What does a new Instructional Designer do? Today’s blog post is a new feature for Logicearth. Kate Middleton has just started with us as a new Instructional Designer. She is embarking on a journey that many of us have been on and she has kindly agreed to share some of her learning and insights as she goes. Over to Kate…I asked Kate to share her learning at the end of her first week. 1. I am a ‘new start’ and I am being ‘onboarded’ Listening to conversations in the office there’s a lot of foreign terminology to get my head around. Phrases like storyboarding, gamification and hinge questions are second nature here, it will likely take some time for them to roll off the tongue. Similar to moving to rural Spain forcing a foreigner to pick up some Spanish quickly, diving into the development of eLearning projects definitely seems the best way to get familiar with all the acronyms and terms that are tools of the trade. 2. Starting the design isn’t the start of the job A lot of work needs to go into deciding with the client what it is that they want in their eLearning content and what they want the outcomes of the course to be. As keen as I may be about my own ideas they may not always fit. It seems this job is as much about communication as it is about creativity. 3. Ideas are precious, but don’t be precious about them Thinking of metaphors and interesting ways to visualise concepts is an enjoyable challenge. However, there are a great amount of other brains who will be taking your course and not all of them will process information in the same way as your own. You may think the building of a suspension bridge perfectly epitomizes the improvement of office relations, you may be wrong, if it doesn’t work you can save it and apply it to something else. 4. The milk is universal It’s a bad idea to assume anything about the office protocol without asking. On my first day I went without my afternoon cup of tea as I was sure someone owned the milk and didn’t want to be labelled a thief, a disastrous and unnecessary sacrifice. I’ve also discovered that not making any assumptions is good practice when it comes to learning… 5. Being a novice might not be the worst thing ‘Unlearning’ is another term that has perplexed me in my first week. While there is still a mountain to climb in terms of getting to grips with instructional designing, eLearning lingo and tasks, at least I can check something off my list, I am already thoroughly unlearnt. Being new means that I can look at everything with fresh eyes, and may even have some ideas that haven’t cropped up before. It’ll be important to keep this perspective while I learn to make sure that I’m still open to new ways of thinking. So that’s Kate’s first diary as a new Instructional Designer. If any of you have any tips or advice you’d like to share with Kate, please reply in the comments below. The post Diary of a new Instructional Designer: 1 appeared first on Logicearth.

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Research shows that when we are happy and having fun, we are more productive. You’ve probably noticed it yourself, too. If you’re feeling down in the dumps you’re more likely to drag your feet, half-heartedly complete your tasks and leave the washing up to fester by the sink for yet another day. On the other hand, if we are happy and feeling good (i.e. have a ‘positive affect’, to get a bit technical), then we’ll have a spring in our step and be able to power on through difficult tasks - and be spurred on to give the house a thorough clean! What is Happiness? When we say we are happy, we mean that we have a positive affect. We are feeling positive, rather than negative, emotions; our state of mind is positive. Of course, the definition of happiness varies as we all experience it differently. A sense of joy; a feeling of contentedness; the desire to jump about; that smile we just can’t keep off our face. There’s lots of research into how our jobs influence happiness. If we enjoy what we do, get paid what we think we should and find it rewarding, we’ll be happier. In fact, a quick Google search returns millions of hits all about how to important it is to find a job that makes you happy, how a job you enjoy means more than one with a huge pay packet, and how to find that elusive job that will cure your unhappiness. But what about the link between happiness and productivity? We know as employees how important it is that our jobs make us happy. But as an employer or a Learning and Development professional, how does employee happiness impact the business? Research In 2010, Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi published a research paper, Happiness and Productivity, which explored the link between (as you may guess from the name!) happiness and productivity. Of the 700 participants, some were shown a comedy movie clip or treated to chocolate, drinks and fruit, while others were asked about negative life events, like bereavements. This put some participants in positive mood and meant the researchers could assess whether lower levels of happiness were later associated with lower levels of productivity. They found that individuals with a positive affect - i.e. those that were happy - were 12% more productive and managed to correctly complete more sums than those individuals who did not have such a positive affect. This suggests that the happier an employee is, the more productive they will be. Applications Clearly, this has implications for work environments. It becomes more important than ever to ensure your employees are happy at work - if they’re not, their productivity and therefore business success will fall. But it also highlights the importance of making sure training programmes are enjoyable. Learning and Development roll-outs which put fear into the hearts of employees and make them curse the day they signed their job contracts won’t be conducive to productivity. More enjoyable training programmes which boost learner happiness, on the other hand, will be more likely to succeed as learner productivity will increase. Learners will be motivated and engaged in their training and therefore work harder, do better and learn more. Want to find out more about how to make learners happy in their training programmes? Fill out the form below to download our free research paper!  

