We’ve just published a new white paper: Common Objections to Online Learning! To download it, click the button below: This white paper will focus on all the common objections that we hear from clients who are not quite sure if online learning is for them and their organisation. If you have doubts about how well online learning works, whether gamification will work for your employee demographics, or whether you have the infrastructure in place to roll out a successful online training programme, this is the white paper for you! Here’s an excerpt to whet your appetite… "Over the past decade, we’ve worked with a lot of clients. They’ve needed our help to tackle a huge variety of problems, from cutting training costs by moving training online to upskilling entire workforces, managing mergers and implementing systems change. One of the things that we’ve noticed over the years is that there seem to be a few standard objections that arise when organisations are considering online learning. For example, there’s the technology issue: my computers aren’t good enough, my employees don’t know how to use them, I’m not a techno-wiz, how will I do this? Then there are the terrified faces of HR personnel when they think they have to input the data of all 52,390 employees into a new system. Not to mention the stalwarts of classroom training who can’t fathom how training would ever work if it wasn’t conducted face to face. Every day, we have to counter many different kinds of objections - and we’re here right now to provide answers and solutions to some of the objections that we hear most often. Here are just some of the questions and problems we’ll address: We already have an LMS - why would we want another one? We have an intranet already! Will our data be safe? There’s waaay too much admin involved, we don’t have the time or resources! I’m not very good on computers, and neither are my employees! Our computers are way too old for online learning! Online learning is boring… it’s generic… it sucks! Gamification? But I heard competition doesn’t work in learning! …and many more!" So, what do you think? Do you share some of these questions and concerns about online learning? If you’ve got an objection to online learning, we want to hear it! Tweet us (@growthengineer) your objection using #LMSObjection and you might see it featured in our next white paper!  The post New White Paper: We Address Common Objections to Online Learning! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

As you probably know by now, at GE, we’re on a mission to redefine what learning can achieve. We truly recognise the efforts of others who pull out all of the stops to make the world a better place. It’s for this reason that we’re happy to welcome Velda Barnes into the Growth Engineering Learning Hero Hall of Fame! Velda is the Head of Learning and Development for Addaction, one of the UK’s leading drug charities. Since it was formed in 1967, Addaction has been raising awareness and helping people recover from drug and alcohol addiction. Coming from its humble beginnings as a support group, Addaction now helps tens of thousands of people overcome their addictions each year. An organisation of this size is bound to have a large workforce, and with that comes a great demand for staff training. Having extensive experience in the realm of treating substance abuse as well as a background in training, Velda Barnes became Addaction’s Head of L&D in 2009. In her time with Addaction, she has helped to deliver winning L&D strategies based on careful training needs analyses. These strategies have taken the form of a blended learning approach involving face-to-face training workshops and custom-built online learning modules. In 2013, Addaction won two Charity Learning Awards for the quality of their learning programme and the effectiveness of their blended learning strategy. These two awards are just the latest in the company’s ever growing list of accolades and by no means the last. There are some eLearning units available on the Addaction website which can be used by any individual or organisation with a need for a better understanding of issues surrounding substance abuse. The eLearning modules are centred on drug and alcohol awareness with other units dedicated to helping professionals in the health and social care sector safeguard those who might be affected. All of this was made possible because Velda Barnes could see the benefits of online learning and found a way to use it to change people’s lives for the better. You can stay up-to-date with her mission by following her on twitter and if you want to stay informed about Addaction, their twitter feed is here. Velda will also be speaking at the 2015 Learning Technologies conference in London in January so be sure to snap up your ticket! As you can see, online learning can be used to achieve any number of learning objectives. At Growth Engineering, everything we do is geared towards engaging learners to help them become better than they thought possible. Click the button below to find out what we can do for you.  

Securing learner engagement with your L&D plan can often seem like an uphill battle. It’s a bit like spinning plates - as soon as you turn your attention to a new plate, the one you had spinning starts to wobble and you’re in serious trouble if you don’t give it another quick spin. You’ve got to keep your attention on all of your plates to make sure none take a quick nosedive. Engaging employees is like this. When you’ve got your attention on them, they’ll more likely than not seem to be engaged, happy and motivated. But turn your back for a moment and they’ll soon be dragging their heels, watching the clock and wishing it was Friday already. How many of your employees are engaged? Gallup polls found that just 13% of employees worldwide are engaged. A worrying 63% are not engaged, meaning they lack motivation and don’t make much effort to help the organisation succeed. And an even more concerning 24% are actively disengaged - these people are unhappy, unproductive and demotivated at work. They’ll write hate mail, bring down the morale of everyone around them, gossip, spread bad thoughts and coast through their workdays doing the bare minimum just to keep their managers happy. They’re not great to have around, really. So what do games have to do with this? Well, one of the reasons that ‘gamification’ helps to engage these workers and rouse them from their slumber is that we’re all used to playing games. Games are a natural part of our entire lives, from playing peekaboo as babies to 5-hour sessions of Call of Duty as adults! Indeed, research from Gamification Nation found that 70% of senior executives play games during work hours. Whether it’s a reflection of society’s obsession with Candy Crush or used as a means of chilling out and making the most of a quick tea break, we think it’s a reason to make sure games and game mechanics are brought into the workplace. And contrary to popular belief that gamers are generally teenagers holed up in their bedrooms tapping away on their computers or pressing buttons on their controllers until the wee small hours, only 18% of gamers are aged 18 or under. In fact, the majority (53%) of gamers are between 18 and 49 years old, with a fair proportion (29%) aged 50 and over. Clearly, since we enjoy playing games throughout our lives and understand the mechanics and metaphors behind games, it makes sense to strategically bring them into our work lives and take advantage of our natural desires for competition and completion. It stands to reason, then, that research from Talent LMS shows that 72% of learners ‘strongly prefer gamification’ on their Learning Management Systems (online learning platforms) and learners are going gaga over getting points for activities like reading, writing, sharing course reviews and voting for content. Don’t you think it’s time to bring gamification into your Learning and Development plan? Download the white paper below to start your own learning journey!  

