Some people see online learning as an uncool cousin. You know, the kind that wears socks with his sandals, gets his dinner down his Tshirt and cracks the lamest jokes. Others consider it to be like a scary aunt - the one that pinches your cheek just that bit too hard and leaves lipstick smears on your forehead. We’re here to tell you that online learning is neither lame nor terrifying. Once you get to know it, it’s pretty cool and exciting. Done right, online learning is like the new kid in class that everyone wants to get to know. They’re unique, interesting and so much cooler than all your other classmates that you’ve known for years. Here’s what makes online learning that much better than regular, boring, dusty-textbook-and-strict-teacher learning: Online learning makes learning fun again. There is so much awesome technology available to us that eLearning units become more elaborate and exciting, user experience is that much smoother and tailored, and online Learning Management Systems are more like a playground where learners can get together than a graveyard where they keep to themselves and have a pretty rotten time. Online learning is super-duper fun because it’s gamified - take our Academy Platform LMS, for example. We’ve added a huge heap of gamification to make the experience of logging on, learning, taking tests and developing knowledge more enjoyable for learners. Badges create a sudden explosion of joy in learners’ hearts; points stack up to create more and more excitement; learners ‘level up’ at just the right time to a) keep them engaged and motivated by showing their hard work is paying off and b) encourage them to push harder for the next ‘level’. Even the leaderboards on our Gamified Social Academy Platform add an element of fun to the proceedings. How often during a classroom event can you monitor who is doing best? Who is chasing whom off the top spot? Who is the expert at this particular subject? Who is trying hardest, who is putting in the extra hours and who needs a bit of extra encouragement to make the grade? Another benefit of online learning - there are too many to mention right now! - is that nowadays it doesn’t have to be lonely. It used to be that Learning Management Systems were simply ships for delivering eLearning modules. Learners would hop aboard, take the eLearning unit and then hop back off. They wouldn’t see anyone else; wouldn’t get to share their excitement at learning new things or collaborate on projects. How sad! Now, though, online learning is much more social. Our Academy is a very friendly place; we just love getting learners together, enabling them to chat about the learning content, discover new topics that interest them, work out tricky subjects between themselves and share interesting findings. And the best bit? We’ve gamified the social aspects of online learning, too - the more learners chat and collaborate, the more points they get; the more they advise other learners, the higher up the ‘Top Contributors’ leaderboard they climb to be crowned Mr (or Miss) Clever Clogs. Our Academy Platform LMS is a seriously great place to hang out. Let us show you - RSVP to the Academy Webinar Tour and see what a fun Learning Management System looks like!  

What is an LMS? We know that the world of online learning can be a bit confusing sometimes. That’s why we’ve put together this article as a kind of introduction into Learning Management Systems. We hope you find it helpful! Don’t forget, you can always drop us an email or use the comment box below if you have any further questions. Firstly, you can think of a Learning Management System as an electronic school. In a school, you enrol students, conduct classes, track attendance, administer tests and exams, and provide certificates when learners have passed the syllabus. And whaddya know, that’s exactly what you do with an LMS, only electronically! You can use your Learning Management System to do everything you would in a school environment, plus more: Add your employees as ‘Learners’ (aka enrol them in school) Assign learners to groups (aka put them in classes) Add eLearning units (aka set your curriculum) Set learners or groups their learning tasks (aka syllabus) Create and manage classroom training events too (aka a normal school day) Monitor and report on learners’ progress (aka the letter your mum gets if you skip too many classes!) Assessments and tests (aka exams) Qualifications (aka certificates, graduation ceremony) ‘Experts’ area (aka one-on-one teaching) Gamification (aka a gold star for being awesome) Social learning ‘Insights Area’ (aka extra study sessions in the library or afterschool club) Why should I bother with a Learning Management System? An LMS should be as integral to your business as word processing or spreadsheet software. This is because a Learning Management System: Provides a one-stop portal for managing training in your company Sets clear expectations for the learning culture within the organisation Defines the company’s expectations on work ethics Offers various reporting features for full visibility on the training activities Enforces accountability through reporting by role, function, geographic territory Cuts costs of training administration enormously Encourages social learning and on-the-job training, which together make up where 90% of our knowledge comes from What will the LMS allow me to do that I can’t already? Actually, if