A lot of the time, it’s easier to talk about why gamification engages learners by using examples, case studies and theoretical scenarios. But sometimes it’s important to flex our intellectual muscles and get down and dirty into the technicalities of engagement and how gamification puts the ‘F’ in fun! That’s Dope! On a neuropsychological level, fun, learning and knowledge retention all relate to dopamine signalling in the brain. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released whenever we experience something pleasurable and has often been linked to things like sex, drugs, gambling and partying - which doesn’t necessarily give it a good reputation. But it’s also associated with doing something as simple as eating a cake, riding a rollercoaster or falling in love (aww). Let’s Get Technical Let’s get a wee bit technical for a moment: for our purposes, we need to think about the mesolimbic or ‘reward’ pathway in the brain, which begins in the midbrain (one of the oldest parts of the brain!) and links to the prefrontal cortex. When dopamine is released in this pathway, it affects things like motivation, addiction and lust. Whilst it’s easy to see how this could be a bad thing when it comes to drugs, gambling, or even cupcakes, it’s this reaction that gives ‘fun’ its pleasurable and addictive qualities and makes us want to repeat the experience which triggered it. If we take advantage of this reward pathway and make learning fun, learning becomes almost like a drug: we’re suddenly motivated to learn, addicted to furthering our knowledge and even a little bit in love with the learning process! The great thing about learning is that it already releases dopamine in small amounts. You’re probably familiar with the flush of euphoria when we finally figure out the solution to a tricky equation or suddenly work out how to put a piece of flat-pack furniture together. Adding fun to this process is like sprinkling lighter fluid on a smouldering barbeque: WHOOSH! The effect is intensified 100-fold. How to Release Dopamine When it comes to learning, how can we release dopamine and get these reward paths working? Well, gamification is the obvious answer as it is all about making learning more fun and enjoyable! In a nutshell, gamification involves using gaming mechanics like points, badges and leaderboards to: Change company culture Encourage collaboration and healthy competition Change behaviours Build team cohesion Produce an incredible ROI Keep a geographically disperse workforce on track Encourage people to take a starring role on their LMS Want to find out more about gamification and how it gets learners engaged and having fun? Read the Business Case for Gamification by clicking the button below!  

We’re really happy to be able to tell you lovely readers that we’ve just been selected as a 2014 Gamification Watch List Company by Training Industry! This great accolade is given to just 8 up-and-coming companies who provide gamification products and services geared towards increasing the effectiveness of corporate training. Growth Engineering were among the eight selected, as we demonstrate excellence in many areas: Features and capabilities of the gamification products/services Company size and growth potential Quality and number of clients/users Geographic reach Awards, recognition, and competitive differentiation For those that don’t already know, we were also selected as a 2014 Learning Portal Watch List Company for smashing the following criteria: New and innovative service offerings Unique approach to delivering learning solutions Commitment to improving learning through technology Quality of initial clients Pretty impressive, right? We’re chuffed to bits to have been selected, and we’re confident that next year we’ll be sitting comfortably in the Top 20 Lists, having graduated from the Watch lists! Want to find out more about what we do and why we’re creating such a name for ourselves? Sign up to tour our award-winning Academy Learning Management System by clicking the button below!  

