I am not a Star Wars fan, but I do remember watching the 1999 film The Phantom Menace and was recently reminded of a quote by Liam Neeson’s character, Qui-Gon Jinn: "Your focus determines your reality." I also read a recent article by the Harvard Business Review: Resolve a Fight with a Remote Colleague. And I am about 17% of the way through a book By Sherry Turkle on Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. All three of these references point to one thing: resolving conflict in the virtual world, when we have only a webcam connection at best — or a phone line at worst — is difficult, often avoided, or postponed until it is too late and permanent damage is done. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be so difficult or scary if we are thoughtful and intentional (i.e. "focused") in working towards a jointly successful outcome (i.e. "reality"). "There is always hope, my friend, though it often comes in forms not looked for. The key is knowing how to see it and seizing the opportunity." - Qui-Gon to Yoda In the HBR article from November 2015, Amy Gallo clearly sets out the challenges of virtual conversations: no body language or facial expression cues lack of "shared identity" (i.e. experiences shared in common) a focus only on role — the work and work content — rather than an empathetic interaction between two human beings. No wonder that we often resort to emails when we should pick up the phone or connect with a webcam. It’s just too hard! Sherry Turkle sees the same problem happening on a macro-level with our dependency (dare I say "addiction") to written texts, IM, Emails and chat. "We are being silenced by our technologies - in a way, ‘cured of talking’." And yet, "It is when we see each other’s faces and hear each other’s voices that we become most human to each other." At The Ariel Group, we believe being "human to each other" is at the heart of any challenging conversation that has a successful outcome. It begins by being willing to be present to the other person and in the moment. Qui-Gon believed this: living in the moment was the best way for him to embrace the Force, which often put him at odds with the other more conservative Jedi. This is not unlike our own reluctance to be at odds with our conservative inner instinct to avoid a challenging conversation. As a result, we have a model that I believe Qui-Gon, Amy, and Sherry would all approve of as we integrate many The Ariel Group’s concepts of Presence into a challenging conversation, even in virtual situations: Reaching out in Four Acts (or ROIFA, for short).   Having introduced this model to hundreds of people in our courses on Virtual Presence and Leadership Presence, the secrets to the use of this model (and also sometimes the most difficult to implement), are the following: Act I: Being present (and I mean really present - to "channel the Force", as Qui-Gon would say) - the ability to focus only on the other person and nothing else for the duration of the conversation. Act II: Listening and reflecting back what you are hearing - demonstrate that she or he has been heard. Act III: Empathy - the ability to walk in the other person’s moccasins and involve him or her in the process. Act IV: Courage - to speak your truth and ask for feedback at the end. Resolving conflict virtually is never easy, and for sure, it is easier when we are in the same office or we can meet face-to-face. But it is possible if you prepare for and approach the conversation thoughtfully and with focus. May the Force be with you! The post Virtual Conflict: Your Focus Determines Your Outcome appeared first on Ariel Group.        Related StoriesElectronic Presence: How to Have Presence in EmailDo Your Employees See You…as Human?The Employee Engagement Equation 

My colleague Carol Lempert wrote a wonderful blog about spontaneous praise and its important place in your leadership toolkit. Gallup backs up her thesis - the #1 tool for engaging and retaining your employees is to catch them doing something great and acknowledging them right away. There are various schools of thought on how often to do this. A 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of specific, positive feedback to constructive/critical feedback is the average; I’ve seen it go as high as 7:1 if you want to create a superstar team. When I shared this data with my colleague Meghan she sarcastically said, "Do we need to start complimenting people for getting dressed in the morning?" Not quite. But we do need to earn the right as managers to ask for improvement, as counterintuitive as that may seem. We need our people to know that we see what they are doing well and the reason we are suggesting adjustments or changes is that we want them to do better, not just for the organization, but for their own growth and development. There is an old director’s trick in the theater than I learned in graduate school. If you want an actor to repeat a certain behavior, you endorse it: "I love the way you crossed to the downstage table quickly and tossed back the drink as if you were desperate to get away from him." I am here to tell you the actor will do that EVERY time, even if the theater catches on fire. Directors endorse the behavior they want to see repeated. Non-actors aren’t much different. We all need to be seen, we need to be appreciated, and we need to know what we’re doing right, just as we need to know when we’ve misstepped. If we’re only being told when we misstep we tend to freeze, afraid to take the next step forward. I am a huge proponent of catching someone doing something great. You definitely want me in your audience as I have spent a good amount of time refining my eye for what is working, and what is unique about the person who is leading or presenting. Here are a few things I’ve learned and practiced along the way: Be the best audience member in the room. I make a point of making eye contact with the person who’s leading the meeting and nodding and smiling to encourage them. Hundreds of participants in Ariel classrooms testify that positive energy from the audience improves their presentation. It’s such an easy way to help your people get a win. Embrace the paradox. As you are observing the person, or their work, try this exercise: think of an adjective and a noun (or two adjectives) that describes their unique style, i.e. "calm authority" or "rigorous AND approachable." Sometimes we have strengths that can seem contradictory but are actually quite complimentary.  Try putting them together. Throw away the feedback sandwich. It. Is. moldy. The days of couching criticism between two endorsements are over. If you are catching people being great you earn the right to be direct when there is an opportunity for improvement. Actors fight to work with directors who endorse them AND help them grow, and the same will be true for you if you make specific, timely, positive feedback part of your management style. I’m confident you will succeed (and I’ll tell you if you do). The post From the Director’s Playbook: Endorse, Endorse, Endorse appeared first on Ariel Group.        Related StoriesDo Your Employees See You…as Human?Flying Unfriendly Skies: 6 Ways to Manage ChangeWhy Biases Ruin the Workplace 