you don’t already have a Learning Management System, you can still do most of what the LMS does… It’ll just take you longer, be more expensive, and won’t be as effective. Think about the difference between digging a hole using a spade or using a bulldozer. The LMS is your bulldozer. It can: Easily report on and measure the progress of learners, individually and as groups Provide a scalable way of reporting on eLearning and other training Survey employees to assess engagement and performance Provide and report on induction and compliance training What are the core functionalities of an LMS? Typical functionality within a standard LMS includes: Full reporting on training activity and progress against goals Email notification and alerts (allows managers or trainers to send training notifications, which are sent to the users’ email address and appear on their learning dashboard when they log on to the learning portal). Content management to manage SCORM-compliant eLearning Tests, assessments, surveys - creation of limitless tests, assessments and surveys to understand staff competence. Typically this is used to roll out organisational competencies and raise standards of performance Reporting suite including graphical dashboards showing what users are doing when and where Login areas of Users, Managers and Admins Multiple hierarchies available so that managers only see their teams Badges, country leader boards Experts area Insights (social learning) area How will it save money and deliver improved training results? A Learning Management System is a fantastic tool that will save your company money and secure a really great return on investment by: Knocking the training administration costs out of the way Providing scalable infrastructure for additional training for new employees Offering global reporting at a glance, and allowing an easy way of seeing how each territory is doing Cultivating a culture of professional and personal development Acting as a visual testament to the employers’ commitment to building and nurturing the human resources Encouraging continuous ‘informal’ and ‘social’ learning to make the training content stick Securing real and lasting behavioural changes There really isn’t much that a Learning Management System can’t do these days! When you combine all the ace reporting, next gen functionality and fun gamification features, you’ll get an LMS that will revolutionise your L&D programme. Want to find out more about what an LMS can do for your business? Download our white paper by clicking the big button below!  

This week’s Learning Hero is Steven Anderson, speaker, blogger and advocate of awesomeness! What makes Steven such a hero then? Well if you think of the average educator as a run-of-the-mill policeman, then Steven Anderson is Robocop. As a recognised expert in the fusion of learning and technology, Steven is the go-to guy for the next step in the evolution of the classroom. With technology moving forward at such a dizzying pace, no industry can afford to stand still, and this is no different for education. Steven completely gets this and he has made it his mission to guide his fellow educators through the brave new world of the Web 2.0 connected classroom. Along with Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Tom Whitby, Steven co-founded #Edchat, a weekly Twitter free-for-all inviting educators from around the Twitosphere to join the conversation. Hosted every Tuesday, #Edchat focuses on the integration of teaching and technology and how this marriage-made-in-heaven can inspire and engage learners as well as educators. Blogging About The Web 2.0 Connected Classroom Steven’s blog is subtitled ‘A blend of technology and education’, but calling it that is like calling a book ‘A thing with words in it’. Like most bloggers, the constant demand for frequent content forces Steven to really explore the boundaries of his specialist subject - and this is where we find the real treats. A quick browse through Steven’s blog will churn up posts covering such topics as the best Apps for learning on the go, Twitter tips for educators and rules for attending a conference. With a lot of blogs, this box-of-chocolates approach can indicate that the blogger really hasn’t got a firm grasp on their subject. This isn’t the case here - on the contrary, we see a blogger with such a widespread knowledge of integrating technology and learning that he can write with authority on whichever topic he chooses. Either that, or ‘Steven W. Anderson’ is the pseudonym of a collective of experts. Of course, this wouldn’t surprise us at all because Steven (if that is indeed his/their real name) has plenty of other things to keep him busy. A prolific social media enthusiast, he has won the Edublogs Best Individual Tweeter in both 2009 and 2011. What little spare time he has is taken up with speaking engagements at a variety of educational conferences and he regularly appears as a guest on the BAM! Radio Network (online radio focusing on education). We, at Growth Engineering, are cheerleaders for the power and potential of social learning and we love to see people encouraging a collaborative learning community with initiatives like #Edchat. If you like the sound of that, then you’ll be pleased to know that we’ve barely scratched the surface of social learning. To find out a little more, click that button and download our social learning white paper!  