You may have heard the term ‘gamification’ already. It’s the latest buzz word in the realm of engagement, and it’s migrating to take up home in all things learning and development. Gamification can be defined as ‘the application of gaming mechanics and gaming metaphors to non-gaming scenarios to make difficult tasks more palatable’. Essentially, organisations can take ‘game’ elements like badges, points, levels and leaderboards and apply them to the situations where they would like to see behavioural changes. In fact, you’ve probably encountered gamification yourself - your supermarket reward card is a ‘light’ form of gamification, where the more you shop, the more points you get. The points accumulate until you gain enough to ‘level up’ and get a reward, like money off or a freebie. When it comes to education, securing learner engagement is always a struggle. Whether you’re training schoolchildren in the classroom or upskilling a workforce online, making sure your learners are actually, you know, learning is an uphill struggle. That’s where gamification comes in. Like a snake charmer uses the power of music to lure their slithery friend from its confines, so an educator can use gamification to charm learners into putting their all into their training and development. Here’s how gamification lights a fire under learners and gets them engaged with their learning, particularly in online environments: Enchantment Cast your mind back to the last incredible game you played. What made it so? Over and above obvious enjoyment, I’m betting you felt a sense of wonder. You probably felt completely captivated while playing it. The minutes passed by in a blur; you were utterly absorbed in what you were doing. This sense of wonderment and enchantment is what gamification aims to create. When online learning platforms are gamified, like our Academy LMS, learners aren’t simply logging on and consuming learning materials. Instead, they enter into a whole new world where their behaviours are rewarded with badges and points; their progress is tracked and their achievements accumulate to let them ‘level up’ and unlock new learning content; and their dedication is clear for all to see on the company-wide ‘leaderboard’. Soon, learners realise that the more they do and the more they interact with their Learning Management System, the more rewarding their learning environment becomes. Competition Creating a sense of competition can be enough to kick-start learner engagement, and leaderboards are a great way to do this. If learners can see how their learning journeys are progressing in comparison to their colleagues, they’ll be invigorated and motivated to push on through the difficult times. They’ll want to rise to the top of the leaderboard and claim the crown - and if they know they are only three badges behind the current leader, they’ll pull out all the stops to make it happen. And besides… a little competition never killed anyone. Surprises Everyone loves a surprise, and what better way to engage learners in their training than surprising them with virtual rewards for their actions? Gamifying online learning means that learners can receive badges and achievements for doing all sorts of things. Importantly, these are not always ‘expected’ behaviours. For instance, learners can be rewarded when they change their profile picture (the ‘Vanity’ badge), log on to their online learning portal after 11pm (‘Night Owl’) and use the online platform’s search functionality (the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ badge). Organisations and educators can even turn these virtual rewards into real-life gains by awarding prizes to whoever holds the top spot on the leaderboard. Sociability Contrary to popular opinion - and traditional teaching methods - learning should not be a solo affair! 90% of our knowledge is gained during ‘informal’ learning which happens after the formal training (which contributes 10%) has finished. And the informal learning is all sociable - it’s a mix of on-the-job training (70%) and observation of others (20%). So clearly, anything which encourages learners to get their hands dirty and get communicating and exchanging knowledge will benefit learners. Gamified learning environments encourage this social learning by pitting learners against one another and rewarding them for contributing to discussions, sharing their knowledge with others and helping each other get the most out of the learning content. Proof There is some tremendous evidence out there to support the use of gamification in learning. Bensons for Beds, a leading UK retailer of beds and bedroom furniture, rolled out training on a gamified Learning Management System and quickly went from making a double-digit million pound loss to a double-digit million pound profit. Azlan Tech Data’s gamified LMS helped to upskill an entire workforce on selling HP systems. One learner even managed to increase her sales across six customer accounts by a mammoth 678%. Find out more about what these companies achieved with their Gamified Academies by watching the interviews here! Clearly, gamification is an excellent addition to the arsenal of any educator or Learning and Development professional. If you’re an educator and you’ve not tried gamification for yourself, now is the time. Your learners deserve to be delighted and excited by their training. Don’t you agree? Want to find out more about how to use gamification in businesses? Click the button below to download our new research paper!