Earlier this month it was announced that our Learning Management System - the Academy LMS - was placed in the Number 1 spot in eLearning expert Craig Weiss’s list of Top 50 LMSs. We were so excited we could hardly contain ourselves! In fact, we couldn’t even wait until Craig had released his corresponding blog post on his report before we wrote our own. But now we’re happy to say Craig’s blog post is live and you can check it out for yourself. Craig reviews over 600 LMSs for his report, so coming first out of all of those contenders is a massive achievement - well done Team GE! Head over to Craig’s website to read his article or click here to download his full Top 50 LMS for 2015 report - well worth the purchase, especially because you’ll get the money back if you then choose to go with the Academy LMS, the world’s best Learning Management System (no, I don’t think we’ll ever get bored of saying that!). Here’s what Craig said about li’l ol’ Growth Engineering’s gamified social LMS: "I could write thousands of words on this system and it still wouldn’t be enough. By far the most modern hip front and back end in the industry (i.e. learner and admin).  One of the very few systems, that I as a learner would have fun and want to stay in.  Support is elite. Constantly adding new features and capabilties.  Mobile rolling out includes on/off synch, native app with xAPI. Gamification - the best in the market. This is a LMS wrapped around gamification, so if you are not into gamification, this may not work for you. My take though, is today you may not be using gamification, but a year from now?  Features are all there and then some.  They are launching Q2 a built-in authoring tool with gamification tied around it and some gaming elements. Badge Library included, social solid, learner huge win!  #1 in Next Gen, #1 in Retail.  They are also working on a HE version which will offer different features than corporate, another nice win for me." Nice, eh? Click here to read the rest. If your interest in the world’s #1 LMS is piqued, there are a few things you can do: 1. Get in touch with us to request a demo tour of our Academy. We’re so proud of our LMS and we love to show it off! 2. Download some of our white papers to find out more about what we do - and why! Some particular highlights are (click each one): Social Learning: How to set your learning free How to secure ROI on your LMS Overcoming common objections to online learning The Business Case for Gamification 3. Click the button below and fill in the form and we’ll get back in touch at a time that suits you. We’re nice like that! We look forward to talking to you!  The post The Academy LMS is the #1 Learning Management System in the World appeared first on Growth Engineering.

This week, we’ve chosen one of the most prolific bloggers on the internet. The label "prolific blogger" can be a double-edged sword. Sure, everyone likes to follow a blog that’s updated regularly but all too often that results in a regular stream of okayish content that’s occasionally ‘hmm’, but more often than not, it’s a bit ‘meh’. This is only to be expected - it’s simply impossible to produce engaging and inspiring content all day, every day, isn’t it? Well, it can be done, but it means working your backside off and dedicating yourself to a mission of enlightenment and most bloggers are hobbyists at best. In her blog, Brain Pickings, Maria Popova does the impossible and consistently writes insightful articles about the most inspirational aspects of literature, culture and philosophy. In an interview for Lifehacker, Maria confesses to spending over 450 hours per month working on Brain Pickings. Now when you consider that there are only 730 hours, give or take, in a month, that doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for eating and sleeping and all of those other damned distractions. But, from our point of view at least, it’s time well spent. Brain Pickings is one of those blogs that you can feel proud to read. Each article is composed of bits and bobs collected by Maria in her constant quest for knowledge and they have the unique ability to make the reader feel both clever and ignorant at the same time. Most striking of all is that it’s impossible to walk away from Brain Pickings without feeling amazed and inspired. With blog titles like these, it’s easy to see why: 20-Year-Old Hunter S. Thompson’s Superb Advice on How to Find Your Purpose and Live a Meaningful Life Famous Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary An Antidote to the Age of Anxiety: Alan Watts on Happiness and How to Live with Presence And that’s just three articles picked at random so you can imagine what the rest of the site is like! One of the most inspirational articles on Brain Pickings concerns the lessons that Maria has learned since starting the project in 2006. Back then it was only a weekly email that she sent to some of her friends and colleagues. You can read the article here, or check out this short video in which Maria sums up her 7 lessons. If you want to pick Maria’s brain (and we strongly recommend that you do), then pop along to Brain Pickings. You can also follow her on Twitter and Facebook and ensure a regular stream of mind-expanding status updates in your newsfeed. Maria’s incredible achievement is only possible because she’s passionate about what she does. At Growth Engineering, we’re passionate about exciting online learning. It’s the drive to share our passion with learners everywhere that gets us up every morning. If you want to make learning fun again and revolutionise your company culture, get in touch with us today!  The post This Week’s Learning Hero is Maria Popova appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re back from Learning Technologies 2015, and what an event it was! After taking a break from the event - held in Olympia Central in London on Wednesday 28th and Thursday 29th January - for a couple of years, it was a great experience to be back in the action and exhibiting alongside hundreds of other training companies, eLearning creators and technology companies. Our Sales and Commercial Champion gives a demo of our Academy LMS Learning Technologies hosts a huge number of free seminars for visitors, though we noticed a few exhibitors sneaking into seminars, too - us included! The seminars ranged from the basics of online learning and blended learning to creating eLearning apps and discovering the importance of compliance for L&D. Whatever your area of interest, there were seminars for you. We particularly enjoyed JollyDeck’s talk on good and bad uses of gamification, and of course our MD Juliette Denny’s talk on how to create awesome game-based eLearning. We were busy from start to finish, showing people the Academy LMS - our multi-award winning Learning Management System which was recently voted the #1 LMS in the world - and our brand new game-based authoring tool, Genie, which we launched at the event. We’re really excited about Genie; it’s a unique authoring tool that focuses on making eLearning simple and effortless for content creators as well as fun and engaging for learners - a win/win, if you ask us! There are just five simple steps to create awesome game-based learning with Genie: Upload your assets (images, videos, sound bites) Build your question bank (type in questions and answers - select from yes/no, multiple choice or text) Pick one of Genie’s game templates (e.g. Around the World, Pole Position, or any bespoke games you desire) Let Genie work his magic (behind the scenes Genie will take everything you’ve entered into the eLearning project and automatically populate the game) Delight your learners! Once Genie has waved his magic wand, you’ll have some incredible game-based eLearning that will make your learners happy and get them engaged, enthusiastic and motivated. We’re pleased to say that the interest in Genie was phenomenal. Whether it was people visiting us because of our awesome Genie-themed outfits or being directed to our stand by colleagues, we were bowled over (and delighted!) by the number of visitors wanting to find out more about our game-based authoring tool. It just goes to show that when you create something unique it’ll capture people’s attention. Want to find out more about Genie? Check out the video below and click here to read more. If you’d like to chat with us about Genie and what he can do for your organisation, click the button below and we’ll get in touch.  