend most of their time, connecting sales enablement tools and resources to the CRM system is ideal. 2. They only teach basic features and benefits Some sales enablement only focuses on the basic features and benefits of a product. However, customers increasingly need sales professionals to understand their unique pain and partner with them to find the right solution. If you only teach reps how to recite a list of product facts, you really have not prepared them to sell at all. 3. They don’t drive uniform messaging The marketing department will, of course, tell you that uniform messaging is very important. When a product is complex and highly regulated, it is absolutely critical to ensure that sales reps are saying the same things, in the same way, around the world. This is where learning reinforcement stands out as a sales enablement strategy. 4. They don’t adapt with regulatory changes Many of our clients work within highly regulated industries where the marketplace changes overnight. For example, the Affordable Care Act has caused health systems and hospitals to shift their focus from a volume-based model to a population management model where quality and risk reduction are king. Sales reps who are still carrying around the features and benefits of yesterday are unprepared to meet the needs of their customers, who now care less about volume and more about patient outcomes and reducing readmissions. For this reason, sales enablement content must be continuously audited and tweaked to make sure it encourages the correct behaviors and teaches the right messages. The post Is Your Sales Enablement Sustainable? appeared first on .

Now your players take Knowledge Guru with them on the go! We’ve made it simple for your learners to play your games on their smartphones. Let’s dive into how it works! Game Author: Invite players to your game by sharing your game’s URL As a Game Author, whenever you make your game live you’re immediately given your game’s unique URL that you can share out in an invitation email. This is how players know where to go to play. Now, with Quest games, players who arrive at your link on their iPhone or Android smartphones will be able able to register for your game and then download and launch the new KGuru Mobile app. Player: Download, Login, and Play! Once a player has registered for a Quest game, they will be able to tap a link to download (or launch if it is already installed) the KGuru Mobile app where they can login and see a list of available games. That’s it, they’re all set!  On-the-go learners will never need to access a computer to play Knowledge Guru. Every interaction and screen has been optimized for the mobile experience. We’ve also added push notification support so players can select to receive notifications when its time to come back and play a new topic. Now you can play a complete Knowledge Guru Quest game on your phone!   Now available! The post Getting Started with KGuru Mobile - Game Author & Player QuickStart Guide appeared first on .

The Fall 2015 release of Knowledge Guru is so small, it fits in your pocket. What I mean is that we are releasing a new smartphone app for iOS and Android. Learners will be able to play Knowledge Guru games across desktop, tablet and smartphone the week of November 2nd. Multi-Device Gameplay Your learners can start playing on their smartphone and finish on their laptop. Scores and achievements sync seamlessly between the web app and native app version of Knowledge Guru. Seamless Authoring and Analytics Create one game with the Knowledge Guru authoring tool that players can access across all devices. Achievements and analytics will sync for all players, no matter what device they access Mobile-First Experience On-the-go learners will never need to access a computer to play Knowledge Guru. Every interaction and screen has been optimized for the mobile experience. Push Notifications and Email Alerts Set up reminders for your players to invite them back into the game and to what they have learned. Players can select between receiving push notifications on their mobile device or email alerts when it is time to come back and play a new topic. Already a Customer? We’ve created a Knowledge Base Article with more details for Game Authors and Players to get started: "Getting Started with KGuru Mobile - Game Author & Player QuickStart Guide" The post Knowledge Guru Adds Smartphone App in 2015 Fall Release appeared first on .

The corporate training world has come a long way over the last several years. While unwieldy Powerpoint slides and lengthy webinars are still out there, most organizations know better. The important message that "one and done" is never a sound training strategy is getting through to people, which explains the uptick in interest in learning products designed to improve knowledge retention. When knowledge retention is the goal, the mobile phone is often the delivery method of choice. It’s not a generational thing: most people are absolutely addicted to their phones and spend lots of time consuming content on these devices. With the launch of our new smartphone app for Knowledge Guru, we are excited to bring the learning science that makes the platform so effective for knowledge retention to learners’ mobile devices. No matter what tool or technology you use to reinforce knowledge, here are five tips for getting the most out of a mobile delivery method: 1. Use push notifications and email to pull learners in Your learners are probably busy people and need consistent reminders and encouragement to re-engage with training content. Your app or game could be ten times more interesting than the eLearning courses on your LMS and still not be enough to pull people in without frequent reminders. When possible, give learners the option of either receiving push notifications or email reminders prompting them to answer questions and re-engage with your content. 2. Have learners play in short bursts Mobile games that are popular with consumers, such as Clash of Clans and FarmVille, are designed to be played in just a few minutes at time. This usage pattern is ideal for increasing knowledge retention: we learn and remember more when training sessions are spaced out into small chunks over time. Games that only require a few minutes of play a time yet encourage repeat play are best for helping learners remember. 3. Use engaging gameplay to motivate and inspire Whether or not a game is fun is subjective, so it is important to understand the preferences of your target learners. For example, some organizations opt for a custom Knowledge Guru theme so that the setting and characters feel appropriate to their players. It’s also important to keep retention-based games simple: as a general rule, games designed to increase retention should be easy to play so that learners do not spend too much mental energy learning the rules of the game. You’ll be surprised how simple a retention-driven game can be when learners are motivated to increase their knowledge. 4. Incorporate external resources into the game Sometimes, the goal is not to help learners recall something from memory but rather to help them find and locate the correct information. In these cases, linking to external resources such as PDFs or online tools from within the game itself can be highly useful. If the game is question-and-answer driven, be sure to incorporate mixed media such as images and video to provide a richer learning experience. 5. Use analytics to spot problem areas and adjust The benefit of using a mobile retention tool is that it is probably not stuck within the walls of your LMS. This means that a wider variety of analytics are available! Use analytics to track what learning objectives and questions learners are struggling with, then send out further reinforcement on the problem areas. The post 5 Ways to Improve Knowledge Retention With Games and Mobile appeared first on .