You wouldn’t start a relationship with someone if you weren’t compatible with each other, so why would you choose a Learning Management System that doesn’t fit with your business? When you’re choosing a new LMS, one of your biggest questions might be whether or not you can take it home to meet the parents. Some concerns you may have about your new LMS might include: How much time will you have to spend on making your shiny new Learning Management System talk to the HR system? Will your learners have to sign on to a bunch of different systems? What happens when employees leave or join? How can you make the most of social networks that employees enjoy using? There are lots of things to consider when you’re trying to decide on a new Learning Management System. Luckily, our API makes integration easy, saving you time, and helping you take your LMS implementation to the next level. With the Academy LMS, you don’t just get a learning platform - you get a loving and meaningful integrationship! Let’s see how. Single Sign-on Nothing kills user experience more than a cascade of login screens. The Academy’s API enables single sign-on functionality across all applications, saving time by removing the obstacles that stand between your learners and their training. Adding users Imagine getting a new LMS and then having to manually add each learner! With the Academy LMS, the API allows integration with your HR system meaning your LMS is always up-to-date with your current employees. Custom integration We recognise that every business has different needs, so it makes sense that they have different systems to address them. We’re a friendly bunch here at Growth Engineering, so we do all we can to make sure our Academy LMS can get along with your applications - regardless of their quirks and foibles. We’ve also been working really hard on integrations to make implementing your LMS even easier! Let’s see some of them: Salesforce.com auto integration Our Salesforce integration is the perfect accompaniment for our Sales Academies. Now you can watch your sales performance soar with an engaging LMS that synchronizes with your current system. SharePoint auto integration The Academy LMS allows seamless integration with external tools like SharePoint giving learners complete access to available resources without having to switch between applications. And more… Keep your learners connected with a Learning Management System that has been adapted to the way they interact. The Academy LMS is compatible with most major social networks including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and more useful integrations are expected early in 2015 - here are just a few of them! Upcoming Integrations: Workday auto integration - coming January 2015 We’re about to launch an update to the Academy LMS including custom integration with Cloud-based HR SaaS solutions like Workday. With this integration, your list of learners can synchronize automatically with your existing system. PayPal - coming February 2015 Soon the Academy LMS will offer a full PayPal integration solution allowing you to make or receive quick, secure payments through your learning platform. Authorize.net - coming February 2015 Coming hot on the heels of our PayPal update, the Authorize.net integration will ensure that the Academy is fully equipped to support eCommerce features. SAP auto integration - Coming March 2015 Our developers are currently working on a comprehensive integration solution designed to synchronize the Academy LMS with most common SAP applications. Oracle auto integration - Coming March 2015 Due to popular demand, we’re implementing a custom integration to bring together the great features of the Academy LMS and the administration tools of the entire Oracle suite, including HRMS systems like PeopleSoft. As you can see, there’s a lot of exciting things happening over at GEHQ! We always aim to please, which is why our Academy LMS never stops improving. Our developers are always hungry for new challenges and these often come in the form of requests from our clients. Because of this, there’s no telling what ERP or HRMS integration we’ll start working on next. If you do happen to be curious, don’t hesitate to get in touch! You can find out more about what our Academy LMS can do on our guided webinar tours. Just click the link below and we’ll find a time to suit!  

This week, we’re honouring a group of people whose purpose in life is to find interesting facts. For those who don’t know, QI (Quite Interesting) is a panel quiz show hosted by Stephen Fry and featuring Alan Davies as the permanent butt-of-all-jokes. The aim of the game isn’t to get the most questions right - in QI, panellists are rewarded for offering the most interesting facts. At the same time, points are deducted for giving answers that are too obvious. In every episode, we’re not just treated to obscure facts and lively banter, but common misconceptions are swept aside leaving us all much smarter people. So who is behind the research engine that keeps the fact-bank topped up? The "QI Elves" is the charming moniker given to the researchers. Aside from pooling their collective fact-hunting efforts for the TV show, the Elves also host No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast that we can’t stop recommending to people! The podcast features James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, Anna Ptaszynski and Dan Schreiber. Every Friday, they each take turns presenting the most interesting fact that they have uncovered in past week. With all of the facts being churned up every day, you would think they’d have enough now to write a book. Well, several in fact. This year, if you’ve behaved yourself, you might just find a copy of 1,411 QI Facts to Knock You Sideways in your stocking. This latest offering from the Elves features plenty of mind-blowing facts, for example: Orchids can get jetlag. Lizards can’t walk and breathe at the same time. There are 177,147 ways to tie a tie. Traffic lights existed before cars. If your thirst for knowledge is still unquenched, you can follow the QI Elves on Twitter for a constant stream of trivia as well as regular updates on the show. Also, be sure to tune into NSTAAF - it’ll be the best use you can make of 30 minutes each week! The great thing with sharing facts (as we discover in both QI and NSTAAF) is that it encourages more people to share their own facts, whether they are directly related or not. Even at GEHQ, not a lunch-break goes by without some random piece of information that sparks off a conversation. We all experience the power of collaborative learning on a daily basis, whether it’s for a specific purpose or just for fun (which is also hugely important). To find out what social learning can do for you, click the button below.  

This time we’re not sharing with you our favourite learning or technology-themed TED Talks. Instead, we thought we’d give you some awesome videos to watch in your spare time to help you appreciate the little things in life. It’s all well and good focusing on life-altering training and career-changing skills, but, as Ferris Bueller said: Life moves pretty past. If we don’t stop to look around once in a while we’ll miss it. So here are some excellent TED Talks that will, hopefully, get you looking at life in a different way. 1. Joshua Prager - In search of the man who broke my neck When he was 19, a man ploughed into the bus that Joshua was riding in, snapping his neck and leaving him a quadriplegic. Years later, after he’d relearned to breathe on his own, move, stand and walk - but was still a hemiplegic - he tracked down the man responsible… 2. Terry Moore - How to tie your shoes You probably had no idea you were tying your shoelaces wrong all these years, did you? We’re afraid it’s true. This short video will show you how to create a much stronger knot. Try it for yourself! 3. Dan Gilbert - The psychology of your future self Dan explains that we’re constantly making decisions that will directly impact the lives of the people we’re going to become. Adults pay good money to have tattoos removed, that they as teenagers paid good money to get! Middle-aged adults rush to divorce people young adults rushed to marry. Everywhere we look, we’re undoing or resetting aspects of our lives which at one point we thought were on the right path. As a psychologist, Dan is interested in the reasons we tend to make decisions which our future selves come to regret - and he thinks it could be because we have a ‘fundamental misconception of the power of time’. Watch more below: 4. Ron Gutman - The hidden power of smiling Did you know, it’s really difficult to frown while looking at a smiling face? It’s because smiling is evolutionarily contagious - when we see a smile, the control we usually have over our facial muscles is suppressed. Ron explains the psychology behind smiling, why it makes us feel good and how it should really be seen as a ‘superpower’. 5. Debra Jarvis - Yes, I survived cancer. But that doesn’t define me Debra found that the best way to cope with her cancer was to claim the experience - not let it control her. "What if there were no survivors, meaning, what if people decided to just claim their trauma as an experience instead of taking it on as an identity? Maybe it would be the end of being trapped in our wounds and the beginning of amazing self-exploration and discovery and growth." We hope you liked our selection! If you’ve got a spare few minutes, why not check out our white paper on how to make learning fun?  