The post Game-based Delight at Learning Technologies 2015 appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Pitching eLearning to senior management can be tricky. They might be lacking time to listen to your presentation, budget to implement it or knowledge of what it can do for your organisation. That’s why we put together these 5 super-quick eLearning elevator pitches which will help you get your foot in the door. So imagine you’re in the lift with your boss and you have a couple of minutes for each pitch: 1. eLearning is cost effective Forget booking meeting spaces or classrooms, paying for lunches, travel, accommodation and workshop tutors. Forget the cost of lost sales that occur from taking your employees out of work for the day or week. Online learning is cost-effective because learners can log on to their Learning Management System during down time at work or at home, work through eLearning at their own pace and get things done when it’s convenient for them - and the organisation. 2. Learn anytime, anywhere, anyhow! With online learning, there’s essentially no limit to where or when employees can do their training. On the bus? Yep. On their lunch break? Of course. Snowed in at home? Yup! If some employees want to race ahead of others and get a head start, that’s fine. On the other hand, if others are really busy at work and need to get a project out of the way before they commit to training, that’s fine - just set a deadline and employees can make sure they have completed the training before then, whenever works for them. 3. Online learning is fun You might be met with a look of disbelief if you say this, but that’s only because it’s likely that your boss has had bad experiences of online learning in the past. But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s actually very simple and easy to make online learning fun and engaging: use gamification! Gamification involves using gaming mechanics like badges, points and leaderboards. It makes learning more fun because it encourages competition and makes undertaking eLearning modules and doing tests and assessments more enjoyable and engaging. And when learners are more engaged, they’ll be learning more. 4. Online learning is multi-language Rolling out classroom training to thousands of employees who speak a variety of languages is tricky. Luckily, our Academy LMS comes with a drop-down list of languages, which means each learner can select their own language. It really makes them feel at home! 5. Online learning is aligned to business needs Picture this: you work in a multi-national organisation with offices all over the world. New legislation comes in that affects every single person in your business. Your first thought is probably one of panic - how will you make sure all employees know of this legislation? How will you do so fast enough to satisfy the conditions? What will happen if you fail in rolling out this new information? Don’t panic. With online learning, this is easy. You’ll just have to create an announcement or a short eLearning module containing all the information, ‘invite’ your employees to take it on their Learning Management System and be able to monitor who has then learnt about the legislation. No travelling required; no phone calls; no meetings; no workshops. Simple. Want to find out more? We wrote a white paper to tackle all the most common criticisms and objections to online learning. Click the button below to download!  The post 5 Effective eLearning Elevator Pitches appeared first on Growth Engineering.

As if it wasn’t enough that we’ve given you the best Learning Management System in the world (as ranked by renowned expert Craig Weiss), we’ve also branched out into the exciting realm of authoring tools. We’ve been beavering away behind the scenes to bring you Genie - a content authoring tool like no other! Genie is a magical being that will grant all your eLearning wishes by creating fun, engaging and motivating game-based eLearning. Genie is obsessed with making learning fun. He’s passionate about engaging learners and really has all their best interests at heart. Let’s take a look at what Genie has to offer: THE DASHBOARD This is where eLearning wizards can see all their eLearning projects at a glance, from what projects are active to who is contributing the most and which badges are up for grabs or have been achieved. PROJECT ACTIVITY STREAM This is the place to keep up to date with everything that your team is doing - automatic and shared posts on the Dashboard show who is doing what and how each project is progressing. When it comes to actually creating awesome game-based eLearning, there are five steps: 1. Upload your assets ‘Assets’ are images, videos, sound bites, badges etc that will make your eLearning stand out and be more interesting and captivating for learners. Genie hates reams of text on slideshows, so images and videos make the learning much more enjoyable for learners.   2. Build your question bank Some of the games you can select (see #3) will require Genie to wave his magic wand and randomly pull questions from your question bank into the eLearning. It’s always a good idea to create more questions than you need, as this ensures learners see different questions and won’t be able to cheat by asking others what they put!   3. Choose a game template Genie has a few inbuilt game templates, such as Around the World, Pole Position (left) and Crossing the Chasm. But there is no limit to Genie’s abilities, so if you have your own idea for a game, let us know and we can get it created. The game you choose will depend on your specific eLearning needs and what you think will work best with the content. If you’re creating an assessment, then Crossing the Chasm will work really well - Genie will populate the game from the question bank, and learners will have to answer questions correctly in order to make it across the board. 4. Let Genie work his magic! Once you press ‘create’, Genie will set to work. He’ll hop on his magic carpet, wave his wand and get busy creating the best piece of game-based learning you’ll have ever seen!   5. Delight your learners! Picture this: learners start their eLearning unit expecting the same old yawn-inducing slideshow. But instead they’re instantly surprised and thrilled to find something entirely different! Badges, images and games, oh my!   If that’s not enough to excite you, well how about this: we’re offering lucky eLearning aficionados the chance to sign up for a Genie Beta Account to try Genie out before he’s officially launched into the big, bad world! Just click here and fill out the form to be on the list!    The post Magical game-based eLearning is effective and engaging appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Are you guilty of committing online learning sins? Do your learners dread your eLearning modules? Does your rigid approach and aversion to change and update your eLearning rankle your team? If you identify with any of these 7 deadly sins of online learning, you’ll need to rethink your eLearning strategy! Here’s what not to do if you don’t want your team to hate you and your learners to wish bad things on you! 1. Text overload! No one likes to read reams and reams of text, especially not on a computer screen or tablet. That’s why we like to keep our articles short and sweet, peppered with images and headings. It’s easier to read, right? Of course, some text is necessary in eLearning to explain terms, show workings or introduce new theories, but any more than that becomes overkill. "But how will I get the content across?" we hear you ask. Well, that’s where other forms of media come in: video and audio, specifically. We pay much more attention when we can see or hear a presenter than if we’re asked to read paragraphs of text. So next time you’re creating eLearning, make sure you keep it short and sweet. 