Little-Known Facts About eLearning Professionals Henry Adams said that "A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops". As eLearning professionals, we can lose sight of that all-important fact while we’re busy developing our next eLearning course. But the simple truth is that we are a rare breed, indeed. We are charged with providing knowledge, skills, and insight to our audience, and we consider it a privilege. Here are 5 little-known facts about the elusive and ever-evolving species known as "eLearning Professionals". eLearning Professionals have an insatiable thirst for knowledge. We aren’t satisfied with just learning the basics. If you aren’t familiar with the topic, we will go above and beyond to gather as much knowledge as possible so that we can pass it on to our learners. eLearning professionals are adept researchers who soak up information like a sponge, and every day is a new opportunity for us to discover something new and embark upon a fresh educational adventure. We even take it a step further by synthesizing and applying that knowledge in creative and unexpected ways. To us, information is a tool that can unlock problems and enable us to understand more about our learners and how they think. This particular trait isn’t always a good thing, however. When it’s time to focus on other aspects of eLearning course design, our insatiable thirst for knowledge may become a distraction that leads us down the path of discovery. Instead of devoting our time to creating the eLearning course layout or navigation buttons we may be tempted to scour the web for tidbits of information. eLearning Professionals are self-starters. Self-disciplined and determined are two words that aptly describe a successful eLearning professional. While you may deal with distractions, you ultimately know how to stay focused on the task at-hand and don’t have to wait around for instruction. eLearning professionals know that there may be hard work and a significant time commitment ahead of them, but welcome the challenge. Being proactive is par-for-the-course, and we are able to adapt to meet the needs of our clients and learners. If someone calls in sick, we tend to raise our hands to take care of their tasks, because we know that it will all be worth it in end when he hand over an amazing deliverable. eLearning Professionals are optimists. This doesn’t mean that eLearning professionals see the world through rose-colored glasses and believe that everything is sunshine and rainbows. Instead, we are realistic optimists who know how to bring out the best in our eLearning team members. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and we use our strengths to help in whatever way we can while encouraging them to do the same. In some respects, this also requires us to be mediators. If the subject matter expert and graphic designer aren’t seeing eye to eye, then we step in and try to remedy the situation because we believe that everyone plays an integral role in the process. Before we hit that publish button and introduce our eLearning courses to the world, there is a spark of hope that each of us feels. We eagerly anticipate how our work will be received and how much it will benefit our online learners. We are optimists, and we use our eLearning courses to inspire and motivate our audience. eLearning Professionals aren’t happy unless they’re wearing many hats. Multitasking may be stressful at times, but eLearning professionals thrive under pressure. If we can sit down at the end of the day and know that we’ve tackled every task and are still on-schedule, then it’s been a good day. We are in our element when we’re wearing many hats. From writing copy and audio narratives to developing the navigational flow of the eLearning course, we aren’t afraid to step into any role that is required of us and do the best we can with what we have. This is yet another characteristic that can get us into some trouble, however. This is particularly true for those of us who have full personal lives. Getting caught up in our work is a regular occurrence, even if that means accidentally missing a dinner with friends or a parent-teacher conference from time to time. Wearing all those hats can get a bit overwhelming, but it’s also what makes this profession so exciting. No two eLearning projects are ever alike, which means that we never have to worry about being bored! eLearning Professionals have supernatural abilities. This one may not be a concrete fact, but it’s true that eLearning professionals tend to be a bit psychic at times. For instance, we can look into the future and see how every piece of text, image, and interactive element is going to look in the finished eLearning project. We can also possess empathy by putting ourselves in the shoes of the learner in order to visualize their eLearning experience. Last, but not least, eLearning professionals can also predict upcoming trends and immediately get a sense for which ones are here to stay, and which ones may be short-lived. While being an eLearning professional may come with its fair share of stress, there is nothing quite like delivering a high quality eLearning course that you know is going to change lives. Technology is changing and more and more learners are recognizing the value of eLearning. It’s an exciting time to be an eLearning Professional! Wondering which skills eLearning professionals should possess in order to be successful? Read the article 10 Habits That Separate Top-Notch eLearning Professionals From The Rest to discover 10 habits that separate truly great eLearning professionals from the mediocre ones in the eLearning Industry. Interested in becoming an eLearning professional but you don’t know how to start? Check The Free eBook: How To Become An eLearning Professional to read the success stories of 23 highly-skilled eLearning professionals! This post was first published on eLearning Industry.