When we start work, we don’t always think about where we want to end up in a few years’ time. Do we see ourselves in the same role, within the same company, or is this just a stop-gap or a stepping stone to something more ‘us’? If you have high hopes for your career then it’s vital you have a development plan, either written out or in your head, of where you want to go - without it, you’re at risk of coasting along and making no real progress. So, firstly, what exactly is career development? Career development is the ‘ongoing process of managing your life, learning and work’. When we talk about career development, we’re referring to the development of the skills and knowledge that will allow you to plan, make decisions and accomplish what you want. Once you have these skills and knowledge, you’ll be able to plan your life much better. Clearly, a career development plan sounds like a great idea, because the whole purpose of a career development plan is to help you reach your goals. What’s not to like!? What does a career development plan involve? Well, it varies slightly whether you’re already in a role, are looking for work and whether you’re already working in the field you desire, but career development plans tend to follow similar patterns: Figure out your key strengths You may want to become a world-famous singer, but if you can’t hold a note, you will need to give up on your idea (sorry!). Similarly, if you can multiply 5-digit numbers in your head within seconds, you might want to consider a role within finance, investing or stocks. Set your goals Firstly, do you have a ‘job’ or a ‘career’? The difference will be in how you feel about your work - if you dislike it or don’t feel all that passionate, it’s probably ‘just a job’ to you, but if you enjoy yourself and want to progress within your chosen field or company, you’re probably in a career. Of course, there are other factors to consider, but generally speaking when we’re creating career development plans we’re focusing on a role we enjoy and want to succeed in - not a job we do just to pay the bills. When you set your goals, think big. You’ll likely be working until you’re in your 60s, so just think how much you can accomplish in that time! Want to run your own department? Awesome. Want to start your own business? Go for it! Identify your career path So, what do you want to get out of your career? Where do you want your career to be in one, two, five or ten years’ time? If you’re lucky your career will fit into a structure hierarchy, like ‘Sales Executive’, ‘Sales Manager’, ‘Area Manager’ and ‘Regional Manager’, which makes plotting your path easy. But if your trajectory isn’t so clear-cut, on what other milestones can you judge your progression? HINT: Don’t make a goal simply for the sake of making one. Make sure what you select really does resonate with you and you can imagine yourself doing whatever you pick as your ideal career. If you don’t like people, don’t try to squeeze yourself into a leadership role. HINT: Don’t go by what other people want! If your goal is to jump the career ladder from Sub-Editor right up to Editor within two years yet someone else you know has set their sights on moving from Sub to Assistant Editor in the same timeframe, that doesn’t mean your goal is wrong. It may mean you have to work harder, but if you’re passionate and dedicated, who’s to say it can’t be achieved? Analyse the differences in where you are now versus where you want to be A gap analysis will show you where you are lacking in skills right now, what you already know and what you need to work on in order to move forward. Try it now: take a look at a relevant job advert and rate your skills from 1-10 on how well you meet each requirement. You’ll be able to see where you need to focus. For instance, if you’re a junior salesperson but want to become a Sales Manager within five years, you may notice that a lot of job adverts require a sales qualification (like an Institute of Sales and Marketing Management Diploma or Certificate) to meet the level required. Therefore in order to meet your career development goal, you’ll need to undertake training to reach the required standard. Other careers may require different training, or maybe a certain level of networking skills or demonstrable sales increases - find out what’s required and add these to your ‘to-do’ list. Order your tasks & set dates Let’s say you’ve identified ten things you need to do or improve to move up in your career. The next trick is to put them in the most logical order. If you need to do X before you can do Y (such as getting a qualification in sales proposals before you can offer to assist your boss in creating them) then X will obviously need to be at the top of your list of priorities. Also, if your career development plan involves taking on more responsibility, try doing this in stages rather than doubling your workload overnight! Monitor your goals & keep track Don’t lose sight of your development plan or skip tasks you find difficult. Keeping on top of what you need to achieve will allow you to focus on your progress. If you feel yourself slipping behind in achieving your goals, try to figure out why this is. Have you lost your passion? Are you finding it too difficult? Regaining your motivation might be as simple as repeating the steps above and seeing how much you’ve improved your skills since the last time you assessed yourself. What do you think? Will you create a career development plan for yourself, now you’ve seen how simple it is? Career development is the kind of thing that’s easy to forget about - until you wake up in ten years and realise you’re at the same place you were when you started your career. If you want to progress and succeed, create a career development plan - you’ll be able to accomplish great things! Want to learn more about how important training and development is to your career? Check out our demo eLearning module of ISMM Unit 308: Planning for Professional Development. Just click the button below! P.s. Check out Careerealism for more great advice.  

We know that life is busy. Whether it’s planning for Christmas, sorting out our kids’ uniforms, putting in overtime at work or doing the shopping, sometimes it’s hard to find a spare moment in the day! That’s why we’ve created a really easy way for you to get in touch with us: the Request Contact Form: It’s really simple and only takes a minute. All you have to do is click the button below, fill out some details and then we’ll get in contact with you at a time to suit you, whether it’s today, tomorrow or three months from now. So if you’ve got something you’d like to ask us or would like to have a demo tour of our award-winning Academy LMS but are snowed under right now, don’t worry - just register your interest and we’ll do the legwork when it’s convenient for you. Don’t say we never do anything for you!  

When we’re having fun and enjoying ourselves, our brains are more active. This means that when we’re having fun in a learning environment, we’re likely to remember more information because of our more active brains. Clearly, making the learning experience exciting and enjoyable for learners is important. But if you’ve ever taken online learning courses yourself, you’ll probably be wondering how it can possibly be made to seem fun - that’s because your experiences of online learning were most likely on a system that was old-fashioned, poorly designed and poorly executed. These days online learning is much more fun! Let’s see how… Technology to Delight Learners If you don’t know already, there are a bunch of ‘Easter Eggs’ hidden within Google. Some are funny results from specific search terms and spinning the page (type ‘do a barrel roll’ into Google!). You can find a list of some of the best Easter Eggs here. Why are we talking about this? Because it shows how important it is to excite and delight learners on your Learning Management System with unexpected goodies, cool features and fun functionality! By giving learners these extras, you’re appealing to their sense of excitement and wonderment - who knows what they’ll uncover next if they just keep looking! This gets them engaged with their online learning environment, meaning they’ll be more likely to do the eLearning assigned to them and they’ll interact more with the LMS, which will take them up the rankings of the leaderboard, which brings us to our next point… Gamification to Make Learning Fun The more a learner interacts with their Learning Management System, the more secrets they’ll uncover and the more rewards they’ll accumulate. These rewards - like badges, points and achievements - add up to improve a learner’s overall standings on their LMS. The more badges they get, the higher up the leaderboard they climb, showing their fellow learners how dedicated they are and what a great job they’re doing. This is motivating because, let’s face it, no one really wants to get left behind, so learners will do extra work to gain the three badges they need to race ahead to the top spot. Sociable Learners are Happy Learners When it comes to gaining knowledge, evidence shows that only 10% comes from ‘formal’ learning like classroom-based training and eLearning modules. 70% is gained while ‘on the job’ in the workplace, and 20% is gained through observation of others. Clearly, then, encouraging learners to become more sociable on their Learning Management System will help them bridge the gap between what they learn in the eLearning module and what they truly need to know in order to succeed in their day-to-day jobs. Want to find out more? We wrote a white paper all about how gamification and excitement is great for the success of a training roll-out. Check it out below!  