It’s now more important than ever to make your onboarding process effective, pain-free and smooth. Good first impressions are vital, after all - a difficult start to a relationship doesn’t bode well for the future, and high employee turnover is costing organisations more than ever. Luckily, online learning is just the ticket to keeping your new - and current - employees happy. It’s the perfect way to introduce the company’s policies, get the newbie up to speed, get across your organisation’s great culture and show the inductee that ‘this is the way we do things around here’. Here’s why Learning Management Systems work for onboarding: Prep for the first day Even before the new employee arrives in the office - bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and clutching a takeaway coffee in sweaty palms - they can be introduced to the company culture. Generally speaking, employees will have to work a month or three months’ notice at their previous organisations, which opens up a fantastic opportunity to get the newbie acquainted with how your organisation does things. Industry knowledge If your new employee is entering an industry they’re unfamiliar with, or if your organisation is a unicorn in a herd of horses, then online learning is the perfect way to get them up to speed with a basic level of knowledge. Their first day won’t be so daunting or full-on if they have a Learning Management System preloaded with all the relevant documents, policies and eLearning modules. Housekeeping There’s a lot to take in on your inductee’s first day. Don’t overwhelm them with details or make them take notes all day long - chances are they won’t be able to read their own scribbles! Instead, all the ‘housekeeping’ duties can be done on the Learning Management System. An ‘FAQ’ section can tell them things like where the cafeteria is, what the sickness policy is, who to go to for first aid and where the spare notebooks are kept. Plus, you never know whether other employees who have been with you for longer will need to be reminded of this information! Introductions There are two great things (actually, there are more like a bazillion) about our Gamified Social Academy. One, employees can get to know each other before they officially start work. We’re all about encouraging communication and conversation, and it’s so easy for employees to ‘chat’ or at least introduce themselves before their first day. The second benefit is that the Academy allows employees to keep in touch after the induction. In big organisations with thousands of employees, it can be tricky to stay in the loop with other departments or offices, but the Academy is searchable by division, job role and name. Never lose a potential friend again! Competition We’d be lying if we said we didn’t feel a little bit of joy in seeing learners on our LMS fight it out to reach the top spot on the leaderboard… and it’s sometimes even more fun when they’re new! Gamification on the Academy - badges, points and achievements - encourages employees to really engage with their new LMS and the onboarding content. They’ll be super motivated to watch the health and safety video, read the disciplinary procedure forms and complete the ‘how do I work best?’ eLearning unit. Everyone likes being top dog, and new employees have a lot to prove - gamification really motivates them to make the most of the onboarding resources available to them. They’ll soon be up and running thanks to online onboarding! We’d love to show you more of what our Gamified Social Academy Platform LMS has to offer! Why not jump aboard one of our weekly webinar tours? It’s free and easy!  

Are you getting the most from your Learning Management System? For many people, the answer might be, ‘Sure, I guess so,’ but what if we were to tell you that you could be missing out on some amazing functionality that could send your training and development into overdrive? That sounds almost too good to be true, but we’re not even finished - what if this functionality involved no additional eLearning and happened all by itself? You’re intrigued - we can tell! Let’s first introduce the 70:20:10 problem. We’ve covered it before, but as a quick refresher, the 70:20:10 problem covers the way in which we learn. In your working life, you’ll learn most of what you need by rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty, i.e. 70% of your learning will come from on-the-job experience. If we skip the 20% for now, 10% of your knowledge will be gleaned from formal learning. By that we mean courses, reading material and eLearning. Along with reporting and skill gap analysis, most Learning Management Systems with deliver this without any problems and, since that’s what they’re designed to do, that is the least you can expect. But what about that 20%? This portion of your training and development will fall under ‘social learning’, a concept which we capitalise on at every stage of our Academy Platform LMS’s development. What is ‘social learning’ though? Social learning, like on-the-job experience, is a type of ‘informal learning’ which covers the experience you gain from interacting with colleagues, discussing work related matters and sharing any knowledge you might find outside of the formal learning framework. 20% is no small proportion of anything and it can count towards a truly valuable learning experience. In today’s interconnected world, people have developed their natural inclination towards social interaction. You’ll already have noticed that this covers everything from the TV we choose to watch, to the holiday photographs we take, all the way to the food we eat. So why not include it as part of our professional development? With our Academy Platform LMS, you have all of the benefits you might expect from an online learning environment - the reading materials you’ve painstakingly gathered, the resources you’ve put together and the eLearning you’ve worked so hard to produce. We’ve gone one further and included several nifty features that encourage learners to share their knowledge and teach each other. How much effort does this require from you, the manager? That’s the best part, folks - this requires exactly zero hours of work! If you think of that in terms of money, any mathematician will tell you that any additional learning achieved through this channel counts as a proportionally infinite return on investment! How can you say no to that?! In any business, the employees themselves are the most valuable asset, so it seems very inefficient to waste such a large resource. If you want to find out more about how Growth Engineering can help them become the superstars they were born to be, get in touch with us today. You can also learn more about the benefits of social learning by downloading our white paper. All you have to do is click the button!  