When we hire new employees, we count on their fresh ideas, new perspectives, and added expertise to help our business grow. In fact, with the right mix of people in the workplace, business won’t just grow, it’ll evolve. But are we providing an environment where their fresh ideas can be heard? Many executives will stop an idea from being executed for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the company culture is resistant to change, and often it’s the executives themselves. Personal biases cause many to be short-sighted and at the same time, overlook huge opportunities. However, if your employees recognize these biases, and use proactive solutions to erase them, your company could become a refuge for fresh thinking and new ideas. "The seven most expensive words in business are: ‘We have always done it this way.’" - Catherine DeVyre, Author, Speaker, and Australian Executive Woman of the Year We acquire knowledge when we are attentive to our experience, intelligent in our understanding, and reasonable in our judgment. This is the only way our decisions can be seen as reliable. According to philosopher Bernard Lonergan, S.J., there are four common biases that prevent insights from emerging: Group Bias These are the "isms" in our society. Racism. Sexism. Ageism. These "isms" are rampant in organizational life. In the workplace, it can lead to an "us vs. them" mentality between departments, or friction and animosity because of age differences, rival alma maters, even former employers, i.e., "Everyone over at Acme Tech is so full of themselves." How to Solve for Group Bias Remove names and college graduation dates from résumés before they get to a hiring manager. Erase "us vs. them" mentality from the workplace. If a project fails, be sure managers don’t go behind closed doors with their team and say, "Well, they should have listened to us." Have company values that everyone gets behind so it’s not about what your team wants vs. what another team wants, but about what the whole company needs. Create interdepartmental monthly lunches to get to know people from other functions. Getting to know others on a personal level can build authentic relationships. Individual Bias Individual bias is a fancy way of saying WiiFM ("What’s in it for me?"). People who suffer from this are often labeled as selfish, shrewd, and looking for loopholes so they can exploit others. They will use anyone — clients, coworkers, etc. — as a means to an end that is good for them. Short version? The essential egoist. How to Solve for Individual Bias If managers need an egoist to cooperate with them, train them to say what’s in it for them (WiiFT) first. By putting things into perspective for your egoist, they will see that cooperation is key for their success, and the company’s. Train managers and employees to show their value, accolades, awards, and intelligence to this person. Have a place on a company blog or intranet to talk about employee’s accomplishments. Many people suffering from individual bias look at everyone else as inferior and not worth their concern. However, if they see fellow employees as counterparts equal to them, they will be open to collaborating more. Build curiosity into your culture. If individuals ask questions about projects — why change is needed, why it’s important to the company as a whole, etc., - people won’t feel on edge when an egoist does the same. By welcoming curiosity (without the culture feeling like a constant interrogation), all employees can have a deeper understanding of everyone’s needs and priorities. General Bias Think about your days in high school or secondary school. What subject did you just hate? That subject suffered from your general bias to it. In simple terms, general bias is the tension between interested and disinterested knowing. For example, if you hated mathematics, you probably rushed through your homework and paid half-attention during class, watching the second hand tick on the clock until the class was over. As a result, you didn’t allow yourself to be curious about the material. You didn’t get excited about sine, cosine, and quadratic equations like you did science or Shakespeare. In the workplace, employees complain about being in a meeting thinking "Why am I here?" or "I have better things to do than listen to this." That’s their general bias sneaking up on them. They are automatically disinterested so you they present or engaged in the material, wasting their time — but more importantly the company’s — because of this attitude. How to Solve for General Bias Train employees to find out why they are on agenda. Fellow coworkers might want their insight about a current trend, or a status on a project. Knowing why their presence is needed will help them prepare. Train employees to stop using the word "common sense" or "it’s always been done this way" to back up arguments. These should be seen as taboo and aren’t going to allow new ideas to emerge. Remind employees about the importance of body language in meetings. Even though they may be present, posture may indicate you have a general bias. Help to identify and adjust blind spots employees may have in how they carry themselves so speakers will feel that the topic is welcomed, and not a burden. Dramatic Bias Dramatic bias, simply put, is the way we kid ourselves. The age old "what’s the worst that can happen?" People suffering from dramatic bias will have loads of answers! Researcher and storyteller Brené Brown alludes to this in her TEDx talk: employees will ‘censor’ things to avoid getting insights about themselves that would reveal the ways they fear, disapprove, or even detest. Fear and vulnerability stops us. To put another way, it’s employees’ unwillingness to be present. They may opt to be blind to a great idea despite the data presented to them. They choose to not understand it data because they’re afraid. Why are they afraid? They might not have the expertise to help the project and are afraid of failing or being "found out." Or they might be afraid of the project’s cost. Either way, they won’t push to make discoveries about an idea, so insights can’t emerge. How to Solve for Dramatic Bias Train managers to do a pulse check to see if everyone gets what’s going on during a big announcement. Have them set time aside during 1:1 to re-explain things so everyone can move forward together. Be real. Be authentic that what you do has a real effect on people. If your company messes up, own it and say you’re sorry and you’ll fix it. Celebrate achievements. Some of the best leaders suffer from "Impostor Syndrome." Managers of these employees should find ways to let employees know how much they appreciate their unique skill sets. So, that being said, do you notice the 4 biases in your workplace? If so, what do you do to counteract them?   The post Why Biases Ruin the Workplace appeared first on Ariel Group.        Related StoriesFrom the Director’s Playbook: Endorse, Endorse, EndorseVirtual Conflict: Your Focus Determines Your OutcomeDo Your Employees See You…as Human? 

We are in the 2015 home stretch. Now is a fantastic time to rally your team together and celebrate this year’s successes. As a leader, when you think about this year’s accomplishments, you probably go straight to the major business outcomes, from excellent talent acquisition to product launches to client retention. Those all should definitely be celebrated. And here I am encouraging you to go deeper on the individual level with your team members. Understand what they like celebrating and give them the attention they deserve.Here are three exercises to explore. Choose one or do all. Perhaps let each of your team members choose their own activity. The main point is to focus, learn, and celebrate.Reflect in a month-to-month format. Have your team member list their major accomplishments in each month of 2015. Encourage them to look back on calendars, emails, and notes. Oftentimes we are moving so fast that we do not take time to acknowledge a new skill acquired or a big win. Give them some time to do this activity on their own. Then, in your next one-on-one, review their month-by-month. It is great to focus on successes and the "highs". Ask why those stand out. This is a great way to learn about each of your team members in a new way. And at the end of the conversation ask: This time next year, what would you like a few of your successes to be in 2016?Create a strategy with each team member. At Fierce, every employee after six months fills out a growth plan. In this growth plan, we focus on four core areas: alignment with company values, current role growth, career growth, and professional development plans. Focus on those four areas with each of your team members. In each of these sections, dig deeper by asking why. Learning your team member’s why is critical for building a strong connection to everything that you do with them. Help the team member map out goals and next steps for those four areas.Do the 3+1 Focus. This is a very simple exercise to create focus. At the beginning of each quarter, I ask each team member to bring 3 development areas that they want to focus on in the next three months. This is a great way to keep it simple and check in on these throughout the quarter. I also ask them to bring 1 development area for me to focus on to best support them. The goal is to answer the questions: As your leader, what is the one area that I can focus on that would make all of the difference to you this quarter? In other words, what can I shift to make me the best possible leader for you? It is critical in this exercise to listen very intently, and then you MUST act. That is why I suggest only one area, because it will accumulate with the number of direct reports you have. So, which activity are you going to try? Do you have other suggestions?  The post 3 Tips to Celebrate and Develop Your Team Members in the New Year appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

This week’s Fierce resource was originally published on Harvard Business Review and provides a simple learning strategy that enables leaders to successfully meet the challenges ahead.Wherever you look, we are living in an age of constant change. As we move into 2016, organizations need to ensure they have the right leadership development strategy in place to navigate the ever-evolving business landscape.According to a recent Deloitte study, more companies than ever report they are unprepared to meet this challenge. How do we start closing the capabilities gap? It starts by building an organizational culture centered on learning. The article The Best Leaders Are Constant Learners offers a simple method for transforming yourself, your team, or even your organization into a learning organism.Is your organization prepared to offer scalable learning?"Sustainable competitive advantage depends on having people that know how to build relationships, seek information, make sense of observations and share ideas through an intelligent use of new technologies."Read the article.The post Fierce Resource: The Best Leaders Are Constant Learners appeared first on Fierce, Inc..