If you’re anything like us, one of the first steps to training a new employee is to get them understanding the brand. Your company brand is like a fingerprint - it touches on everything you do, it’s unique, and it helps customers identify you among a sea of competitors. Think about Coke, Apple or Tesco. The brand runs through everything: advertising, products, email signatures, websites… even offices, intranets and stationery is branded these days! So why is it, then, that companies don’t make the same effort to brand their Learning Management Systems? It’s important that employees appreciate that when they go into their LMS to undertake training, they’re not doing it for anyone else - they’re learning new things ultimately for their own benefit, though also for the benefit of the organisation. Therefore we think it’s really important that each of our customers has their very own branded LMS - think: colours, images, phrases, titles, functionality, date and style of launch… Everything should be unique to that customer, since every customer is themselves unique! Fully skinnable This means that each and every Learning Management System we create for clients looks different. Got a pink and purple brand? Welcome to your pink and purple Academy LMS! Is your company quaint and sweet, specialising in fluffy kittens and potpourri? Then your Academy will be too. Do you sell guitars for death metal bands? Your Academy LMS can be as dark and hardcore as you want! You see, when every aspect of your Academy’s UI (that’s ‘user interface’) is built to match your brand, your learners will feel at home. They’ll know that the Academy - and all the eLearning content and special features within it - has been specially selected by the company just for them. They’ll know the care and consideration that went into it. It’s not just any LMS - it’s their LMS. API Connectivity Ugh. There’s nothing worse than having to log in five times just to get to a piece of eLearning that you’re not really all that enthusiastic about doing anyway! Luckily for your employees, learners only have to sign in once per session. So if they log into a work or shared computer using their username and password, the Academy will recognise this and they won’t have to log in again that session. No more multiple logins - yay! Integrations Got an HR system you really like? We’ll integrate with it so that anything you change or update on the system automatically cascades to the Academy. So if Deirdre in Accounting gets married, you’ll only have to update her surname once. It might seem like a little thing, but when you’re dealing with thousands of employees at once, it’s definitely the little things that count! You can read more about our API and integrations here. Talk like a Pirate Day While it’s certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, the fact is that our Academy LMS can be altered to encompass whatever text or phrasing you desire. Don’t like, "Leaderboards" on your Academy for dog trainers? Why not change it to, "Top Dogs"? Are you really feeling the love on Valentine’s Day? Simple: change every ‘Like’ to ‘Love’ for that special event! See? It’s important that your employees don’t see their Academy LMS as an add-on or an external site, but as a system that is integral to the organisation. They’ll respect it far more if they recognise it. Want to learn more about how important design and branding is in learning? Read our white paper on how user interface design is linked to engagement!    

You there! Did it work? What year is this? I have to get to the nuclear power plant before something dreadful happens!  

At this time of year it’s traditional to take stock, contemplate how far we’ve come, what we’ve learnt and what we need to be focusing on next year to really make waves. You probably do it yourself. Do you - one hand clasping a champagne flute and the other clammy with Twiglets - set New Year’s resolutions, like losing 10lbs, taking up knitting or learning to drive? You probably say to yourself, "This is the year! This is the year I’ll get fit, quit my job, get back into horseback riding, become a carpenter, get a promotion, get my degree…" You’re not alone. 45% of Americans usually make a pact to reinvent, reinvigorate and reignite their lives once the clock strikes twelve on New Year’s Eve, and 17% ‘sometimes’ make New Year’s resolutions. As a technology company focused on learning and development, our goals naturally revolve around creating awesome technology solutions, helping as many people and organisations as we can to improve their skills and knowledge, and making learning as fun and enjoyable as it can possibly be. If you’re like us and can see the importance of self-development and online learning, perhaps your New Year’s resolutions will also involve improving your knowledge? That’s all well and good… except that only 8% of people who make a New Year’s resolution are actually successful in achieving what they set out to. In fact, over half will have given up on their resolutions by June! Imagine if we gave up on our goal to have the #1 Learning Management System in the world… how boring life at GEHQ would be! Despite these poor results, setting yourself targets at the start of the year can help to focus your mind and get you achieving more than you could otherwise. So, once your headache has gone and you’ve had the chance to review your resolutions, here are some tips to help you stick to your goals for 2015: 1. Tell people what your goals are Our goals are to create exceptional online learning that knocks socks off, excites learners and delights organisations. That means we need to focus on evolving our Learning Management System (the Academy LMS), producing new and exciting features, and creating evermore fascinating and invigorating learning environments. There you go - now you know our goals. What about yours? Once you tell people what you want to achieve in 2015, you make yourself accountable. Share with your friends and family what your goals are and be honest when they ask you about it or when you share your progress. It’s much more affirming to be able to tell them you’re rocking your resolutions than losing the battle, which means you’re more likely to behave in ways that support the resolution. If your goal is to lose 4lbs a month and you know you’ll be reporting in to your partner at the end of every month, you might be less likely to pick up that donut on the office table and more motivated to get out of bed 30 minutes early for a run when it’s raining… 2. Break your goal into manageable chunks Rome wasn’t built in a day, so you can’t really think you can become the most inspirational leader overnight or wake up the day after a run weighing a stone less! Think about your goals in terms of smaller ‘missions’. We wrote about this before, it works so well! When you break resolutions down into missions you’re more likely to achieve them because they seem, well, more achievable! Think of it this way: if you want to get a qualification, you don’t just take a test. Instead, your goals or ‘missions’ might look like this: Research the qualifications available, pick one and begin. Complete all the eLearning modules and associated tests. Study, making sure there are no gaps in your knowledge. Complete and hand in any assessments and projects required to pass. Celebrate passing! Hang your certificate in the hallway. See? This makes the overall goal much more achievable because you can see what smaller steps you need to take to get there. It’s no longer as daunting or impossible as thinking, "This year I will get a qualification." 3. Set a date If you’re worried you’ll become one of those ‘give up after ten days’ goal-failers, then setting a date might work for you. Going by the example above, let’s say that you want to complete the first mission within one week - so you’ll spend that week researching qualifications, working out your finances and applying. Mission #2 is pretty big, so you’ll want to give yourself longer - depending on the length of the eLearning modules, maybe 2 weeks per module. Doing this will help keep you on track, and you’ll be able to tell pretty soon if you’re deviating from course. If it’s already been three weeks and you’ve not picked your qualification, you’ll need to knuckle down and get it done - or figure out what’s stopping you… 4. Be real with yourself Sometimes we like to hide things from ourselves. It might not be obvious at first, but if you’re putting off doing something - like shopping for the tools needed to fix your kitchen counter or only buying junk food when you’re meant to be on a diet - then you’ll need to try to delve into the issues and see what’s preventing you from doing what you need to do to achieve your goals. Don’t forget, you set these goals yourself. You wouldn’t have picked them if you didn’t want to make them happen, so what’s holding you back? You know you want to run the 10k with your friends in three months’ time, so why haven’t you booked your place yet? So, what goals are you setting yourself for 2015? Let us know! If taking control of your learning and development (or that of your organisation) is one of your goals, then get in touch - we’re experts when it comes to inspirational online learning!  The post Stick to Your Goals and Reap the Rewards! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Do you remember your time at school? You were probably encouraged, unwittingly, to become extremely ‘average’. Think back to your favourite and most hated subjects. Which were you given extra help with? Was it the one you loved and were naturally talented at, or the one you disliked and struggled to grasp? It is likely that you were pushed to perform in the topics you found difficult, yet if you excelled at something, chances are you weren’t pushed quite so hard - if you were already good at it, there was no need to expend any further effort in that area, right? This training technique results in a lot of average people: they are mostly good or adequate at most things. But in an organisation, you don’t want a lot of average people - you want employees who have exceptional individual talents. Someone who is brilliant with numbers to work on the accounts; someone with a natural skill for leadership to take the team forward. What does it matter if these individuals can’t do the other’s job? That’s not what you’re paying them for! What is really needed is a Learning and Development plan which focuses on individual talents: the skills that organisations need. Of course, there will be basic levels of understanding that are necessary in an organisation. But over and above this, businesses should be focusing on developing employees’ natural talents. How to bring talent and learning management together: 1. Create competencies. In order to know what the L&D plan needs to deliver, organisations need to create a set of competencies - the skills and behaviours that employees need to possess and display in order to meet the company’s needs and the industry’s demands. 