2. Ignoring the learner. If you were baking a cake for someone’s birthday, would you think about whether they would like the taste, or would you do whatever seemed ‘easiest’ or most ‘functional’? If they were mad on chocolate, would you bake a Victoria sponge because that’s what you always do and you know the recipe off by heart? Of course not! You’d bake a gorgeous gooey chocolatey cake that they would adore. "Oh, it’s heaven!" they’d cry - not "Oh. Victoria sponge again… thanks." In the same way, when creating eLearning, you shouldn’t think about what makes your job easiest, what is quickest or involves the least amount of hard work. Instead, you should do everything within your power to make the eLearning appeal to your learners. 3. Lack of interactivity Next Arrow: Click. Next Arrow: Click. Next Arrow: Click. Next Arrow: Click. Boring, right? Your learners won’t appreciate you if your eLearning amounts to a plain old slideshow - and your team won’t be proud to put their name to this ‘eLearning’ that could really just be sent out as a PDF. Instead, the focus should be on interactivity; clicking various places on screen to progress, drag and drop exercises, inputting their own thoughts and experiences into the learning and choosing how they progress through the module. Interactivity like this will make the whole experience much more valuable and the content will stick in learners’ minds. 4. Yo, you ugly! The amount of ugly eLearning out there is crazy - we often stare at the screens thinking that it’s almost as though the content creator was trying to create the ugliest-looking, most poorly-working eLearning module they possibly could. You know, like how kids will do a really shoddy job of washing the dishes so they aren’t asked again? Yet it’s the job of these eLearning designers to create units that hundreds or thousands of learners will see. You’d think they’d try a little bit harder, right!? In simple terms: don’t be the ugly sister. Make the effort to be the beautiful Princess. 5. It’s too hard! What is more demoralising than logging on to take your eLearning unit and realising it’s all way above your head? It’s never nice to feel out of your depth, and eLearning that is unnecessarily technical, pitched too far above the learner’s level or full of complicated terms will really put them off. Solution? Make sure the content is pitched at the right level, never use an uncommon or overly-complicated (read: pretentious) term when you could use a well-known one, and make sure there is further reading available for those learners who need a bit more help. 6. It’s too easy! Everyone knows their ABCs and their 123s. If they didn’t, they certainly wouldn’t be in a position to undertake an eLearning module! So don’t treat them like idiots. If they’re taking a sales management training course, you can be confident that they’ll already know what ‘closing a sale’ is - don’t teach them to suck eggs. If an eLearning module is going to be worth a learner’s time, it needs to teach them things they don’t already know. It’s a delicate balance to strike, but one which will pay off dividends when a learner comes away from their training energised, full of beans and motivation, and ready to take on the world with their newfound knowledge! 7. It’s too long! Everyone’s time is precious, so it’s a deadly sin to draw out a learning module longer than it needs to be. If you can explain a theory in one paragraph, don’t try to stretch it over three slides because you think it looks more professional. Not only will it take you and your team longer to create, but the learner will certainly not appreciate it! In the same vein, if you say an eLearning unit will take 1.5 hours to complete, it better had - inaccurate timings will make you an object of hate where learners are concerned! Imagine they schedule in the time into their busy days and then find their course overruns and they have to either stop their eLearning or cancel a meeting… That certainly won’t get you into their good books! It pains us to say this, but this is by no meals a definitive list of eLearning sins - there are many more committed by even the most good-intentioned content creators. If you commit any of these seven deadly eLearning sins, make sure you heed our warnings and make a commitment to change! It’s never too late to learn how to create incredible eLearning - click here to find out more!  The post Seven Deadly Sins of Online Learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Securing learner engagement is often the trickiest part of your Learning & Development plan. You may be completely confident that your online training programme is the bee’s knees, but until you actually roll it out and see how your learners receive it, you won’t know if they are truly engaged. Engagement is really important - employees are 12% more productive when they’re engaged and happy, they take fewer sick days (3.9 compared to 10.7) and are consistently happy throughout the week, averaging between 94.7% and 95.5% happiness. The more engaged a learner is, the more motivated they are to learn - the harder they’ll try and the more they’ll persevere when training is tough. Gamification is one of the surest ways to ensure learners are engaged with their online learning. Not only does it make learning more fun, but it helps the learning content to stick in learners’ minds for longer, and encourages a healthy sense of competition within the learning group. All these things help to boost knowledge and organisational success. Today, we want to see what you think about learner engagement. Answering the form below will also grant you access to our super-duper new white paper, which explains all about how to directly align gamification with business objectives to make your training incredibly effective!  The post Learner Engagement Poll of the Day appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Over the past few years, we’ve had the pleasure of making the learning lives of thousands of employees much more enjoyable. Our Academy LMS - the #1 LMS in the world! - is built from the ground-up to be a delightful, engaging place for learners; gamification functionality makes learning exciting, and the social features encourage a deeper understanding of the learning content. Our Academy LMS has been successfully used by organisations all over the world, and we’re proud to have made a huge positive impact on the lives of so many people. As a company on a mission to provide learning to 10% of the world’s population in the next 10 years, we’re proud that our Academy LMS has been adopted by so many companies the world over and has made a huge positive impact on the lives of so many people. That’s why we’re so excited to announce that we have just taken on our very first Canadian client! Erickson Coaching International is the leading Canadian coaching and training organisation with over 40,000 graduates in over 36 countries. They have been pioneering transformational coach training and business leadership programmes since 1980, and we’re chuffed to bits that they love our Academy LMS enough to offer it to their students! As Erickson is focused on Higher Education, we’re going to be working closely with them to develop some specific education-focused features for the Academy LMS that will secure ever-higher levels of engagement and motivation. Our Managing Director, Juliette Denny, said: "Awesome! Erickson’s New Online Academy for The Art & Science of Coaching is a thrilling opportunity. We are excited to be focusing on the fast-growing Higher Education sector with a prestigious brand such as Erickson and are looking forward to making it a tremendous success!" Erickson will be utilising our gamification features on the Academy LMS - which was also ranked the #1 Gamified LMS in the world in 2014! - to apply a quest-like structure to their training to make the learning process more engaging and fun for students. Quests will be assigned for exercises, assignments and learning challenges to encourage learners to