Not only is it difficult and costly to take your sales teams off the road for sales training, but most of the time, classroom training doesn’t actually work! So often we talk to organisations that spent thousands of pounds on workshops, tutors and classroom training who just haven’t seen the return on investment they were promised. But don’t worry. We have the answer to these problems: train your sales staff online! Our Sales Academy comes preloaded with an excellent eLearning library of sales modules, meaning it’s now simpler and more effective than ever to roll out sales training to your workforce. These eLearning units are accredited by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management (ISMM), which means our sales training is almost guaranteed to raise the standards of your sales teams, improve results and drive revenue growth. As a recognised training centre for the ISMM, we enable our clients to deliver SCORM-compliant sales training via eLearning modules on our Sales Academy from Levels 2 to 5 We love working with the ISMM to deliver nationally-recognised qualifications online at a fraction of the cost of classroom training, and we’re proud to offer a highly scalable sales training solution ideal for large, geographically-disperse sales forces. Each unit within the sales eLearning library is structured around an ISMM qualification (an Award, Certificate or Diploma, from Level 2 to 5) and contains all the learning content and the assignment necessary to gain one of the prestigious qualifications. All learners need to do is log on, go through the eLearning unit and complete the associated tasks and assignments. And voila - they’re a Sales Superstar! Using our sales eLearning in conjunction with our online Sales Academy solution means we can assess your staff to ensure they receive the right level of training, map training needs to a development passport of learning, deliver the sales training online via mobile or tablet, test, mark and accredit assessments and then certify the qualification. But that’s not all! In addition to offering these ISMM qualifications as part of our Sales Academy solution to upskill entire workforces, we also offer the qualifications on an individual basis our own award-winning Academy Platform Learning Management System (which was recently voted the world’s best Gamified LMS, best NextGen LMS and best Retail LMS!). We call it the Sales Superstar Academy. You can find out more about it by heading to our sister website, Sales Superstars. Intrigued? Check out what our Sales Academy has done for Aggregate Industries by reading the case study below!  

Vocational qualifications (VQs) are work-related qualifications. They’re designed to allow you to learn in a way that suits you, and give you the skills that employers are looking for. There are lots to choose from, in a wide range of subjects. The great thing about vocational qualifications is that they are completed while you work - alongside your day job. This makes the training relevant, means you can start using it to boost your work straight away, and also means the learning is more likely to ‘stick’. When you consider the fact that 70% of our knowledge comes from work-based, ‘on the job’ learning, it’s really clear just how important vocational qualifications are to your career! (By the way, if you’re wondering: we get 20% of our knowledge by observing and interacting with others and just 10% from ‘formal’ training! Read more about the 70:20:10 problem of learning.) Ideally, the work involved in your vocational qualification will directly reflect the tasks you’re doing on a daily basis and the skills you need to build upon. Sure, you can learn about something different, but it’s a whole lot easier to gain a sales and marketing qualification when you’re actually, you know, closing sales and marketing products! Lots of companies have already benefited from putting their workforce through vocational qualifications using an online approach. For instance, Aggregate Industries put 400 salespeople through a Level 3 Diploma in sales and marketing from the ISMM (Institute of Sales and Marketing Management). The online approach meant that they could complete the eLearning modules in their own time, and then start applying their new knowledge straight away at work the next day. It’s much more flexible and means the business started seeing the positive effects of the training from day one! Here’s a short example of how vocational qualifications really do complement your current role: imagine you’re taking an ISMM qualification online. If you’re working on ISMM Level 3: Unit 301: Planning and Delivering a Sales Presentation, part of your assessment might focus on sales presentations that you’ve given to clients and you’ll be encouraged to create a new presentation, which can then be used in a real situation with a client. See? A vocational qualification focuses on what you need to do to improve your career and helps you get there. It’s pretty great and it really works to improve your career prospects! Want to find out more? Try one of our ISMM demo units for free today!  