2. Assess competencies. Once competencies have been created, employees can then be assessed. Competency assessments are all about providing a way of building the skills and knowledge that people need to perform their current job. It’s also the key element of the succession planning process because it provides a way of developing people for their future roles. 3. Map skills to roles. What makes a good salesperson? What skills does a retail store manager need? How do they differ from a warehouse manager, or Head of Finance? Once you know what skills each role requires, you can plan your training around learning and improving these skills - which will benefit the individual employee, the department and the company. 4. Develop an L&D strategy aligned to business needs. In the past, this might have involved creating a five-year L&D plan that would focus on meeting the business’s projected needs. But with such a tumultuous business landscape now, it is essential instead for L&D to develop the ‘mindset and capability to understand the emerging needs of the business … and [have] the ability to design "just-in-time" learning solutions that harness current issues’ (Training Industry, 2011). L&D need to be able to react to changes in the business quickly, efficiently and expertly. 5. Get Subject Matter Experts involved in eLearning content production. Stop outsourcing your training and development to external companies that don’t know your organisation, don’t know your employees and don’t know your industry. To create the best training programme that truly meets the needs of the organisation, L&D should utilise the skills and knowledge of subject matter experts (SMEs) within the company. While subject matter experts really know their stuff - that’s why they’re experts after all - this doesn’t necessarily mean they know how to teach others what they know, especially when it comes to designing online learning. To get SMEs on the same page as L&D, it’s important to get them involved in eLearning production (Articulate, 2011). Think of your own organisation: I’ll bet there are a lot of extremely knowledgeable employees who are approaching retirement age. Are you just going to let them take their knowledge with them and have it disappear from the company forever? Of course not! Get them involved - encourage them to collaborate with other employees, old and new, and share their knowledge. 6. Make training relevant to the role. To truly break down barriers between learning management and talent management, it’s essential that training is relevant to the employee’s job role. Contextual learning (making the learning directly relevant) aids in problem solving, encourages learners to learn from each other and allows them to monitor their own learning, leading them to become motivated self-learners, or ‘active’ learners (CORD, 2012). In other words, training has to be business critical: it has to be beneficial to the organisation and fit into the business’s objectives. 7. Make employees accountable. When employees become active learners, they become accountable - they realise that improving their skills and learning new things is beneficial and ultimately up to them. Whereas in the past L&D ‘owned’ the training program, more and more these days it is the employees (i.e. learners) that are taking the reins (Personnel Today, 2014). In an ideal world, L&D will become the facilitators of knowledge, helping learning to happen where it needs to happen. Which brings us on to point 8… 8. Encourage informal learning. You may be familiar with the ‘70:20:10’ problem. It states that while 70% of our knowledge comes from on-the-job training and 20% through observation of others (together, these are ‘informal’ or ‘social’ learning), only a tiny 10% comes from ‘formal’ training, i.e. training courses, workshops, eLearning units and textbooks. For some reason, it is the 10% that L&D programmes focus on - which means employees miss out on 90% of learning which occurs informally! Therefore, when employees are encouraged to continue their education outside of the formal training, they actually come to remember more. 9. Reinforce learning. Organisations need to have a way to reinforce the learning content - otherwise, it will be forgotten. After all, without reinforcement, the training will be nothing more than knowledge transfer, which has been shown not to lead to any behavioural change (CAOT, 2005). Want to find out more? We’ve written a white paper all about social learning and how to encourage learners to start sharing their knowledge with their peers. Read it by clicking the button below!  The post 9 Ways to Unite Talent and Learning Management! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re really happy to let the cat out of the bag and tell the world that we’re going to be exhibiting at Learning Technologies on 28th and 29th January 2015 in Olympia, London. It’s always such a great event but for the last couple of years we’ve attended only as visitors - so it’s fantastic to be ‘taking a stand’ (stand 150 to be precise) and exhibiting to all you lovely attendees. We’re especially excited this year because… *drumroll*… we’re going to be announcing a new product! We can’t say too much about it right now, but let’s just say that there will be something magical happening on the day… Something that will delight eLearning creators far and wide… Something that will excite learners and revolutionise eLearning for good… As an extra treat for you, Juliette - Growth Engineering’s Managing Director - will be taking to the stage in her usual passionate, energetic style at 3.30pm on Day 2 in Seminar Three to talk all about this exciting new product. As a bit more of a teaser, we can tell you that she’ll be inviting the audience to join her in the battle against dull eLearning and to commit to making the online world a brighter, more exciting place for learners. So if you’re going to be at Learning Technologies, please drop by and say hello! We love a good natter and we’re overjoyed to be able to share our new product with you. In the meantime, why not download one of our white papers? It’s ready and waiting for you!  The post Learning Technologies 2015: Here We Come! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

By now, you may have heard quite a bit about gamification, the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios. (If not, click here to start at the very beginning - it is a very good place to start, after all!) We believe that gamification is the best way to get learners engaged with training content - and we’ve written about it before. But, you might be wondering, how exactly does one go about ‘gamifying’ eLearning? Does it involve navigating the screen with a Playstation controller, or dishing out some playing cards? Nope! Here are 15 ways you can gamify your online learning: 1. Break the eLearning into specific sections. Being faced with three hours’ worth of eLearning is daunting! It’s a much better idea to split the eLearning content up into discrete, bite-sized parts. You can put a quiz at the end of every section and, if they pass, award the learner a virtual badge. 2. Separate the content into different, graded levels. Make the learning journey more fun! Hide content from learners until they ‘unlock’ the module by gathering enough points or badges. So the more they do and the further they progress, the more content is available for them to experience. 3. Track scores in each section. Once a learner can see how well they’re doing in each section, they can work on increasing their average score! 4. Make rewards shareable. Allow rewards like badges, certificates or achievements to be posted on social media sites and internal company intranets. If someone’s doing really well, it’s nice to be able to show off a little bit. 5. Introduce time constraints. Make ‘levels’ date or time sensitive, so students need to check in each day, week or month to receive new challenges. If they don’t log in within the time limit, they’ll have missed the boat - and their fellow learners will have overtaken them on the leaderboard! 6. Encourage social learning. Create group assignments so that students collaborate together to accomplish projects. This’ll tap into the 90% of learning which occurs ‘informally’ - 70% occurs through observation of others and 20% through on-the-job training! 7. Make it matter. Introduce the concept of a ‘quest’ or ‘epic meaning’, where learners submit a piece of work which reinforces learning or cultural norms. 8. Incentivise users to share and comment on other people’s work. This embeds learning and encourages knowledge sharing - which, as we saw in #6, is great for retaining knowledge! 9. Delight learners. Surprise users with extra bonus rewards when they finish a particularly difficult eLearning module or pass a new challenge. They’ll appreciate the extra goodies! 10. The heat is on. Create artificial pressure by using ‘countdowns’ on quizzes. This makes users tackle challenges under time constraints - a skill which is very useful in their day-to-day work lives. 11. Punishments! Take away badges, or rewards, if challenges are not met successfully. It might sound harsh, but if you want learners to appreciate the gamified rewards then you need to make them worthwhile; a status symbol, if you will. A pop star won’t stay popular for long if they never release any new material. 12. Try and try again. Don’t make the eLearning a one-time deal. Instead, make role-playing or branching scenarios within the eLearning infinite, or repeatable, so that if the challenge is not met successfully, the learner has to find a solution. They can’t just give up and admit defeat - the answer is there, so they have to make the effort to find it! 13. Create a story. Introduce characters that help and hinder the learner on their journey. It’ll make it more engaging and memorable. 14. Personalisation. The learner can create or select a character to ‘play’ throughout the eLearning, or - even better - play as themselves! You’ll be amazed at how enthusiastic a learner will be to save their character from the Swamp of Stupidity when they’ve created it themselves. 15. Make it competitive! Post leaderboards showing learner performance across departments, geographies and specialisms to encourage competition and collaboration. No one wants to be at the bottom of the heap. This works particularly well with salespeople, who are naturally competitive (who’d have guessed!?). Want to find out more about how to gamify online learning? Download our white paper!  The post How to Gamify: 15 ways to introduce gaming concepts into eLearning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