remain excited about the learning and progress further. Rewards like badges and points will motivate students, and Erickson will also be encouraging students to use reflective journaling techniques and blogging to reinforce the learning content. Marilyn Atkinson, Founder of Erickson said: "We’re very excited about our partnership with Growth. The breadth of the tools and offerings of its Academy LMS mean we can really enrich the learning environment for our students. We’re especially excited about the opportunity to offer interactive technologies which make the entire learning process more engaging and enjoyable." To celebrate the launch of the New Online Academy, Erickson and Growth Engineering will be joint-hosting an official launch event at one of Vancouver’s hot new venues, Steel Toad Brewpub and Dining Hall. Alumni, current students and graduates, partners, and trainers will gather to reconnect with the community, preview the New Online Academy, find out more about the technology behind the Academy and hear the latest updates from Erickson Coaching International on February 24, 2015. To find out more about Erickson Coaching International, click here. To discover what makes our Academy LMS so engaging for learners, click the button below to get a personal tour around the platform!    The post Announcing our First Canadian Client, Erickson Coaching International! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It’s a sad state of affairs that all too often your employees will push back against any training you offer them. It can seem like an insult, sometimes, to suggest they would benefit from learning new things and improving their skills. "Aren’t I good enough now?" they’ll wonder. "Am I really doing so badly that I need help?" It’s a tricky situation to be in, and it’s very important to tread carefully if you’re going to succeed in getting your employees engaged with their training. Here are our top tips to making online learning matter to employees: Make sure they know what’s in it for them Only when your employees see how they’ll benefit from the training will they be enthusiastic about it. Change the tune from ‘You need to do this eLearning course’ to ‘Are you interested in improving your chances of promotion?’ and your workers will be champing at the bit to log on to their Learning Management System and take the training! Emphasise the important role they play Reassure your employees that they aren’t tiny cogs in a huge machine - they are far more important to that. In fact, they’re vital to the success of the company. Their contribution is massive - that’s why it’s so important that they have the correct training and qualifications. Encourage leadership We’re sure there will be plenty of employees who would like a leadership role, but maybe they’re not qualified for it, or there are no openings within the company. Marketing their new training programme as a way in which they can lead a team (a team of learners, in this case) can be very motivating for these employees who want that extra bit of authority. Assign them roles like ‘Academy Advocate’ or ‘Training Pioneer’ and encourage them to boost team morale and desire to undertake training. Work training into their progression We’re not suggesting you bribe employees by telling them that if they study X, Y and Z eLearning modules they’ll get promoted. Oh no. But tying training into job progression and prospects can be a very useful tool in securing learner engagement. For instance, let’s say that a Team Leader needs to be trained in first aid. Clearly, undertaking a first aid training course is essential to reaching the level of a Team Leader. Put another way, if Sales Managers all hold accredited sales qualifications - such as from the ISMM - then it will be clear to employees what they need to do to put themselves in the running for a promotion. See? There are plenty of ways to get your employees invested in their training - contrary to popular opinion, it’s not always as difficult as pulling teeth! Want to find out more about how to supercharge employee engagement? Download our white paper below!  The post Making online learning matter to employees appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It can be difficult to create eLearning to a deadline, particularly when you’re working with a number of people, and going back and forth between subject matter experts, eLearning developers and L&D professionals. That’s one of the reasons we developed Genie, our brand new game-based content authoring tool. Genie is a little bit special - in addition to creating really engaging, fun game-based eLearning, it also makes the development of eLearning a whole lot of fun too! Here’s how: TEAMS With Genie, up to 10 eLearning creators can collaborate on eLearning modules. You have control over setting your teams and assigning individuals to certain tasks. You can specify who has what power - Christy can be an Administrator, with the power to create new users and change settings. Alan can be a content creator, meaning he can make awesome eLearning but he doesn’t have control over other users. And so on. PROJECT ACTIVITY STREAM Ever wonder what your colleagues are getting up to - whether they have finished uploading the images, or completed the badge library? Wonder no more! With the Project Activity Stream, you’ll be able to keep up to date with all that your fellow eLearning creators are doing. GAMIFICATION Ah, a little competition is always good! Genie’s project management functionality is gamified, meaning that eLearning creators can gain badges and points for uploading assets, making slides and finishing the games. It’s super-motivating for them to receive rewards in this way, and it keeps them going - particularly if they see that their colleague is overtaking them on the Genie leaderboard! Gamification keeps everyone on track, creating eLearning at the correct pace and hitting deadlines as they crop up. REWARD CENTRE All those lovely points that team members pick up can be exchanged for real-life rewards in the Reward Centre. Being able to gain real rewards - like gift vouchers and extra days off - is very motivating. It shows eLearning creators that the more they put into their job, the more they’ll get out of it. FORUMS This is a great place to chat with fellow content creators. You can share tips and tricks, talk about the latest learning methodologies, troubleshoot, or generally just chit-chat about what it takes to create awesome eLearning! FUN FACTS We’re all about fun here at Growth Engineering (as if you couldn’t guess!). As such, we created the ‘fun facts’ button: click here every day to get your daily dose of informative entertainment! Whether it’s the fact that a chameleon’s tongue is 1.5 times the length of its body, or that lightning strikes 1,000 times per second on earth, we’ll have something to get you thinking! All these project management tools (and extra little features that make life more fun) contribute to a great working environment for eLearning content creators. They help to keep work flowing, ensure deadlines are hit and make sure that the eLearning that is produced is truly exceptional. And the best bit? With Genie, your content creators don’t have to be eLearning developers who know their HTML from their jQuery. Oh no - instead, they just need to understand the topics they’re writing about, upload assets, drag and drop items into slides and then ask Genie to create the best darned game-based eLearning their learners will ever see! Want to find out more? Click here!    