This Week’s Learning Hero is Jay Cross! You might ask why we chose him, but then again you might also ask what took us so long to chose the guy who coined the term, ‘eLearning’! Since his first courses at the University of Phoenix, Jay has gone on to become a leading authority on the power of informal learning and the importance of working smarter. For those who don’t know, informal learning covers everything that happens outside of the formal training structure. This includes things like hands-on experience and knowledge learned from colleagues and co-workers - basically anything you can’t find in a book. Though many companies rely on formal learning when it comes to T&D, the larger percentage of knowledge retained comes from informal learning. In the orchestra of Informal Learning, Jay Cross is a conductor, waving his baton with enthusiasm. Jay is committed to helping businesses achieve more, and achieve it more efficiently, by applying more human-friendly practices. He has hit many milestones along the way including the founding of Internet Time Group, serving as the CEO of eLearning Forum and writing a column for CLO magazine. His book, Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways that Inspire Innovation and Performance, is one of the most comprehensive resources available on the subject and the Working Smarter Fieldbook 2011 is full of tips and tricks to turn your traditional training model on its head. His other duties as ‘Chief Unlearning Officer’ don’t stop with writing books and articles. He’s a popular keynote speaker, often attending conferences and in-house sessions. In his talks, he often draws on his knowledge of business, cognitive science, technology and psychology to present an inspiring package to help businesses and managers discover what is truly possible. The best thing about his talks is that he can actually take these fairly heavy topics and put his ideas across in an amusing and engaging way - proving that his advice about engaging learners isn’t just empty rhetoric. Check out this video to see what we mean. If you need to inject a bit of life back into your company culture, or encourage new ways of thinking, you can visit Jay’s website, or you can also get in touch by email, on twitter, facebook or Google +. Like Jay Cross, we know the enormous benefits that can be gained from tapping into informal learning and exploiting these resources which are basically free. As more and more business leaders are waking up to this potential, the landscape of training and development is changing dramatically and it’s up to trainers to change too. To find out more about the changing face of learning, click on the button to download our white paper.  

The Goal of Learning & Development Securing great return on investment is an essential - but often seemingly unachievable - goal of an L&D strategy. We often speak to Heads of HR, L&D and Company Directors who had great expectations of their Learning Management System but who just haven’t seen the return on investment they were promised. Their training programme is just not the exciting, intriguing and behaviour-changing godsend it was supposed to be. Their grand plans have failed, the promises have come to naught and they’re up the proverbial creek without a paddle. The reason that training programmes fail to secure ROI is that they generally focus on only a small proportion of learning. The ‘70:20:10’ problem of learning explains that while 70% of what we know we learn by rolling up our sleeves and getting stuck in at work and 20% we gain through observation of others, only a small 10% is gained through formal training practices, like workshops, eLearning modules, lectures and textbooks - and it is this that most training programmes focus solely on. Do the Math It’s no wonder that organisations aren’t seeing a return on their investment - they’re investing 100% of their resources (not just money, but time, effort, accountability and support too) in just 10% of their employees’ knowledge. Of course the sums don’t add up! What is needed is a culture of empowerment - a culture in which employees are empowered to develop themselves over and above the formal training programme that they are enrolled on. In other words, rather than spending all of, say, a £20k training budget on a Learning Management System chock-full of eLearning modules to secure 10% of learning, organisations would be far better off spending £30 or £40k on an LMS that can tap into all forms of knowledge acquisition and secure 100% of learning. It seems like a bargain when you think about how much extra you’re getting! Forgetting Curve Of course, even if you manage to reach the ultimate 100% of learning, there is no guarantee that you’ll see behavioural change - and without behavioural change, your ROI will amount to zilch. This is because of the ‘forgetting curve’ of learning. It’s the idea that we lose up to half of what we learn if we don’t work to actively retain it, by which I mean unless we use and apply the content, it’ll leak out of our brains like sand through our fingers. Which is sad, really. In order to not only hit the elusive 100%, but to also make sure none of that learning is lost, we need to empower employees to take charge of their own professional development. And how do we do this? The answer lies within your Learning Management System. The technology is already there; you just need to give your learners the means to take the reins. Communicate and Collaborate It’s often all too easy for learners to log on to their LMS, take an eLearning unit and then ride off into the sunset, armed with a certificate of completion but without having interacted with anyone else during the learning journey. Not only is this a lonely existence, but it’s bad for learning. Remember the 20% of learning that occurs through observation of others? There’ll be none of that if learners can’t get together, talk, discuss the learning content and build upon the knowledge they gained during the formal eLearning module. Social Learning The answer is to build a dedicated communication