This week’s Learning Hero is Cheri Baker! We like Cheri Baker because, just like us, she’s on a mission to help good companies become great companies. The heart of any organisation is made up of its people but it’s no good having a heart without a pulse. As an organisational development specialist, and the president of Emergence Consulting in Seattle, WA, Cheri makes it her business to help organisations to find their pulse and put the life back into their business. In order to improve their results, these businesses have to improve the performance of their people. Cheri utilizes a wide-ranging set of specialities and services from arranging teambuilding workshops and retreats to providing customer service training and creating drives to improve employee engagement. It might seem obvious to some people, but it’s not enough to focus on one area of a business and hope for great results. To improve your company culture, you need to find areas in need of development at all levels. Cheri is well aware of this fact, and that’s why she provides such a range of services to managers and supervisors as well as employees. Besides her consultancy work, Cheri is also an aspiring novelist, or as her Twitter bio puts it, "Management consultant by day, struggling novelist by night." That might seem a little inconsequential, but it does have some impact when it comes to her blog. Like many people in the Learnosphere (you heard that here first!), Cheri produces a regular stream of articles featuring advice on productivity, observations on work culture and much more. The thing that sets Cheri apart from some of her peers is that her blog posts are actually a joy to read. Not only do these posts provide some useful information, they’re filled with personal experiences and real stories proving once more that she knows a thing or two about engagement. If you want to find out a little more about what Cheri does, check out the Emergence Consulting website, or you can visit her professional blog, The Enlightened Manager. On the other hand, if you want something more informal (with added puns!), you can visit her personal blog. For more a bite-size helping of Cheri, you can also follow her on Twitter or Facebook. In any company, an engaged workforce is the key to success. A high level of engagement can mean the difference between a team of motivated employees and a horde of zombie learners. In The Night of the Learning Dead, Roger the L&D manager unlocks a zombie curse by choosing the wrong Learning Management System. Find out what happens for yourself by hitting that button below…if you dare!  The post This week’s Learning Hero is Cheri Baker! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re pleased to announce that at this year’s Learning Technologies show - taking place on 28th and 29th January 2015 in Olympia, London - the world’s #1 eLearning expert, Craig Weiss, will be hosting three seminars on the Growth Engineering stand! Craig is an eLearning analyst, expert, blogger, speaker, thought leader and all-round nice guy. He runs the E-Learning 24/7 blog which sheds light on the eLearning industry one arresting blog post at a time. In fact, he just released his Top 10 LMS Forecasts for 2015 - check it out here. Back to the show. Craig is offering lucky Learning Technologies attendees the chance to hear him speak three times during the event; twice on Day 1 (28th) and once on Day 2 (29th). Simply head on over to Stand 150 (that’s the awesome Growth Engineering stand - and with what we’ve got planned, it’ll be easy to spot!) at the below times, open your minds and prepare to be blown away! Day 1, 11am: Craig will be talking about LMS Trade Shows - if you’ve never been to an event like this before, this is a great introduction to what you should be asking to get the most out of the event and make the most of your valuable time. Day 1, 2.30pm: That afternoon Craig will host a question and answer session, ‘Town Hall Q&A’. Got a question about the eLearning industry? Wondering why he has crowned our Academy the #1 LMS in the world? Need a new LMS but not sure what functionality you need? Fire away! Craig will be on hand to answer anything that pops into your head. Day 2, 11am: Day two may just be even more exciting than the first day: Craig’s talk that day will divulge insider information about eLearning in the UK. If you want to find out where eLearning in the UK is going, how it’s unique and what to watch out for, this is the talk for you! But that’s not all! If you find yourself with a spare half hour later on during Day 2, head to Seminar Three at 3.30pm: you’ll be able to hear Juliette Denny, Growth Engineering’s Managing Director, explain how to create super-engaging game-based eLearning with our brand new product, Genie. What’s not to like!? We hope you’re as excited about Learning Technologies as we are. We count ourselves very lucky to not only be ranked the #1 LMS in the world by Craig Weiss, but to have him join us on Stand 150 too. We look forward to seeing you there! In the meantime, why not check out our white paper on how our Academy Learning Management System will help you secure awesome return on investment?  The post Craig Weiss to Host THREE Talks at Growth Engineering’s Learning Technologies Stand appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Do you know what the biggest problem with online learning is? Here’s the answer: it is goshdarn mind-numbingly boring! The majority of eLearning sends learners to sleep, makes them dread their upcoming training and causes them to question whether they really want to improve their skills and knowledge in the first place - is torturous online learning really worth it!? And that’s a massive problem. The entire purpose of online training is to upskill learners, improve their career prospects and put them in a great position to not only excel themselves, but to push the organisation forward to new successes, too. So when it comes to fixing the problem of boring learning, what can be done? There are a number of ways to improve online learning and engage learners with their training, from personalising the eLearning courses and rewarding learners with points and badges (i.e. gamification), to encouraging learners to compete with one another and share their knowledge. We’ll cover them all another time (or you can click here or here to read a couple of nice meaty white papers which should cover everything!), but for now, let’s talk about Learning Objectives. It might sound a bit boring and remind you of being in a classroom at school, but learning objectives are an essential part of online learning. But there is more to a learning objective than a statement of what the learner is required to understand at the end of the training. When learning objectives are used in the correct way, learning won’t seem so dull and boring; online learning will have meaning, direction and excitement. Learning Objectives Aren’t One-Offs: You should always think of learning objectives as individual parts of an ongoing ‘whole’ training programme. Sure, one module might be stand-alone (such as ‘Deciding which fire extinguisher to use in a fire’), in which case the associated learning objectives might be: Correctly identify which fire extinguisher to use for a particular fire Understand how to use fire extinguishers But don’t forget that it is part of an employee’s whole training about fire safety - they also need to learn about how to prevent fires, what to do in the event of a fire, who to contact, the escape routes and so on. Learning objectives aren’t discrete training goals - think of them as ingredients in a cake. You need to add all the right ingredients in the correct order to make a tasty cake, rather than a dry, dusty disaster (which is what a lot of eLearning becomes!). Learning Objectives Should be Meaningful: So, if we agree that learning objectives aren’t discrete goals but part of a whole learning journey, how do we make them ‘add up’ correctly and make the journey worthwhile? With online learning, one of the ways to do this - and something that is available on our Academy, the world’s #1 LMS - is to assign learning to ‘Levels’. As learners interact with their LMS and take training, they’ll gain points, just like in a video game. Once they’ve gained the requisite number, they’ll ‘level up’. Levels on the Academy LMS are an aspect of the gamification functionality that we really think makes a difference to the learner experience. So if the overarching goal of training is to understand the fire safety policies and best practices within an organisation, then ‘Levels’ can be created to encompass each stage of the training. Let’s see how it might work: A learner logs on to their LMS for the first time in order to take the fire safety course required of them by their organisation. As soon as they enter the exciting world of online learning, they’re assigned to the first ‘Level’: Raging Blaze. Associated with this Level are some predefined eLearning modules, access to specific chat groups (or ‘Insight Groups’, as we call them) and extra reading that relates to their Level. After they go through everything available to them and learn about, say, the first thing to do upon discovering a fire, they’ll take a test or assessment to check they’ve learnt the topic. After doing all this, the learner will have accrued sufficient ‘Points’ to take them over the threshold of that Level and into the next one: Smouldering Fire. In this Level, learners are given access to different eLearning modules, groups, tests and additional material. Again, they progress through, until they’ve gained enough points to ‘level up’ to the final level: Cooling Embers. See how it’s all connected? Aligning learning objectives to Levels makes the whole process smoother, ensures learners are learning the right things in the correct order, keeps their training structured and even adds an element of fun - I’m sure we all know how enticing it is to earn points and ‘level up’; it’s the focus of almost every computer game around, after all! Want to find out more? Click here to read about how important it is that online learning is engaging, or click below to go back to basics and discover exactly what eLearning can do for your organisation!  The post The Biggest Problem With eLearning, And How You Can Fix It appeared first on Growth Engineering.