The post Keep Your eLearning on Track With Genie’s Project Management Tools appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Back in 2014 we created Night of the Learning Dead, a comic book (and later, video) centred around Rodger and his disastrous belief that choosing the cheapest legacy LMS on the market was a good idea. For Rodger, things quickly turned from bad to worse: not only were his employees not engaged with their training, but they had turned into brain-hungry zombies! With zombie learners prowling the halls and trying to eat him, Rodger admitted his mistake - and the Fairy Godmother of online learning appeared to show him the right way to make online learning! The Fairy Godmother showed Rodger that good Learning Management Systems need to be fun, social and collaborative; only then will learners really enjoy their training. With Fairy Godmother’s advice, Rodger’s employees were cured of the zombie learner virus and were soon enjoying the process of learning. Hurrah! Check out one page of the comic below: Our Night of the Learning Dead comic book was such a hit that we put our pens to paper again. For 2015, we’ve created a new comic book: There’s Something About Genie! In this comic we meet Alan, an L&D manager, who is desperately in love with Jasmine from HR. He tries everything he can think of to woo her and win her heart, but nothing is working. Meet Al and Jasmine. He loves her - she has no idea he exists… Suddenly Al has a lightbulb moment when he hears that the HR department requires a new piece of eLearning. "Aha!" Al thinks. "This is my chance to make Jasmine fall in love with me! I just need to create a really easy eLearning module for her…" Does he succeed? Do zombies make a reappearance? What is that mysterious lamp that just appeared on Al’s desk? And just what will Al’s third wish be…? To download our free There’s Something About Genie! comic and find out the answers to the above questions, click the button below!  The post Introducing Our New Comic: There’s Something About Genie! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re proud as punch to say that this week’s Learning Hero is none other than our brand new Canadian client, Erickson Coaching International! But before you cry "Conspiracy!" just hear us out. Erickson has been doing incredible work since 1980 - long before yours truly came onto the scene to help them create an exceptional Higher Education LMS. With over 40,000 graduates in 36 countries, Erickson has been pioneering transformational coach training and business leadership programmes for the last 35 years. And with a vision to ‘change the world one conversation at a time’, Erickson is well on its way revolutionising the way we learn about coaching and leadership. Erickson International was named after Milton Erickson, a therapist with a unique approach to therapy and a keen eye for observation. His idea that all behaviour has a positive, unconscious intent paved the way for what is now modern psychotherapy and forms the basis of ‘solution focused counselling’. Erickson’s ‘solution focused approach’ was pioneered and developed by Erickson’s founder Marilyn Atkinson, PhD, and has been tweaked and developed throughout Erickson International’s life. It’s a unique approach that integrates the profession of coaching with personal growth technologies - which means it’s a comprehensive approach that guides people towards a clearer understanding of their own unique path, and creates a framework to get them there. Erickson is completely focused on making the learning experience enriching for learners. Which explains why they chose to work with us to create their new learning portal, since our Academy Learning Management System is renowned for achieving high levels of learner engagement and supercharging motivation. In fact, Erickson have just launched a video to explain exactly what their new Online Academy for The Art & Science of Coaching is all about. Check it out below and see for yourself the passion that goes into everything Erickson do!  So thank you, Erickson Coaching International, for being so inspiring - the whole Erickson International team are real Learning Heroes! You can find out more about Erickson Coaching International here, or click here to find out about their exciting launch event on 24th February. If you’d like to see for yourself just why Erickson Coaching International chose to create their new programme using our Academy LMS - the #1 LMS in the world, as ranked by eLearning expert Craig Weiss - then click the button below and we’ll show you!    The post This week’s Learning Hero is… Erickson Coaching International! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

While online learning is without a doubt an incredibly effective method of training your employees, there will be situations in which you’ll have to supplement eLearning with some real-world training. Take health and safety for example. You can teach learners the basics online - what to do in the event of a fire, the correct procedure for a broken limb, what to do if a hazardous substances gets into eyes, and so on. But good luck teaching an employee how to give mouth-to-mouth without using a dummy! There are some things that simply need to be taught and practised in real life. That’s why we’ve made it really easy to combine online and offline training - the Classroom Booking functionality on our Academy LMS makes managing classroom training oh-so-simple! From the Admin side of the LMS, admins will need to select Content then ‘Classroom’ from the dropdown menu. From there, you can create and edit classroom bookings, invite learners to courses and even stipulate what learners need to have achieved before they arrive. This means you can set learners specific learning goals to make sure they arrive at the classroom event armed with all the facts and knowledge they need - which makes the classroom training a way to reinforce the learning and make it stick better. As Admins, you’ll be able to check who has accepted the invitation, what extra work they’ve done on their LMS to prepare for the event (i.e. what ‘suggested reading’ they have completed) and whether some learners might need a bit more encouragement to get them prepared for the classroom training day. Classroom booking and management via your LMS is also great in case any information about the event needs updating. If the date, time, classroom or any other details change, learners will receive automated emails to let them know. So rather than an Admin having to send a mass email to all learners informing them of the change - or a learner turning up at the original date and time and finding no one there! - learners will know straight away if anything changes. Finally, linking classroom events and online training allows organisations to bring technology into the classroom. One of the possible reasons that you deviated from traditional classroom training in the first place was because it wasn’t engaging your learners; online learning (complete with awesome technology, gamification, social functionality and so on) solved this issue. So the thought of bringing learners back into the classroom might fill you with dread: "Oh no, we’re heading back to disengaged, bored learners!" On the contrary. By combining online and offline learning, we actually gain the best of both worlds: the engagement of technology and the kinds of skills that can only be learnt in real-life training environments. Here’s how the process works: Create the training on your LMS: call it, say, Health and Safety 101. Assign eLearning units to the development stream - Fire Safety, Resuscitation and Calling 999, for instance - and then invite learners to the dev stream. They should start taking the eLearning modules, reading up on the subject, chatting amongst themselves and gaining points and badges to bring them up the leaderboard. Then, create the classroom event and invite learners. During the classroom training, tutors will be able to monitor learners’ progress, see who has done what and - here’s the really clever bit - report back on what they’re learning during the event. Tests and assessments can be created to be taken before, during and after the classroom training, to track how much employees are learning and how their knowledge is improving. Utilising technology in the classroom also makes it a lot more engaging and captivating for learners. In fact, we wrote a white paper on this a couple of months ago! Just click the button below to download it and learn about how important it is to bring technology into the classroom:  The post Managing Classroom Training from Your LMS appeared first on Growth Engineering.