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For all that our adjunct faculty community experiences in online and onsite learning environments, it is heartily appropriate to extend a video gift of our appreciation. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you who...Continue Reading »

Do you need to streamline and scale your elearning production? The specification phase is an important step that helps you focus on creating learning experiences that are tailored to your specific learner. In this article we’ll look at how consistency, functionality and team identification can help you in the specification phase. The specification phase defines what the solution will look like and lists the quality assurance acceptance criteria against which the elearning will later be tested. This can help when you come to evaluate a project. 1. Focus on consistency The specification phase is particularly useful when you’re working with a team and needing to scale elearning production. Why? Because the specifications work as a set of guidelines to ensure everyone is working on the same page. Consistency starts with creating a set of principles that your team is going to abide by. You don’t want to lock it down so much that you eliminate creativity, but you do need to provide support structures that enable team members to understand what it is you’re trying to achieve. Tools: Everyone needs to know what tools are being used to produce the elearning. You don’t want people heading off in different directions and using their own choice of tools. This would result in elearning that looked inconsistent and was hard to maintain. Style: You may find it helpful to develop a style guide: a set of principles around which your elearning is built. This can include your choice of font, graphics style, tone of voice and grammatical and lexical standards (e.g., UK or US spelling conventions). Branding: This covers logos and the use of branding, presenting any brand guidelines for using graphics in your course. 2. Determine the functionality At this stage, you need to lock down exactly how your course will function. Here are seven key areas to consider: Platform and browser You need to decide what devices your end users will be using to access the elearning so you can ensure that the content works on these devices, browsers and platforms. A word of caution here: there are new platforms and devices coming onto the market all the time, so focus on your audience. What devices/browsers do they use? You need to understand them as much as possible. To do this, look at Google Analytics data to see how users are accessing content. This can help you build your specifications around your particular users. Reporting Determine whether your elearning needs to run in an LMS; if it does, find out what its requirements are: Completion: How will the course report completion? Tracking: SCORM 1.2 or xAPI? Metadata: Project title, identifier for LMS implementation, descriptors and keywords for search functions Assessment: How should questions behave - will they be randomized? Also, what should the pass mark be? Media Specify any particulars regarding graphics, audio, and video. For example, if particular file types need to be used, or if there are bandwidth restrictions, you will need to take this into account for video streaming/downloading. Navigation Specify how learners will navigate the elearning. For example, will they use menus, forward and back buttons, home button, bookmarking? Accessibility Determine what standards your elearning will adhere to. At the very least, you will want to consider the following: ‘Safe’ colors and contrasting Keystrokes for desktop use (Tab, arrow keys, space bar and Enter key) Alternative text to describe images and graphical elements Captions or transcripts for video and audio. User interface/creative direction Decide on the elements of the user interface for your elearning, including interactive elements such as buttons. Some authoring tools, such as Elucidat, allow you to develop a ‘theme’ which covers all these elements. This saves you spending time and money developing the same elements every time you create a new course. Acceptance criteria Set out the criteria against which your elearning can be tested and validated. This is generally a simply list of ‘must have/do’ features and functions. You can fine tune these and reuse them when you create future courses. 3. Identify the team The final step in the specification phase is to identify who’s going to be accountable for the different steps in the production process. Decide who will analyze the source content, build, proofread, manage the project, do the art direction, sign off deliverables, test, and integrate with the LMS. Allocate roles to the team if you are working on a larger project. It might be that, in smaller projects, one person does all these tasks, if so, it’s important to select someone who can wear multiple hats! Stay on top of the latest elearning ideas, trends and technologies by subscribing to the Elucidat weekly newsletter. Summary The specification phase of the elearning development process is where you bottom out exactly what the solution will be and who will deliver it. The key steps are designed to ensure consistency of approach and output, quality criteria, and roles and responsibilities. When you have completed this phase, you will have a set of guiding principles that everyone can work to. This will make it easy to scale your processes and bring new people into the team. Related: Analysis and scope: How to approach the 1st stage in the elearning development process Design: How to approach the 2nd phase of the elearning development process The post Specification: How to approach the 3rd phase in the elearning production process appeared first on Elucidat Blog.

Top 5 Learning Technology Trends for 2016 https://t.co/QwZApxylfu

  If you, a friend, or a loved one wants to learn something but isn’t inclined to take a formal class, or even if they are in a class and want to add to their classroom efforts, help can be just a mouse click away. In fact, not only is world class help available in the form of many different types of education softwares but in many cases, the educational software that’s available is free of charge.   What Would You Like to Learn Today?   Whether a student just wants to pick up a new skill or supplement a subject that they are already learning, education softwares are there to do the job, and very well too. From anatomy to zoology, educational software can be purchased or downloaded from a practically endless number of sources. And not only are these programs excellent, having been created by some of the most distinguished experts in any field but thanks to modern computer graphics, in many cases, they’re fun to use, not only for kids but adults as well.   Making a Game of It   Everybody knows that when you want to learn a normally staid subject, try making it into a game. That’s exactly the premise of many education softwares packages that make a normally dry subject such as anatomy into a computer game that is fun. A good example of this is Bodyworks Voyager-Mission into Anatomy, which takes students on a tour of the human body via a fighter ship that is shrunken and inserted into the human body. The object of the game is for the user to destroy certain types of microbes and save the life of the patient. Things get a lot of complicated when users discover that there are two types of microbes, one that tries to kill the patient, and the other that tries to kill the fighter ship. Need more ammo? Periodic questions about what the user has experienced must be answered in order to restore their weapons.   Fun and Learning for Everyone   As ubiquitous as computers have become in recent years, it should come as little surprise that education softwares are available that are not only excellent teaching tools but are also fun to use for virtually any age user. Children as young as four can use educational software tool such as The Clue Finders to learn such subjects as math and geography using the tools of fantasy and science fiction. Children can even learn such concepts as business by using Lemonade Stand, which teaches simple math via the real world of a child’s lemonade stand.   Even more mature students will enjoy and benefit from education softwares that teach such diverse subjects as math, languages, and even music in a fun and interactive ways. Role playing takes on a new meaning when students can become part of solving real world problems via the topics they learn in dealing with issues such as pollution, literacy, and much more. In fact, several educational software packages are available that will teach a student programming, which might lead to creating their own education softwares. When it comes to education softwares, the sky is the limit.   The post Education Softwares: Learning Anytime, Anywhere appeared first on Fedena Blog.