‘Selling’ an online learning solution to senior management can be tricky - there are lots of misconceptions of eLearning that you’ll need to push through, objections you’ll need to tackle and explanations you’ll need to give. As an integral part of the Learning and Development department, your job includes convincing senior management that eLearning is the way forward. In order to make sure you get off to a great start in your campaign to move training online, here are seven things that senior management will want to know about eLearning: 1. Why is online learning a good solution? What’s wrong with the traditional training the organisation has been doing for donkey’s years? To reassure your boss that making the move from classroom training to eLearning is the thing, you’ll need to provide costs and statistics of your current training. How much does, say, one day of workshop training cost the organisation? Don’t forget, this isn’t just in terms of classroom hire and booking a tutor. How much will be lost in daily sales? What about travel expenses, lunches and accommodation? Compare this to the possible costs of online learning. While the initial costs may seem large, once you factor in the fact that learning can be conducted outside of working hours, employees don’t need to be ferried around or given lunches, and they won’t miss a day working, you can see that eLearning might just be the solution your organisation has been looking for. 2. Or, we already have an LMS - why do you want to change it? This is might be more tricky to answer, particularly if your current LMS has been a bit of a disaster. Of course your bosses will be hesitant to sign off on another hare-brained idea if the last one wasn’t exactly successful. What does the new LMS have that your previous or current platform doesn’t? What is it capable of, and - this is really important, so write it down! - how will it ensure a better return on investment? It’s no good telling your boss that this new LMS has gamification features and social functionality - if you don’t explain how this will improve learner engagement and motivation, and therefore knowledge, there’s no reason for them to give credence to your suggestion. 3. How will you engage learners? Online learning has a bit of a reputation. It can be seen as boring, dull, tedious, poorly-executed and ineffective. That’s why your boss will ask you how you’ll overcome these things and make learning enjoyable and engaging for learners. Have you thought about how exactly you will engage learners? Some options are: - Gamification - Game-based eLearning - Social and informal learning styles 4. What will the ROI be? So, you’ve told senior management that an LMS will save your organisation money, engage learners and make learning fun. But we all know that at the end of the day, return on investment is important. Are you able to give an estimation of ROI? If you’re struggling, check out our white paper on how to make sure your LMS is delivering ROI: 5. What about our HR system? We paid a lot of money for that! Most good LMSs are pretty clever in that they will interact or ‘integrate’ with other software services. Our Academy LMS, for instance, will integrate with intranets, HR systems, CRMs and products like Salesforce and Workday. It’s really simple - find out more about integrations here! 6. How long will it take to implement? If everything is sounding good so far, senior management might be wondering how long it will take to implement this wonderful new system. The answer? Well, that entirely depends! Do you want integration work completed before you launch? Do you want to roll out the training as part of a larger marketing effort? Of course, this also depends on what LMS provider you choose - we can go from first contact to launch within just a few weeks! 7. What about creating eLearning, though? Isn’t that costly and difficult? Not always! With Genie, our game-based authoring tool, you can create really engaging eLearning in two shakes of a lamb’s tail - or two rubs of Genie’s lamp! We’re not quite ready to tell you all about Genie right yet, but check back soon to find out more! When you can answer all these questions clearly, concisely and confidently, you’ll be in a great position to really put forward your online learning idea - and if you need a bit more help, check out the white paper we wrote on all the common objections we’ve heard:  The post 7 Things About eLearning Your Boss Wants to Know appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Here at Growth Engineering, we’re big believers in the importance of lifelong learning. We think that there is always something new to learn and that our learning journeys should never come to an end. And it seems we’re not the only ones who think this way! There are plenty of quotes out there - from geniuses and historical figures to pop icons - that show we’re not alone in loving learning. We decided to trawl the internet for our favourite learning quotes. We hope they get you thinking and motivate you to continue pushing your self-development forwards! 1. There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning. - Jiddu Krishnamurti 2. We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change. And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn. - Peter Drucker 3. I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught. - Winston Churchill 4. Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. - Mahatma Gandhi 5. Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it. - Albert Einstein 6. One learns from books and example only that certain things can be done. Actual learning requires that you do those things. - Frank Herbert, Children of Dune 7. Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn. - Benjamin Franklin 8. Develop a passion for learning. If you do, you will never cease to grow. - Anthony J. D’Angelo 9. One hour per day of study in your chosen field is all it takes. One hour per day of study will put you at the top of your field within three years. Within five years you’ll be a national authority. In seven years, you can be one of the best people in the world at what you do. - Earl Nightingale 10. You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way. - Marvin Minsky11. If you can’t explain it in simple terms, you don’t understand it. - Growth Engineering 12. Research shows that you begin learning in the womb and go right on learning until the moment you pass on. Your brain has a capacity for learning that is virtually limitless, which makes every human a potential genius. - Michael J. Gelb 13. You learn something every day if you pay attention. - Ray LeBlond 14. Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young. - Henry Ford 15. In the end we retain from our studies only that which we practically apply. - Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe 16. We learn by teaching. - Proverb 17. Ask a question and you’re a fool for three minutes; do not ask a question and you’re a fool for the rest of your life. - Chinese Proverb Which of these quotes about learning resonates most strongly with you? If we’ve inspired you to take control of your own knowledge and learning, the next step is to check out our research paper on why it’s so vitally important that you enjoy any training and development you decide to undertake. Check it out below!    