When you love your job, everything seems that bit easier. Your days don’t drag, you don’t watch the clock, you bounce out of bed with a spring in your step and you don’t begrudge working a few hours extra here and there - in fact, you want to, because you care about what you’re doing. For those of us that feel like this, worklives are rosy. But if you’re missing the enthusiasm and can’t imagine skipping down the street to work, you need to work on your motivation. Here are five of our favourite TED Talks about work and leadership that will help to reignite your passion! 1. Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action "Why is Apple so innovative?" Sinek asks. After all, there are plenty of other computer companies out there. And why did Martin Luther King lead the Civil Rights Movement, when he wasn’t the only man who suffered in pre-civil rights America? The answer, suggests Sinek, is that these people and companies act differently to everyone else. Ultimately, the companies and people who succeed most and lead the way know why they do that they do. They don’t just know what they do (‘make computers’) or how (‘building processors’ etc), but they understand why (‘to revolutionise computing, to make lives easier, to create portable solutions’). Watch Simon’s TED Talk below to find out what your ‘why’ is and change how you see your job.   2. Susan Colantuono: The career advice you probably didn’t get Susan explains that there’s a lack of women in senior leadership positions, and she wants to know why and what can be done to rectify this. "Why are so many women in the middle and what has to happen to take them to the top?" Susan explains that there is a missing 33% of the career success equation that women, generally, are lacking. Find out what this 33% is and how you can work to close the gap by watching the video below:   3. Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity maker Kare grew up ‘phobically shy’, so she spent a great proportion of her childhood simply watching and observing people. And she noticed something: there were two kinds of people. One kind was focused on gaining attention and recognition. But the other kind had a ‘mutuality mindset’, and they would talk in terms of an ‘us’ to include others. To truly be successful, Kare says, people need to work together. You need to become an ‘opportunity maker’ who raises others around you, who helps others to succeed, and who uses their talents to help others. Find out more about how to do this below:   4. Margaret Heffernan: Dare to disagree If you disagree with something at work it can be difficult to find your voice. You don’t want to cause trouble, be seen negatively, or cause issues which could get you in trouble. So what do you do? Margaret tells the tale of Alice Stewart, a doctor in the 1950s. She discovered evidence that the main cause of childhood cancer was x-raying pregnant women - which you’d think would be reason enough for doctors to continue this practice, but for whatever reason, they continued to do so for 25 years. In order to fight for her belief, outgoing and personable Alice worked with her polar opposite: a statistician who preferred numbers to people. And the reason their partnership worked so well? His job was ‘to prove Dr. Stewart wrong’. Only by failing to prove Alice wrong could she be confident that she was correct. It’s an inspiring story of the importance of challenging the status quo and questioning everything. Find out more about how to achieve this successfully (and not anger anyone!) below:   5. Yves Morieux: As work gets more complex, 6 rules to simplify So many employees are disengaged and demotivated. It’s almost like that’ve checked out. Yves asks: "Why is productivity so disappointing … despite all the technological advances - computers, IT, communications, telecommunications…" Does a lack of engagement lead to poor productivity, or does poor productivity lead to excessive pressure placed on workers, which then results in a lack of engagement? In fact, Morieux suggests that it results from the basic pillars of management. Watch more below:   If you’re struggling to get your employees engaged, or you’re lacking engagement in your own job, we have a solution: click the button below to find out how gamification can boost engagement!    The post Top 5 TED Talks about Work appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re pleased to say that this week’s Learning Hero is Joey J. Lee, PhD, Research Professor of Technology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. It was a happy surprise to stumble across Joey’s work while we were searching for further information on gamification in education - though as soon as we began to read more about him, we were amazed we’d not heard his name sooner! In his own words, Joey designs, develops and studies ‘interactive games and technology for learning’. His current projects address real-world problems like sustainability, social change, cross-cultural education, motivation and engagement in classrooms. Joey also directs the Real-World Impact Games Lab at the university, where he develops games, researches motivation and games, and writes papers. In 2011, Joey and Jessica Hammer, Graduate Research Fellow, also at Teachers College, wrote an article entitled Gamification in Education: What, How, Why Bother?, which is how we came across him. In the article, Joey and Jessica tackle how gamification might be utilised to reduce the scarily high dropout rates at college across America: apparently, around 1.2 million students fail to graduate high school each year. It’s a shocking statistic and is something that really needs to be addressed: and gamification is the way to do it. Like us at Growth Engineering, Joey J. Lee recognises the role of gamification in engaging learners. When the topic is dry or difficult, something extra is needed to captivate learners’ attention and get them invested in the course. In the article, Joey and Jessica explain that gamification helps to create new rules by which to learn, away from the rigid confines of school rules - formal rules that include sticking strictly to the syllabus (whereas a student’s passion may lie elsewhere) and deterring any communication that isn’t directly related to projects. With gamification, if a student reads an optional library book which is related to the classroom topic, they can gain a badge or some points. This encourages them to continue reading around the topic, supplementing their education and expanding their knowledge further. It really is a great article! Read it here at Academia.edu. To find out more about Joey J. Lee and his work, click the links below: Joey’s page at Columbia University. Joey’s website. The Games Research Lab. Columbia University on Twitter: @columbia That gamification is the answer to the problem of engagement is something we’ve believed from day one, which is why we built our Academy LMS from the ground-up to be full of gamification features like points, badges and leaderboards, and why we’ve placed such an emphasis on social learning and collaboration. We work better when we can bounce ideas off each other, after all. Want to find out more? Download our white paper on how gamification superchargers engagement by clicking the button below!    The post This week’s Learning Hero is Joey J. Lee! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