  We are hearing so much about collaboration. We hear about all of the benefits, why we should do it, how it improves our practice and student achievement.  I have had wonderful success with amazing collaborations through inquiries, projects, conferences, leadership opportunities, and with students, parents an amazing colleagues! In this way, it has solved […]

As we celebrate the end of another record-breaking year at LearnUpon, we wish you and your loved ones a happy and peaceful Christmas. 2015 was a special year for us, as we hope it was for you. The LearnUpon team more than doubled in size. We acquired hundreds of customers and expanded into new territories. We launched dozens of improvements and added twenty features to our LMS. We’d like to thank all of our customers and friends, old and now, for the invaluable contribution you’ve made to driving our mutual growth. Here’s a look back at some of the features, friends, customers and conferences we made this year. We can’t wait to do more and travel even further in 2016!   Customers We welcomed over 250 new customers in 2015, including: Citrix Skibo Technologies Greenline Conversations Azalea Health EpiSAFE Benestream General Cable Deliveroo Adeva Training & Consulting LearnUpon now serves over 450 customers, more than double the 200 announced in September 2014. Growth has kept the team busy. Over 400,000 users and 1.3 million course enrollments were created in our LMS in 2015. $2.1 million in course sales were sold through our eCommerce platform. LearnUpon’s Customer Success team made 300 calls and the Marketing team published 60 blog posts. Thanks for being a part of it! Countries We continued our global expansion in 2015. We opened our first office in Australia and welcomed our first customer in Latin America. Our LMS currently has more than 2 million active users in 15 countries. You can now use LearnUpon in Brazilian Portuguese, in addition to the existing English, Dutch, French, German, and Spanish versions. We already have some exciting travel plans scheduled for 2016, with the opening of a US office, and the expansion of our presences in Australia and Belgrade. Team LearnUpon added 15 new team members this year, across Customer Support, Customer Success, UX/UI, Engineering, and Marketing. The team is split between our offices in Dublin, Belgrade, and Sydney. And the team continues to grow, with 4 new hires ready to start in January 2016. If you’d like to work for LearnUpon, send us a copy of your CV and a brief description of your interest. We’ll be on the lookout for even more Customer Support, Business Development, Engineering and Customer Success team members in early 2016.   Features This year, we focused on our goals of delivering the best customer support in the industry and releasing features that make users go "Wow!" We worked with real customer feedback and our vision of a better LMS to release some of our most-loved features to date, including: Salesforce integration iOS app Tin Can support Association-specific features ILT calendars Webhooks We’re already hard at work on the next round of releases. Stay tuned, there’s lots more coming soon!   Awards 2015 proved to be another award-winning year at LearnUpon. We kicked off the year in style, when Craig Weiss named us the best SMB LMS in the world. In April, we scooped three Blacknight SME Awards for Customer Focus, B2B Export, and the overall Grand Prix award. In September, our LMS was named in TrainingIndustry.com’s Learning Portals Watch List. And we ended the year on a winning note, with a Silver Award in the Best Advance in Learning Management Technology from Brandon Hall.   Conferences Our globe-trotting continued, as we somehow found time to exhibit at 6 eLearning conferences. Highlights included our first Associations conference with ASAE 2015 and our first exhibition at DevLearn, the world of eLearning’s biggest event. You can catch us in person at our first conference of 2016 - Learning Technologies in London next February.   That’s it from us for 2015! We look forward to sharing the next round of releases and updates with you very soon.   Want to read more? Sign up to get our latest posts! The post Merry Christmas from the team at LearnUpon appeared first on LearnUpon.

eLearning scenarios help your employees not only develop useful skill sets and improve their weak points, but also apply training knowledge to their work environment. In this article, I will further explain why designing effective eLearning scenarios is important, what are the elements you should focus on while developing them, and 7 tips on how to create fully engaging and immersive scenarios for eLearning. Your organization’s goal is to increase productivity of both your employees and your company, and most of the training methods you implement have this exact goal: To help your workforce develop their skills and apply new knowledge. Scenario based learning is a great training means to achieve this, as it is ideal for: Identifying issues. Stimulating action. Improving analytical thinking skills. Encouraging problem-solving. Formulating strategies. Generating sensitivity to change. Improving soft skills such as selling and communication. Practicing newly acquired skills in a safe context. Creating a good eLearning scenario is not an easy task. For this learning tool to be truly effective, you need to ensure that: It is relevant to your audience. It has clear learning goals and objectives. It presents a realistic situation. Its characters are modeled after real people. It is well constructed, accurate, logical, focused, sequenced and so on. But there is a lot more to building an effective scenario learning strategy. In this article, I’ll share 7 valuable tips that will help you create great eLearning scenarios and make absolutely sure that your employees not only acquire and retain the knowledge you are offering, but also know exactly how to apply it in their real work environments to increase your company’s productivity. 1) Identify your audience’s needs. Analyzing your audience is a great starting point for developing your eLearning scenario. Who are they? What are their educational and professional backgrounds? What motivates them to do their work? What problems do they face on a daily basis in their work environment? What skills do they need to develop? What are their learning preferences? The more you know about your corporate learners, the easier it will be to create an eLearning scenario that engages them and relates to them. 2) Make use of your learning goals. Building around your learning objectives is essential for every online training method, but there is a key reason for using them in your eLearning scenario: To create the situation around these learning objectives, that is to create your eLearning scenario’s storyline. Identifying what you want your online learners to achieve will help you identify the challenging situation or event and build around it and towards the learning outcome. For instance, if you want to develop your employees’ communication skills, a scene portraying the negative consequences of miscommunication mishaps in a humorous context can be a great idea. 3) Keep it real. Simply put, an unrealistic eLearning scenario is completely useless. It might be entertaining, sure, but it wouldn’t help your employees learn. An eLearning scenario tied to real world situations will fully engage your employees, as they will be able to relate it to the real issues they face in their work environment. Irrelevant situations will just distract them, whereas eLearning scenario events that resemble reality will help them focus on learning how to overcome their problems and explore alternative solutions. Furthermore, a realistic situation makes the training process less formal; therefore it becomes easier for your employees to emotionally connect with the eLearning content, which, of course, enhances the whole eLearning experience. 4) Create appropriate characters. In addition to the previous tip, for your eLearning scenarios to be as realistic as possible you need to include relatable characters. Your employees will lose interest if the "heroes" of the story look nothing like their real colleagues, managers, and bosses. So make sure that your eLearning scenario characters, whether professional actors or avatars, resemble people who could actually work in your company. Extra tip: Pay special attention to your characters’ facial expressions, as appropriate facial expressions can enhance a realistic effect. Consider even changing the facial expressions of you character everytime your employees make a decision! 5) Focus on interactivity. As you already know, interactivity increases your audience’s engagement levels, as it is the exact opposite of a passive learning experience. Most importantly, it helps turn theory into action; interactions allow your learners to choose alternative paths, make decisions, and see the impact of those decisions. Consider creating a series of questions the answers of which lead the eLearning scenario characters to different choices; this way, you will create a dialogue between your audience and the situation and the eLearning experience will become more engaging and immersive. 6) Challenge your audience. Challenging your learners is not as easy as it sounds; you need to find the balance between making the eLearning experience neither too easy as to insult the intelligence of your audience and nor as complicated as to frustrate them. As long as you know for whom you are creating the eLearning scenario, you will be able to determine whether the situations you have created are too boring or too complex. Consider presenting the situation and not giving the solution right away; instead, provide useful clues that will trigger your employees’ interest and inspire them to work to solve the problem. Furthermore, create a challenging context in which every action your audience makes will have different consequences; this way, they will be able to learn from their mistakes in a safe environment while developing their critical thinking skills. 7) Offer feedback. Finally, as in every learning method you follow, you should never forget to give feedback. A great way to do this is by integrating a game into your eLearning scenario and using a rewards system as a discrete but effective feedback mechanism. Having scores and levels of achievement have been proven effective techniques to increase both motivation and engagement. Keep in mind that your learners need to know why they failed so that they won’t repeat the same mistakes in the future; so perhaps you will need to gather all failing points of the eLearning scenario as an interesting material for an online discussion later on. Now that you know how to create effective eLearning scenario experiences, you may be interested in learning more about a specific kind of eLearning scenarios: Branching scenarios. Read the article Effective Branching Scenarios In eLearning: 5 Tips For eLearning Professionals and find 5 tips for eLearning branching scenarios that you can use to provide your learners with the critical thinking and problem solving skills they need to achieve their goals in their personal and professional lives. The post How To Design Effective eLearning Scenarios appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