The post 17 Insightful Quotes About Learning to Inspire You appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Here at Growth Engineering, we know how learning and development can really engage employees, boost morale and improve company culture. Although adequate training is undoubtedly a vital cornerstone in your company culture, it’s not the only thing that needs to be considered. All good managers and leaders understand that to craft the kind of company that people want to work for, it’s important to have clearly defined values and goals. It’s easy to find out how to do a job - it’s up to your company culture to tell you why. S. Chris Edmonds is a speaker, consultant and author who makes it his mission to help out organisations by showing them how to improve their company culture. Chris embarked on a consulting career in the early 90s after 15 years leading business teams. Since then he has become an authority on the importance of organisational culture and he has done a lot to change the way it is perceived by business leaders. When it comes to running a business, company culture has for a long time been considered the "soft stuff" of the mix. It’s taken for granted that task management and KPIs are the aspects that demand the most focus. In reality though, it is becoming steadily obvious that it’s the so-called "soft stuff" that makes the difference between companies that just get by, and those that surpass expectations and thrive. This is one of the main lessons to take from The Culture Engine, Chris’ latest book. In this book, Chris sets out a plan for anyone who wants to unlock the power of their organisational culture. The framework he presents helps managers to define their company culture, identify patterns of behaviour that generate the best results and build those behaviours into the company’s ethos. This latest offering from Chris Edmonds brings together his years of experience and it’s a great starting point for anyone who wants to improve employee engagement, customer experience and of course, profit! You can check it out for yourself here. You can find out more about Chris and his consultancy work on his website, or you can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. At Growth Engineering, we’ve seen what amazing results businesses can gain from bringing everyone together and celebrating who they are. Our learning solutions are designed to engage learners and make them feel like they are part of a winning team. By applying the principles of Social Learning to your L&D, you can discover a new realm of engagement and build a company that your people are proud to be a part of. Want to know how? Just click the button!  The post This week’s Learning Hero is S. Chris Edmonds! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Drumroll please… Growth Engineering’s Academy LMS has been ranked the #1 LMS in the entire universe! Ok, technically it’s the best LMS in the world, but that’s still a pretty awesome feat, right? eLearning expert Craig Weiss - yep, the same one who will be joining us on our stand (Stand 150) for three talks at Learning Technologies - reviewed hundreds of Learning Management Systems and came to the same conclusion that we’ve always known to be true - Growth Engineering’s Gamified Social Academy LMS is the best, most incredible, most jaw-dropping, most fun and most engaging LMS in the solar system! And, according to Craig, it’s not hard to see why. Craig highlights our ‘extraordinary’ service and support, ‘commitment to push the envelope’ and ‘monthly updates with enhancements and feature sets, rather than tweaks’ that most LMSs release. Pretty neat, right? If you’re interested in reading more, check out Craig’s website here or download his report here. And don’t forget, Craig will be joining us on Stand 150 at Learning Technologies on 28th and 29th January! He’ll be hosting three talks, two on day 1 and a final talk on day 2. Click here for more information. If you want to see for yourself just why Growth Engineering’s Academy LMS is the best in the world, why not take a tour?          The post Growth Engineering’s Academy LMS is officially the Best LMS in the World appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It will come to no surprise to you when we say that technology is changing almost every aspect of our lives. From birth to death (and every fun dip, climb and twist on the rollercoaster of life in between), technology is making its mark. Whether it’s the way we brush our teeth, navigate cities or read books, advances in computing, circuitry, robotics and the internet are affecting everything we do. And - you may have guessed this already - it applies to learning, too! Nowadays, organisational training doesn’t have to remain firmly wedged in a seat in the classroom. It has been released from its confines and we can now learn anytime, anywhere and anyhow! That’s because, when it comes to training, technology opens up so many opportunities. With online learning that utilises all this awesome new technology, learners are able to log on to their Learning Management System when they’re lying in bed on a rainy Sunday or on their lunch break during the week. They can take eLearning courses in their own time, at their own pace, and yet the training is so engaging that it is still effective. In the past, organisational training may have involved months of planning, weeks of arranging venues and tutors, hours of poring over budget sheets and hundreds (of thousands) of pounds in lost sales. If you wanted to train up your best salespeople, you’d have to take them away from doing their job for the whole training programme - which is counterintuitive at best, and pretty silly at worst! But now, you don’t need to drag your employees away from their jobs for week-long workshops or training days. Instead, they can do an hour’s work here and there, an assignment on a quiet day or during the weekend, and get a lot more done - all while continuing to push the company forward to ever greater success! Not only is technology making it easier to access online learning, but it’s making it more fun, engaging and exciting, too. For starters, advances in technology mean that now it’s possible to hook learning up with rewards like virtual badges and points. This makes learning more like a game - in fact, it’s a technique that’s called gamification, and we’ve found that gamification helps to get learners engaged and make learning fun! Want to find out more about what advances in technology are doing for learning? Check out our white paper below!  The post How Technology is Changing the Way We Learn appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Are your learners engaged or have they been infected with the zombie virus? Are they eager beavers or slow-moving sloths? If you tick the boxes of these 9 points, you’ll know that your learners aren’t engaged - and you’ll know you need to invest in learner engagement posthaste! 1. You can almost smell the dread coming off your learners - the stench of disengagement pervades every nook and cranny of the office. As soon as that email inviting them to take their compliance eLearning lands in their inbox, you’ll hear their screams and groans from all directions. 2. Learners put off their training for as long as humanly possible. And when they do finally get around to doing it, they make sure everyone knows it’s not willingly. "This is so boring! I’m only doing it because I have to. It’s not like I’ll learn anything from it anyway." 3. ZOMBIES! Your learners are so bored and lifeless they may as well be zombies. They’re brain dead; nothing more than shuffling corpses. Click here for a video of how to cure your learners of the zombie virus! 4. Your learners only log on to their Learning Management System under threat of death (or loss of job). If your learners were engaged, you wouldn’t have to bribe, pester or threaten them in order to get them going on their Learning Management System. 5. Your learners aren’t, you know, learning anything. You can’t see any improvements in their performance, increases in sales or boosts in knowledge. D’oh! You’re in exactly the same place as you were before the training programme, except for one issue: you’ve spent your L&D budget! 6. Your learners bad-mouth their online training any change they get. Employees that do this aren’t just lacking engagement - they’re actively disengaged. They don’t just find the training boring - they HATE IT WITH A PASSION! Phew. Calm down. 7. Activity on your Learning Management System begins to trail off. What might once have appeared to be a buzzing hive of activity is now a graveyard - complete with cobwebs. Learners just aren’t logging on as often as they used to. This is because they realised pretty early on that the only kind of eLearning they’ll get on their LMS is boring. It just won’t keep their attention - so they’re not bothering.8. Learners zoom through eLearning modules… But don’t take anything in. If you create eLearning units that learners can just click right on through, guess what? If they’re not engaged, they’ll do just that. We’ve even heard some learners say they’ll compete to see who can click their way through the fastest! 9. Your return on investment is atrocious. Sorry, but that’s the crux of it. If your online learning isn’t engaging, your learners won’t learn and your training programme will be a complete disaster! This’ll be apparent in your learners’ reviews of their training, senior management’s perceptions and ultimately the return you’ll get on your training spend. If any of these seem familiar to you, then start panicking - yesterday. Your first step towards securing learner engagement is to download our white paper. It’ll tell you why engagement is important and how to send it sky-rocketing. Just click the button below:  The post 9 Signs You Need to Invest in Learner Engagement appeared first on Growth Engineering.