and collaboration area on an LMS. Ideally, learners should log on to their LMS, take the eLearning module and then - instead of kicking up a cloud of dust behind them in their haste to leave - they should enter the communication area and talk about what they just learnt. This kind of ‘social’ learning is the answer to the 70:20:10 problem. Learners have already smashed the 10%, so just the 70% and 20% are left to tackle. They know they can dive into the 70% once they’re back at work, but here’s the crux of it: they need to have a level of knowledge before they can do this. Sure, they can learn some things from zilch, but imagine being thrown in at the deep end with no prior knowledge of what you might need to learn… It’s daunting, demotivating and disempowering! In order for employees to effectively learn at work, the first step involves social learning: the 20%. Once learners have become all-knowing beings through both formal and social channels, they can then set to work continuing to learn when they’re back in the office. Gamify Social Learning We learn best when we’re having fun: that’s why learning should be gamified. ‘Gamification’ is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios to make difficult tasks more palatable. When we’re talking about gamification of eLearning, we mean awarding points and badges for moving through the module, getting answers right and completing units. And when it comes to an LMS, it means awarding badges for interacting with the Academy and other learners, moving through ‘levels’ (like Newbie to Sales Superstar) and climbing up a leaderboard to be crowned #1 Best Cleverclogs in the Whole Wide World. Gamifying social learning is slightly different. It involves rewarding learners for collaborating, sharing knowledge, helping each other understand tricky topics and answering questions. When learners interact and share information in their dedicated communication and collaboration area, they become recognised as experts in their chosen field; the go-to guy for Telesales and the must-ask madam for fire safety. And doesn’t everyone want to be at least a little bit famous? Empowerment So you see, once you empower employees to take an active role in their own training and development - not only by giving them the means to do so but by rewarding them for doing it - learning will evolve in unique and unexpected ways. Knowing that there is a dedicated area where they can talk about their training means learners will keep returning once they’ve discovered something new; all aspects of the 70:20:10 problem will come together and complement each other. When employees learn something new at work, they will be motivated to log on to the LMS and tell other learners about it - for which they’ll get some experience points and move up the leaderboard, reinforcing their expert status. And when other learners read about this new skill, they can then apply it when they’re back in the office. You’ll be able to forget the forgetting curve all together. Rather than learning being discrete and lonely, an empowered culture allows learning to become social, interconnected and enjoyable. And, as it happens, far more effective. The key to securing return on investment lies in an empowered learning culture. Once learners are given the means to learn socially and informally, there’ll be no stopping them. You’ll have created a culture of continued professional development - and have an ROI to really write home about. Want to find out more? Check out our white paper on how to secure ROI on your Learning Management System by clicking the big button below!  

This Week’s Learning Hero is TeacherGaming! You can’t deny the genius behind creating wonderful things, but there’s also ingenuity in repurposing things that already exist. TeacherGaming aims to create ports of existing video games designed specifically with a classroom environment in mind. For too long, educators have been reluctant to use video games in their lessons, taking the hackneyed stance that video games are the enemy of education. Students have been let down by empty promises of ‘fun educational video games’ that turned out to be programs to teach them how to type. TeacherGaming burst into existence in 2011 as the lovechild of educators and programmers. The company directors, Santeri Koivisto, Joel Levin and Aleksi Postari, represent the new generation of educators, people who have ‘wasted’ their childhood on video games and thus know what differentiates a good one from a dull one. Their mission was to revolutionise the way digital gaming was incorporated into classrooms. The key to engaging kids in the classroom was to take something that they already love and adapt it to a more educational purpose. It was here that MinecraftEdu was born. Unless you’ve been in a cave or reading a really long book for the last couple of years, you’ll already be aware of Minecraft. For those who don’t know, Minecraft is an open-world environment developed by Swedish producers, Mojang. The easiest way to describe it is a 3D first-person Lego set in a world made entirely of 1m³ boxes which can be collected (mined) or placed. It’s a pretty simple concept, but its simplicity means that this world can be adapted to almost any situation, making it particularly useful in a teaching context. Officially endorsed by Mojang, MinecraftEdu allows teachers to craft their own 3D teaching environment to suit their needs. Just like the standard version of Minecraft, the scope and potential is limited only by the teacher’s imagination. The platform has been taken up by over 20,000 schools worldwide and it has been used to teach concepts as diverse as public housing, democracy, geometry and how the global food market works. The philosophy of TeacherGaming places great weight on the importance of engagement when it comes to imparting knowledge that really sticks. This principle is as true for adult learning as it is for schoolchildren. At Growth Engineering, we consider engagement to be the key that unlocks the potential of learners. To learn more, click the button below.  