When it comes to using gamification in learning to change behavior, employee-facing programs have a decided advantage over external, consumer-facing undertakings. Where consumer-facing gamification must compete with a multitude of daily distractions for the attention of consumers, employee-facing programs have an established audience who will behave in predictable ways every day. In some senses, corporate gamification also promises a bigger return on investment. If employees can be better motivated to complete tasks, improve their skills through professional development, and support other employees, then a business stands a much better chance of flourishing due to its focused workforce. Consequently, the gamification of learning for the purpose of motivating employees (and employee motivation in general) has become a far more discussed topic than using game elements to motivate consumers. So how, specifically, should you deploy game elements to level up the engagement of your workforce? First, you must identify what set of behaviors you would like to change, and then set up goals to track the impact of gamification on those behaviors. Once you’ve outlined your strategy, consider how complex you would like the gamification system to be. In theory, gamification is an incredibly broad term, and it doesn’t always deal specifically with software. However, for the purposes of the employer, three tiers of corporate gamification can be identified, each with varying levels of complexity, different use cases, and distinct elements. Level 1: Progress-Based Gamification in Corporate Training Progress is one of the most motivating elements of gameplay. As a player completes tasks in a game world, some type of progress is signified, which in turn encourages more play. Progress is a similarly powerful motivator in the business world, though its use in employee gamification is narrower than in full-fledged video games (as is every game element). Most often, gamification that plays on progress to motivate employees takes the form of software interface elements, such as points, badges, and progress bars. When an employee accrues points for completing a task, they feel a sense of progress, as if their manager were standing over them patting them on the back. Another example would be in eLearning, where employees complete a series of courses and make progress toward a conclusion. In this context, a sense of progress is very important; it’s all too easy to lose interest or get discouraged because the training courses are too extensive. Here, progress bars are effective to visualize progress throughout the curriculum, or badges are useful for signifying accomplishments. Progress is used in more complex forms of gamification as well, but this type of interface-based gamification is best used to motivate less creative work, like completing paperwork or a series of educational modules. These tasks strain the attention because they can become monotonous. Gamification helps keep the experience enjoyable. Level 2: Social-Based Gamified Learning As evidenced by the massive communities online games like "Halo" and "League of Legends" command, games have a tremendous ability to bring people together. And the motivational appeal of community, recognition, and autonomy is not diminished when taken out of a game context. Social media is the most prominent example of this form of gamification. The autonomy users have to publish nearly anything and everything engenders a great sense of motivation among users, as does the recognition they receive when they post something their community finds popular. Again, the proof for this type of gamification can be found in the worldwide user-base for the most prominent social networks. So it’s no surprise the popularity of enterprise social networks is on the rise. By creating an organization-wide community on these platforms, employers give their workforce a place to interact with coworkers like they would with friends outside the office. While this will likely result in an uptick in morale, the real business case for such gamification is made in terms of collaboration. The limitations of email for employee collaboration are well known, and an effective internal social network will supply plenty of tools to communicate and share information — all while reinforcing the collaborative behavior with the tried and true game elements of recognition and autonomy. Level 3: Full-Fledged Games The final tier of employee gamification is actually full fledged games, like the Army uses to train soldiers or the University of Washington used to help scientists fold digital versions of proteins to better understand their structure. Here, the line between gamification and games blurs, which can lead to a lot of semantic jostling — very little of which is productive or useful to the vast majority of professionals tasked with improving the motivation of their peers or employees. What’s important to know about a custom-built gamification platform is that it requires significant resources but also promises spectacular rewards. For example, Fold-It, the game developed by the University of Washington, boasted contributions by over 50,000 players, which eventually lead to significant progress in understanding certain protein structures. *** If you think an immersive gamification LMS would work for your organization, be sure to match it up to a strong business case. Truthfully, most employee-facing gamification will fall into (or combine) the first two categories. Though they are perhaps less exciting than a complex interactive game, the staple game elements of progress, recognition, and community are still effective methods for motivating employees. Use them wisely, and you’ll be well on your way to raising the engagement level of your workforce. Author Bio Aleksandr Peterson is a technology analyst at TechnologyAdvice. He covers marketing automation, CRMs, project management, human resources, and other emerging business technology. Connect with him on LinkedIn. The post The 3 Tiers of Employee Gamification appeared first on TalentLMS Blog.

This year brought the Choose2Matter team so many wonderful experiences. We traveled across the country, as far west as Bellevue, WA, and as far east as East Greenwich, RI. Above all, we learned that when […] The post #Choose2Matter 2015 Recap appeared first on Angela Maiers.

Is it better to manage or lead your employees? It could be said that it is best to have a bit of both, but most employees find it more effective to be led rather than managed. While many business leaders see the wisdom in this concept, most fail to apply it to their employees' training needs.    