According to the Bartle Test, a game player classification system, there are four kinds of game players - and therefore when it comes to gamified eLearning, eLearners can be divided into four types. The Bartle Test (you can take it here) is based on a 1996 paper by Richard Bartle. It’s a series of questions and an accompanying scoring formula that classifies players into categories based on their preferences and overall score in each section. Since 1996, the Bartle Test has been taken a whopping 860,000 times, and is still going strong. There has been plenty written on game player types over the years (check out Gamified UK for a fleshed-out version which expands on Bartle’s thinking). Here’s the basics of Bartle’s game player types: Achievers: win, challenge, create, show off, compare Socializers: help, share, comment, gift, greet Explorers: explore, rate, review, vote, curate Killers: harass, hack, cheat, heckle, Achievers These players like to feel that the task can be ‘beaten’ in some way, shape or form. You can cater to the Achiever style by giving learners something to accomplish and ensuring that achievements are visible to all. This appeals to the Achiever as it allows them the opportunity to show off their skills and prove their elite status to others. Explorers Explorers will retain rich memories about what they experienced during their learning and will often enrich themselves in anything they can find about the subject. One appeal of the visibility is that they are surrounded by people who will benefit from their wisdom. It is notable that they often feel restricted when expected to move on within a certain time, as that does not allow them to look around at their own pace. It’s important to give explorers the opportunity to navigate around their Learning Management System - and setting rewards like badges for doing so can be extra-motivating. Socialisers Their objective is not so much to win or explore as it is to be social, interact with others and make everyone’s experience more pleasant. The Academy LMS’s Dialogue Stream and Insight Groups are two ways to appeal to these learners, since it is a way for them to connect with their peers. Chat functionality allows them to welcome others, offer help and advice and share information. It allows Socialisers to develop new relationships. Killers These learners thrive on competition with other players, and prefer fighting and competing with them to working with them. The majority of Killers are in it for the sheer sporting thrill of winning. Leaderboards on the Academy LMS appeal to Killers, since they allow learners to see at a glance who is doing ‘best’ and is ‘killing’ the competition. Though it should be noted that only a small percentage of learners will be Killers. Want to find out more about how gamification appeals to each type of game player? Click here! Alternatively, discover how to use gamification to achieve business objectives by clicking the button below!  The post What type of game player are you? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

As a learning technologies company waging war on dull online learning, we’ve heard it all over the years: eLearning is boring. It’s too hard. It’s too easy. It’s not challenging, it’s too simple, it’s too confusing… There are so many misconceptions of online learning floating around. Here are 6 of those misconceptions, and each one contains a link or two to further reading to prove to you that they are simply that - misconceptions! 1. eLearning is expensive Simply not true! It may seem like the set-up costs are expensive, but once you factor in the cost savings against classroom-based training, you’ll see that taking your training online is actually a cheaper option. Just click here to find out how to make sure your online learning is delivering return on investment. 2. eLearning isn’t effective Another myth. So not only is eLearning less expensive, it’s actually more effective too. Check out this white paper for proof! 3. Online learning is too difficult So many people think that online learning is only appropriate for techno-savvy people who are already skilled on computers. Again, simply not true! The beauty of Learning Management Systems like our Academy LMS is that anyone is able to understand and use them. As soon as a learner logs onto our Academy LMS for the first time, we take them on a whistlestop tour of all their Academy can do - they discover where to find information, what different sections of the LMS are for, what badges and achievements are available to them, and more! Find out how easy our Academy LMS really is to use by signing up for a personalised guided tour: click here! 4. eLearning is boring Well, well, well. I’m sure we’ve all heard this criticism of online learning before. Whether it’s from personal experience, hearsay or just the thought of taking eLearning modules, there is a pervading belief that it’s boring. The truth of the matter is that yes, some eLearning can be boring. But that’s certainly not the kind of online learning experience we provide here at Growth Engineering! Oh no no. On the contrary: we use everything at our disposal - from state of the art technology to psychological theories - to make eLearning fun and engaging. There’s one magical word that highlights how we’re different, and how we make sure that online learning is never boring: gamification. 5. Online learning is lonely For those of us used to learning in a classroom or workshop environment, the thought of taking training courses ‘alone’ on your computer can seem lonely. However, we recognise the importance of social learning in getting learners engaged and truly learning, so online learning is never actually lonely. In fact, there are always fellow learners to talk to, and learners are encouraged to join groups to chat, share ideas and answer questions! Find out more about the 70:20:10 problem of learning and how encouraging social learning helps by clicking here. 6. Online learning topics are limited There are some who accept that online learning sort of works, it’s kind of effective, and it’s not too hard on the wallet. But they also think that it only works for some kind of training, and not others. For instance, maybe eLearning is fine for teaching employees the correct fire safety protocols, or other health and safety topics. But sales processes? Management training? Leadership strategies? Can these really be taught online? The answer, actually, is a resounding ‘Yes!’ There is almost no limit to what can be taught online. And with Instructional Design methodologies like the Discovery Method, learners are able to come away from their eLearning with a plan of attack for implementing their new skills at work. Find out more about the Discovery Method and sales, leadership and management training options. Want to find out more? We recently put together a white paper all about these common misconceptions to online learning - just click the button below to download your free copy!    