When it comes to implementing an awesome Learning and Development programme, there are a lot of things to consider: how will the training be presented? Over how many months? How many employees will go through it each time? How will the learning be reinforced (because it absolutely has to be!)? The path to L&D excellence is fraught with these questions, considerations and compromises - but luckily, your friends at Growth Engineering are here to shed some light on Learning Management Systems to explain some benefits you might not yet be aware of! Firstly, did you know that Learning Management Systems can be used to organise real-life training? I know, I know, it probably seems weird that an online learning company is telling you that you can organise classroom bookings through your LMS. The perception is that we’re only enthusiastic about online learning but that’s not true. Sure, eLearning works really well to engage learners and get them changing their behaviours, but we recognise the importance of classroom training, too. Sometimes information is better disseminated in real life. Anyway, with the Academy Platform Learning Management System, you can integrate all the best things about both classroom training and online learning! The Academy Platform can create a beautiful marriage of technology and classic training - book and manage classroom bookings, invite learners, manage invitations, send out pre- and post-learning quizzes, easily incorporate videos and downloadables in the classroom event… The possibilities are near endless! Next up, did you know that Learning Management Systems are social? Yeah, really! Online learning used to be seen as a lonely experience but now the perception is changing. Learning is social nowadays - the best Learning Management Systems out there have communication areas where learners can chat to each other, share their thoughts and bounce ideas off each other. Learning together is much more fun than going solo! Lastly, you may not know this (where’ve you been!!?), but Learning Management Systems these days are FUN! You probably don’t believe us - that’s because the only experiences you’ve had of Learning Management Systems have been negative, boring, mind-numbing and soul-crushingly dull. Well, since then, LMSs have gone through a revolution: they’ve been injected with a fantastic dose of gamification to transform from zombie systems to joyful gamified Learning Management Systems - hurrah! As you may be able to tell, we absolutely love talking about Learning Management Systems and explaining how gamification and social learning work. In fact, we’ve been quite prolific writers on the topics. Take your pick from the buttons below to download some pretty awesome white papers which go into greater detail about all these points. Enjoy!  

Are you wondering what we do when we’re not creating engaging, award-winning online Learning Management Systems and sending learners on a learning journey to paradise? Well, in our down time we go through a magical transformation from Learning Superheroes into stars - film stars, to be specific! Between us, we write, act, film, edit and upload fun, entertaining videos that explain what it is we do here at Growth Engineering. And here’s one of them! The video we’ve featured below highlights some key functionality of our award-winning Academy Platform Learning Management System. It explains how we’ve used gamification to send engagement levels soaring, how we encourage social learning with our awesome ‘Insights’ area and how our gamified Learning Management System can be used to book and manage real-world classroom training, too! So, without further ado, why not check out our latest video all about the Academy Platform Learning Management System - recently ranked the #1 Next Gen LMS in the world and the #1 Gamified LMS in the world! As you can see, we’re all about making learning fun and engaging for learners, but we don’t stop there. We’re also passionate about making it as easy as possible for Managers and Admins to monitor and report on learners’ progress, set up eLearning modules, create tests and manage classroom booking with our ‘Interactive Classroom’ functionality. There really is no other Learning Management System quite like the Gamified Social Academy Platform LMS! When learners log on to the Academy, they forget they’re learning - instead, they just think about all the fun they’re having, the points and badges they’re gaining and how quickly their skills are skyrocketing! We’d love to show you around the Academy so you can get an even better idea of exactly what sets us apart. It’s not just about gamification and beautiful design - the user experience is divine, we’re on the ball with informal learning and social learning, and the Academy is just so easy to use. There are a couple of ways you can see our gamified Academy Platform Learning Management System for yourself. You can either sign up to one of our weekly webinar tours with one of our expert guides (do this by clicking the big button below) or, if there isn’t a time available that suits you, fill out this form to request contact at your convenience. Easy as pie! We can’t wait to talk to you.