Santa makes it seem so easy! We could all use a manufacturing system staffed by mysterious beings who happily create fantastic quantities of merchandise. Or a global distribution system that accurately sorts out packages according to location, desire and moral rectitude. Or how about an on-time, high-speed delivery vehicle with apparently unlimited capacity, powered by 8 flying creatures (led by an animal with a searchlight for a snout)? To this writer, the real fantasy lies in the fact that everyone already knows exactly what to do when the holiday rush kicks in and when to do it, with no mention of training. Reality Check… The appearance of Santa, the elves, the sleigh and the flying reindeer means we are faced with what we know as the holiday rush. And the truth is that, for retailers and other related industries, there’s a lot at stake. The holiday season is the busiest — read "most stressful" — few months of the year. In some cases, this short, frenzied time is what will determine the profitability — and even the ongoing existence — of a company. Organizations hire seasonal staff in large numbers. Full- or part-time staff, who are already committed to their own jobs, are often pulling double-duty as they train a very temporary workforce in the rush to keep up with business. And demand, supply and distribution chains can be subject to changes faster than you can say "Happy Holidays," adding stress to a system already stretched to the max. For instance, think of how quickly the weather changes in the Northern Hemisphere, and imagine the havoc a bad weather system can wreak on shipping and distribution. And when a problem occurs, it can (pardon the pun) really snowball. So what does eLearning have to do with the holiday rush? Quite a bit, as it turns out. eLearning is especially good for effectively and rapidly getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time. Without proper training, small hiccups in the chain can quickly cause very large impacts. Because eLearning equips people to deal effectively with the tasks at hand, it can help reduce the impact that unexpected events or changes can have on a taxed system. eLearning may not be Santa Claus. But read on, and you’ll see how you and your employees can experience the magic of being well-prepared for yourselves. You see, Santa, if nothing else, is always prepared. And know-how is a huge portion of the ongoing attempt to be ready for anything that can come up. Consider the value of accurate and relevant knowledge, wrapped in attractive and easily-accessible packages, delivered to designated people, at precisely the time and place it’s needed. And yes, there may even be cookies involved (the internet kind, not the kind that you have with milk and leave by the fireplace for a jolly visitor in red). Take a look at these 5 features of eLearning that can — please pardon the clichè — help to make your holiday season brighter. eLearning breaks knowledge into manageable, bite-sized morsels of information. learners can focus on, and retrieve the information that is relevant to the need at hand. retention of information is much higher when the information is presented in smaller packets, rather than large chunks, of learning. at a time when time and energy are at a premium, learning activities are incorporated into productivity and less time is taken away from production activities. eLearning makes the information accessible, and the organization can control the level of accessibility. learners can obtain the necessary information in a variety of ways, including on their own mobile devices. time spent away from important tasks is minimized, since pertinent information is available on-the-spot. having information available electronically generates less paper waste, saving resources and ultimately, money.. important, time- or security-sensitive documents are less at risk of loss or damage.   The Flexibility of eLearning allows you to keep the content relevant. employees can keep up with the rapidly changing information regarding manufacturing, distribution and sales activities. having the most updated information provides security and confidence for organization representatives and employees as well as customers and clients. You can standardize the information and keep it consistent. accurate and consistent informations reduces errors, and frees up resources. issues and conflicts can be resolved more efficiently and effectively, and with velocity. employees are not left to "guess" the right answer, and customers receive elevated levels of service. eLearning keeps your learners engaged, and their progress is trackable. t’is the season to be easily distracted; an engaged learner retains knowledge more reliably. supervisory and management staff have a better understanding regarding which of their employees are best equipped to deal with the demands of the season and can staff positions accordingly. Get a jump start on next year. In the Christmas tradition, it takes a year of being "nice" to minimize a meltdown in morale during the holidays. For retail and related businesses, being "nice" equates to being prepared. And it’s never too early to start. It’s during the crunch-time of the holidays that the previous months of preparation — including training — become particularly meaningful. In addition, a large percentage of the people working in your organization may be seasonal staff, who may not have the benefit of experience. They may also lack an existing knowledge or relationship to your organization’s policies and procedures. Creating an eLearning course that specifically addresses the necessary aspects of daily operations provides benefits for the seasonal and regular employees alike, as well as the clients and customers who may come into contact with those employees. It’s a good idea to incorporate eLearning into your training and development activities. It’s a really great idea to plan for your next holiday season ahead of time. And by "ahead of time" we mean "as soon as possible." It’s never too early to plan for the holiday rush. Consider harnessing the power of eLearning for the holiday rush of 2016 and beyond. You could be better prepared to handle the increased demands on your employees and on your organization. At the same time, your staff will thank you for empowering them to be effective. Happy Holidays from the staff at KMI Learning! If you’d like to find out how we can support you in preparing for the demands of the holiday season, contact us at info@kmilearning.com The post Wouldn’t it be nice if the holiday rush could be handled in a Santa-esque manner? appeared first on KMI Learning.

We discuss the trends and issues we observed during the weeks of December 8-20 as we flipped resources into our Flipboard magazine (http://bit.ly/trendsandissues). We have four trends that we discuss. VR/AR was again a trend we observed-one that has been a trend for most of 2015. The second trend was online learning. There were a […] Tags:   Del.icio.us Facebook TweetThis Digg StumbleUpon Comments:  0 (Zero), Be the first to leave a reply!Copyright © Trends & Issues [Episode 53 Trends for December 8-20 VR, Online Learning, Security Issues & Software Data Breaches, and Chromebooks], All Right Reserved. 2015.

In the process of transforming a learning culture within a business organization, it is imperative that we use what we know about the way adults learn and how that translates into effective performance when applied in an online training environment. The key goal is to ensure engagement of employees in a given task not by programming every step that they are to take but providing latitude for them to collaborate with other learners in meaningful ways. This also lays the ground work for the development of an innovative mindset among learners.John Seely Brown, an innovation expert made a very insightful statement when he stated:"Organizations need to find the 'edge dwellers,' and 'pull them together and give them voice.' Edge dwellers are the change agents within an organization. They need to be given permission to experiment and push boundaries and they need to be provided with tools to have at their disposal, such as social media."However, in order for this type of engagement to be enriching for an organization, there needs to be a focus on effective design thinking when designing irresistibly engaging learning experiences. To aid this thinking, three important elements need to be in place which are:Using Kolb's Theory as a basis which postulates four main learning styles: Converger, Diverger, Assimilator and Accomodator, we need to go further and modify it by applying what new research from the field of Cognitive Neuro-Science tells us about how adults engage in their learning when presented by an immersive E-Learning environment.A clearly defined purpose for learning and engaging in the learning experience. Designing a group of learning experiences for adult learners that makes explicitly clear the reason, purpose, and usefulness of the subject matter is a necessary component in reaching adult learners.A format or facilitation process that encourages participants to share their knowledge and experience freely. It is this very point that the concept of the Global Corporate Trainer, Instructional Designers and the Learning Principles Educator(or Expert) Network is offered as a choice with exciting potential to prosper business organizations and "jump start" innovation.The Global Corporate Trainer, ID and LPE Network: What is its purpose and how does it work?   Some of the problems that business organizations have experienced in the past and continue to experience in some organizations can be summarized as follows:When new skillsets are needed to be passed on to employees, engagement during the sessions might peak but then after the sessions are long over, little, measurable improvement in performance is seen. Why did the commitment to applying learning on a regular basis disappear?A new and potentially innovative change is proposed and supported at the time but then is left to sit and gather dust for a variety of reasons ranging from necessary budget cuts to potential loss of jobs if the innovation is pursued. When change is necessary, why are so many roadblocks erected to following through without even suggesting hybrid modifications or viable alternatives? Why do potentially innovative approaches suffer the "paralysis by analysis" effect? The development of the proposed network provides a needed "sandbox for innovation" where innovative ideas and effective, irresistibly engaging learning experiences may be developed through open collaboration not only with the noted business organization's trainers, ID's and LPE's but also with the same types of personnel from other business organizations who share common interests. The essential key to understanding the Global Learning Hubs and adjoining networks such as this one is to take a close look at the collaborative pathways that join them and think about this as a digital symbiotic relationship. This should make sense if we look at business organizations as living organisms. The benefits of such a concept would be as follows:Costs for development are shared with other business organizations who have common interests and therefore the ROI is also shared according to a mutually agreed upon formula. In concept this is similar to the trade pact groups that already exist in today's world.Open innovation can take root here as organizations involved would also have equal access to the other networks in the Global Learning Portal through collaborative pathways as shown in the diagram. Collaborating in this non-threatening environment allows for the testing of new ideas before they are brought back to the individual business organizations.The learning culture of the business organizations improves as a result of the constant feedback from the Global E-Learning Hub which acts as a communication network between the adjoining collaborative networks and the individual business organizations. There is the potential for the sharing of knowledge among the 6 distinct Learning Portals. This would be especially important in collaborating to help improve infrastructure upgrading that is needed for developing countries to effectively participate in the global E-Learning enterprise.There is a great potential to help many nations improve the quality of life for their inhabitants and especially for new generations that are being born, through the means of effective education. Due to the expansive global reach of the world wide web, we can help many nations to empower their children to be agents of change within their societies. We need to do this to counter the negative forces within many societies that would deny hope to new generations of ever conquering disease, poverty, war and political corruption. Remember that dictators maintain their power by keeping their people ignorant and in fear. [Remember, if you feel that the message of this post should be shared over social media, share it!] Next...Designing Effective Interactions For E-Learning

In a world where we have access to highly advanced, fast moving technologies, learners do not have the time or inclination to sit down in a classroom and passively listen to what a teacher has to say. For this reason, corporate training is not as effective or influential as it once was. But before businesses throw in the training towel altogether, they should consider adopting an alternative approach, which embraces technology rather than shunning it. While numerous options are on the table, microlearning is proving to be the training technique of choice among modern day learners. In addition to providing learners with a solution that fits into their busy lives, offers a great deal of flexibility and the ultimate in interactivity, microlearning also affords several advantages for businesses too. It cuts down development costs, reduces time-to-competence, provides more flexibility when it comes to creating learning materials and results in greater knowledge retention. But in spite of these benefits, the training possibilities that microlearning can bring are not being fully realised by some businesses. However, the obstacles that stand in the way of implementation are actually rather easy to overcome.   Microlearning recap As opposed to prolonged training programs, microlearning splits up teaching into more manageable, bite-sized chunks. These focused groups of activities are much quicker to complete and easier to consume. Even so, this doesn’t mean to say you can splice up your current formal training activities to realise the rewards of microlearning, as it requires a different framework. On top of this, microlearning isn’t about thrusting complete responsibility onto your learners to fend for themselves. Although there is the opportunity to use social learning tools and online resources as part of microlearning, it needs to be within a coherent and considered structure that works alongside a curated selection of content.   The science behind microlearning In 1956, psychologist George A. Miller conducted the first piece of research that proved we learn more effectively in short bursts rather than long sessions. He explained that our short-term memories could only hold seven "chunks" of information, although recent MRI research suggests this is closer to four. Miller also demonstrated that when knowledge is broken down into smaller pieces, it could help with comprehension. However, long before Miller made this discovery, another psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus made the distinction between short- and long-term memory. His work on the forgetting curve and spacing effect highlighted why learning solutions needed to include reinforcement methods and regular practice spread out over time to avoid fatigue and consolidate memory.  Both of these psychologists provided the building blocks for microlearning, which breaks down lengthy teaching into small chunks in a variety of formats. When combined with adequate spacing and the repetition of content, learners can acquire knowledge with greater comprehension. It also gets rid of unnecessary superfluous information and concentrates on essential topics instead. This plays into the hands of what modern day learner’s want. Technology allows for formats that learners are comfortable with, while spacing and repetition enables training to take place at a suitable time. But the virtues of microlearning extend to training providers too, not just the individual.   Additional advantages of microlearning Cheap to introduce Seeing as microlearning is concerned with small chunks of content, training becomes much cheaper to create and introduce. Any changes or updates that need to be made don’t require much money either. Quicker to implement Microlearning content and materials can be produced and implemented incredibly quickly. There is no need for content development, as learning designers can easily curate existing materials. More agility If the training you need to give staff is constantly changing, microlearning holds the answer. It allows you to deliver updated content instantly and experiment with different approaches for a more agile business. More mobile Most microlearning solutions are compatible with mobile devices, enabling individuals to complete their training at a time and place that suits them, from the daily commute to at home after work.   Overcoming the obstacles of microlearning For many, adopting a microlearning approach instead of sticking with traditional training techniques can seem a little daunting. Irrespective of the perks it can provide, several organisations believe they will lose control over their training activity. After all, if there is no dedicated environment to develop and deliver microlearning, how can you manage and monitor training or find out whether employees are progressing or not? Furthermore, the learners themselves might not know what, when, and how they should be interacting with training. However, modern technology holds the key. Microlearning training providers like Wranx have developed platforms that can be adapted by any organisation, yet retain a rigid framework for control over content and activity. Learners known that training takes place here, but can also reach out for support whenever it is required. Our microlearning platform also features reporting tools to manage content and insightful analytics to monitor progress. Learning materials can then be changed and updated according to each individual’s requirements. As Miller and Ebbinghaus alluded to, learning that happens in small chunks also needs to be diverse. But our offering features formats such as quizzes and techniques like gamification to keep learners interested in what is being taught. Therefore, the obstacles that sit in front of microlearning adoption aren’t even that substantial when you know about the solution.   Making the switch to microlearning With the ability to reduce time and costs as well as increase engagement and memory retention among employees, microlearning can have a significant impact on your organisation and its overall objectives. However, you must drop any preconceived ideas that training is an independent exercise, which employees only need to experience once. For microlearning to work, it is essential you realise that training must be an ongoing activity. Thankfully, technology is on hand to facilitate this shift, which learners are all too happy to accept. As Deloitte explains in its 2015 Global Human Capital Trends report: "Learning today has become a business-critical priority for increasing skills, improving the leadership pipeline, and enhancing employee engagement. As the corporate learning market undergoes a digital transformation, this is the year to assess your current learning environment and implement a new vision to build a corporate learning experience that touches every employee in a significant way." Share this post with your own audience