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you hardy enough to navigate the murky waters of online learning and uncover the buried treasure? At this year’s World of Learning Conference and Exhibition, taking place on 30th September and 1st October, your friends at Growth Engineering are launching The Great Academy Treasure Hunt. While most Learning Technologies companies are content with offering exhibition visitors a boring, dull meander around their Learning Management Systems, Growth Engineering are not. We think it’s just not good enough! No, in order to truly get a taste of what a great Learning Management System can offer, it’s vital to make the tour itself enjoyable. That’s why we’re inviting WOLCE visitors to hunt for buried treasure on our gamified Academy LMS! All you need to do is head over to our section of the Test Drive Area, grab your Platform Pass and use the treasure map clues to uncover the secret code that will unlock the treasure chest, located on our stand (E80), and claim your prize! But don’t try to trick our friendly GE staff into telling you the super-secret codeword… they’ve been sworn to secrecy, on penalty of walking the plank. The only way to unlock the treasure chest and claim your reward is to test drive the Academy Platform LMS. We won’t go into too much detail about the prizes up for grabs, but let’s just say that Captain Jack would be very happy… *hic* Don’t forget, you can pre-book an appointment to meet with us at the event. Just click here to book a meeting with Growth Engineering. P.s. did you know, Growth Engineering just won three Brandon Hall Excellence Awards? Yep! We won a Silver award for Best Sales Training Program for Extended Enterprise, which reflects the huge improvements in sales figures that we and Azlan (the Enterprise Specialist Distribution division of Tech Data, wholesale distributor of technology products) generated through Tech Data Academy. One awesome individual who received sales training delivered a massive increase of 678% in sales across six different customer accounts - a truly remarkable feat - and proactive users on the Academy outperformed inactive users by 75% in terms of sales growth. Wahoo, go Azlan!! But that’s not all! We won two Bronze awards, too. The first was for Best in Learning Technology Implementations in association with Brakes for the Brakes Change Academy, which increased employee knowledge of systems change by 90%. The second Bronze was in the Best Results of a Learning Program category, awarded to us in association with Bensons for Beds, Britain’s largest bed retailer with over 270 stores and 1,800 employees, for Bensons Academy. The Academy boosted employee engagement, reduced attrition rates from 50% to 23% - saving the company £1,350,000 a year - and reduced training costs by £500,000. You may be able to tell that we are pretty excited about these awards! If you’re interested in getting the same results for your organisation, check out our free white paper on how to secure fantastic return on investment on your training programme:  

This week’s Learning Hero is Cathy Moore, a fellow enemy of boring training! When your house is on fire, you call the fire brigade. When barbarians are attacking your city, you alert the local garrison. When you need help creating more engaging eLearning, you call Cathy Moore. Cathy is a speaker and writer who has been helping companies with instructional design and eLearning for over 16 years. We’re not talking about lemonade stands or Granny Annie’s Knitting Workshop here - we’re talking about Microsoft, Pfizer and even the US Army. Large organisations can suffer from the same L&D issues as smaller ones but costs of poor training are significantly higher. Regardless of the scale, dull eLearning and ineffective training programmes have an effect on the bottom line. To get around this problem, you need training content that engages the learner. Since few business leaders have buckets of free time, they need to hire an instructional designer - a training expert who can translate the learning objectives into something that speaks to the learner. But, like those learners, the instructional designers never stop learning. Cathy Moore’s blog is aimed at instructional designers. Her posts deal with the challenges faced by eLearning professionals and offer lots of advice for surmounting them. As an example, this post deals with eLearning scenario questions and how to improve them. We’ve all seen poorly-considered multiple choice questions. Sometimes the incorrect answers are so ridiculous that the learner can too easily eliminate them and find the correct answer. At the other end of the scale, the question might be too vague and open to interpretation. Now, to Johnny Average, problems like these might seem a bit trivial but these are the kinds of things that keep instructional designers awake at night. Thanks to people like Cathy Moore, these lonely souls can sleep easy. If you want to know more about what Cathy does to make the world a better place, check out her website. It’s a great place for instructional designers to find guidance and it’s full of useful articles to inspire anyone with an interest in the nuts and bolts of training and development. Here at Growth Engineering, we are ‘waging war against dull online learning’ - a mission statement that is spookily similar to Cathy Moore’s. Our Gamified Social Learning Management System, the Academy Platform LMS, is built from the ground up with engagement in mind. To find out how to pump a little more awesome into your online learning, sign up to tour the Academy by clicking the button below.