2015 has been a great year for workforce gamification. It was a year of great changes - a movement away from performance appraisals into "live" employee coaching, a year where workforce gamification became more mainstream and more enmeshed with performance and learning.  Writing a blog depends on user feedback about what’s interesting (and what isn’t), so without further ado, we wanted to share with you our most popular 2015 gamification articles: 1. The Ten Surprising Benefits of Gamification This one is the the most popular post in 2015. the post discusses the lesser-known benefits of gamification. Instead of discussion "fun" and "games" or point, badges and leaderboards, the article examines the real benefits of gamificaiton: transparency, feedback, recognition and on-the-job mastery. The post also discussed the topic of choice and autonomy at work. 2. Will 80% of Gamification Projects Fail? Interestingly, our second most popular post this year looked at an infamous part of our industry’s history and asked - Will 80% of gamification projects fail?, referring to Gartner’s 2012 gamification forecast. In this post we looked back at this famous quote and explained what had changed in the industry since the report had been published. What really changed was the understanding of what gamification at work is really about - from feedback, to culture and a "script for work" - and it seems that Gartner actually got gamification right in 2012. 3. Gamification for Employee Onboarding The third post on this list had to do with a very specific topic - onboarding. The post discusses complementing talent acquisition with onboarding processes. The first days at a new workplace are crucial for employees to feel comfortable, and may very well define their productivity levels in the future. Gamification is a great solution for this, because it enables employees to start at a certain ‘beginner level’ and develop their capabilities and confidence up from there. I also spoke about how gamification can be used for elearning during the onboarding process, and how this can be utilized to analyze and monitor the new employee’s progress. 4. 5 Sales Gamification Leaderboard Mistakes The next post in our list is about one of my favorite topics - leaderboards. The article maps  five common ways in which leaderboards are done wrong, and specifically sales leaderboards. These include Tracking the wrong benchmarks; Endorsing the wrong behaviors; Overlooking the middle 60%; Making a disengaging leaderboard; and Forgetting teams In short: leaderboards are a great tool. Use them wisely and remember that sometimes competing against your own benchmark works better. 4. Performance Management Doesn’t Work. What does? This post about performance management was written because 2015 was a landmark year for this practice. Why? because  some of the world’s biggest organizations got rid of the traditional performance review. This change actually reflects the strengths of performance gamification: timely feedback and an objective understanding of performance and a move away from employee post-facto evaluation into proactive employee development. 5. Gamification and Change Management All companies change. In our world, companies are actually changing much faster than they used to. That’s why it is important to manage change, and gamification is a great tool to do so.  This post was about how Gamification and change management work together - showing what behaviors are changing, what the expectations are and measuring and "tuning" the actual change. This video has Yahoo’s former VP customer experience discuss the same topic. 6. Team vs Individual Incentives This post is about team vs individual incentives, transparency, and how gamification is the easiest way to achieve and maintain transparency in organizations. There is some fascinating research on the subject of individual vs team incentives and productivity - guess which works better?. Humans crave social gratitude and acceptance, and care about how they are percevied by others. Yet, for team incentives to work and for these psychological factors to be able to come in to play transparency is needed. In other words, only when employees know what others in the organization are doing and know that their own work will be visible to others, do they care how they are perceived and compare themselves to their peers. Achieving transparency in any organization is an extremely difficult task, and this is where gamification can play an important role. 7. Gamification Analytics Matter Analytics are beginning to play an important role in HR technology, and gamification analytics are a prime example. We think it’s crucial to know not only how your game is doing but also, where you are losing people, what raises engagement with the platform and what makes your users want to come back to platform time and again. The next level is managerial analytics and providing the tools for the future of "people analytics". 8. Move the Middle Here, I wrote about working with the middle 60%. So many employers are focused on the performance of either their best employees ("they’re doing so well! How do I keep this going?"), or on their worst performers ("If only I could get them to do a little better…"), but actually most of the potential for a productivity jump is hidden within the middle ranks.  In other words, a manager who really want to improve her organization, should be thinking about how to move her middle performers up in the class of "good" performers and by this have the biggest effect on the company. In order to achieve this, employers need to think about - capabilities and motivation. An employee needs to acquire new capabilities that will make her better at what she does and more productive. At the same time, if this employee has all the capabilities in the world, yet still isn’t motivated, these capabilities won’t come in to play and productivity won’t change. Gamification is a great way to marry capabilities and motivation. 9. How Gamification Works This post is actually an inforgraphic about how gamification is implemented, accessible here. It actually works quite nicely with this white paper on best practices for gamification project management. 10. Best Guide: Elearning and Enterprise Gamification Of all our guides, this guide was the most downloaded this year. Maybe because it is driven by an important insight - almost every gamification project is an excellent candidate for elearning integration. So, those were the most popular posts of 2015. We’ve already got some great things in the works for 2016 and we can’t wait to share them with you. Keep posted and enjoy the holidays!  

One of my favorite moments from my pre-service days was when my college professor (a white woman) pulled me aside to tell me what my life would be like as a black teacher. She said… "Rafranz…I need you to know that you are black. You need to know that this means that you don’t get to be average. You don’t get a mediocre day. You have to be great…always. You need to know this. You need to know that things are different for you." This was a lesson that my mother had already ingrained within my spirit but hearing it from Dr. Huse, the woman who physically brought Dr. Evelyn Granville (2nd black woman to earn a doctorate in math and noted NASA Computer Scientist) into our lives, resonated on a level that my mother didn’t teach. Our connection to Granville meant hearing first hand accounts of our incoming struggle while teaching black. It is a thought that lives within me today and everyday. I’m glad that it does. We were prepared for this life in every way possible…content, culture, leadership and tech. Through a multi-year participation in a federally funded, Teacher Quality grant program where we were developed to be leaders, opportunities for growth were there if we worked to grab them.  My pathway into this tech world was as simple as understanding how to manipulate a device and engage kids in ways that most feared. I will be forever grateful to Dr. Huse for making sure that fear had no place in our classrooms. Even as doors continued to open in the world of teacher technology training, there was something undeniable about the need for my face in this space. When you teach enough district trainings with severely limited faces of color in the crowd…you get it. You just do. After each training, the black teachers, as few as they were…smiling ear to ear whether they understood the tech or not, would hang back just to say… "Thank you for being here and doing us proud." Or "We never thought that one of us would be doing this." The second statement kills me to this day as it STILL happens far too much! It’s weird but I never felt a lack of black as the teacher "leading" until I stepped foot into a technology conference and saw not one face like my own…thousands of people and not one. I never saw a lack of women until I started to meet more tech directors and they were not women nor were they of color. Even as the title of this job has expanded to include my own (digital learning and professional development)…the scarcity of people of color in tech/digital leadership is still a fact…one that I did not see until I was I was able to see. In the years leading to this point in time in my career…of all of the barriers broken, spaces open and opportunities that are still quite unreal, it must be said that the lack of representation is pretty appalling…still. You can’t tell me that tech leadership isn’t on the radar at all for educators of color. (It is and I am connected to quite a few) That’s just like saying that the missing women, black and brown voices in the technology world are missing because WE aren’t applying. Perhaps we should be in a space where we SEE, hear and honor their work just as much as we honor those with "names", paid networks & jobs that aren’t actually in schools. One can hope, right? Earlier tonight, I connected with a new voice of color in this space and he said something that struck a nerve. He said…"I just want to be invited to places like ISTE like you and then I know that I would have made it." I wrote back… "ISTE didn’t invite me. That door was forced open…" That door is open because the one thing that you learn when you feel that you are the ONLY one is that if you look deep enough, that is never the case. I may not be in the classroom anymore but Dr. Huse’s advice still very much applies. There are no "off" days. There is work that must be done…students to empower, teachers to inspire and plenty of people depending on a certain level of work to be done in the space where it matters most. Like a badge of honor, I wear my skin with pride and applaud the journey to now…one that was never alone…even when I thought that I was. Thankful for this.

Studies report that processes for hiring, developing people, and conducting performance management are seriously flawed.