The post 6 Common Misconceptions of Online Learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Let’s be honest with each other: the common perception of eLearning is pretty negative. Click-through slides are boring, tick-box quizzes are about as fun as filling in a tax return, and any additional audio or visual elements are uninspired to say the least. Not exactly a fun way to spend an hour or two. That’s why a lot of learners will focus on the end goal, i.e. finishing the eLearning unit and ticking it off their list. They don’t really focus on what they’re learning on a slide-by-slide basis, only taking in enough information to allow them to pass the final quiz. For these learners, they see the eLearning as 30 minutes of pain that they just need to power on through to get out the other side. It’s pretty sad that most eLearning is seen in this way. The thing is, there’s nothing inherently wrong with online learning. The possibilities are almost endless, what with the awesome technology that we have at our disposal these days. So why is it that learners still dread their online training? Well, for the most part, they gained these negative associations of eLearning from experiencing pretty shoddy training in the past. If you had a bad experience - say, an awful train journey, full of delays, nowhere to sit, stinky fellow passengers and bank-breaking fares - then of course you won’t look forward to repeating the experience. You’ll avoid travelling by train as much as possible! In the same way, if you’re forced to sit through mind-numbing eLearning, you won’t exactly be jumping for joy the next time you have to take an eLearning unit, will you? For companies, eLearning is a cost-effective way of upskilling staff - and it’s something that’s very important to the success of the business. In 2012 PwC surveyed 1,200 CEOs and found that 24% were forced to cancel or delay important strategic initiatives because of ‘talent constraints’. In other words, they felt that their workforce did not have the knowledge and skills to deliver initiatives. Moreover, 30% of CEOs felt they could not innovate or compete effectively because of talent constraints within their team. It’s a real problem! Organisations must train and develop employees in a cost-effective way, yet most eLearning doesn’t work and is seen negatively by employees. Therefore, the pressure is on for L&D professionals to deliver training programmes that not only upskill employees, but are enjoyable and engaging for them, too. Well, how about trying something radical? How about making your online learning fun for learners? It’ll make your learners much happier!   Here’s how: Gamification, which is the application of gaming mechanics to non-gaming scenarios, involves rewarding learners with badges, points and achievements for taking eLearning units, and displaying learners’ progress on leaderboards to encourage a bit of competition. All this helps engage learners because it ensures that the training appeals to our innate human instinct which is geared towards all things ‘fun’. Gamification leverages learners’ fundamental need to achieve, get rewards, attain status, engage in competition, collaborate and express themselves. Research shows that employees are more engaged with a gamified approach. In fact, we’ve found that they spend over 50% longer on learning and training with gamification features Gamification also increases participation - staff experiencing gamified training are 86% more active than those accessing non-gamified training. It’s a pretty impressive difference, right!? Employees training with gamified eLearning take in and retain more information and attain higher skill levels all whilst enjoying the eLearning more! No more boring slideshows to sit through or eLearning units to rush through - just engaging, enjoyable training. Want to find out more about gamification in training? We wrote a while white paper on how to align gamification to your business needs to secure employee engagement and increase business success! Download it for free by clicking the button below:  The post Incorporating game play into eLearning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Nowadays, a lot of stress is placed on training employees and improving their skills - which is of course a great thing! Workers that are trained are more valuable to the company and increase the organisation’s chances of success within its sector - a workforce of highly trained individuals gives the company an edge over the competition. Intellectual capital is a combination of the intellectual property within an organisation, and the people who are able to use it. So when we talk about increasing intellectual capital, we mean to increase the skills of people to make better use of everything at their disposal. As Kisielnicki and Sobolewska (2010) state, the majority of companies use a blended learning approach to train employees and increase intellectual capital. This involves using both online and offline methods to upskill employees, which usually means learners go through a few eLearning modules and then finish the training off with workshops or classroom-based events. Clearly, eLearning is an important part of this: it allows senior management to make sure that employees know the basics, gives them the opportunity to complete additional work as and when needed, and ensures learners come to the workshop armed with all the knowledge they need. This allows them to make the most of the classroom training - rather than learning the content in a group setting, they instead work on sharing their thoughts and reinforcing the ideas, which helps the learning to stick better. That’s not to say that eLearning can’t be used as stand-alone training. It’s very effective, and there are instances whereby it’s simply not feasible to bring employees into groups for classroom training. This is particularly the case for companies which are spread across the globe - it’s just not practical to fly every Sales Manager to one central location for a one- or two-day workshop! Similarly, large organisations can’t house all their thousands of retail staff in one workshop, and holding a separate classroom event for each chain will put costs up astronomically. So in the case of online training only, how can organisations ensure they are increasing intellectual capital? Well, if they can’t bring employees together in real life, encouraging social learning on their online learning platform - aka Learning Management System - is the next best thing. This is because, contrary to popular opinion (and what most training organisations seem to believe!), only 10% of our knowledge is gained through ‘formal’ training, like classroom learning and working you way through eLearning modules. A huge 70% is actually gained while ‘on the job’, i.e. actually trying out what it is that you’ve learnt. The rest (20%) is gained through observation of others. But the 70% and 20% can be combined on Learning Management Systems. By encouraging learners to chat about what they’re learning, share ideas, suggest further reading and answer each other’s questions, they’re actually putting what they’ve learnt into practice. They’re using their new-found skills to help others, they’re testing what they now know against other’s experiences, and they are trialling new theories to see if they truly understand. By encouraging learners to be social on their LMS, you’re effectively boosting the intellectual capital of your organisation in the same way you would in a blended learning environment. Want to find out more? We wrote a whole white paper on social learning and why it’s so important that learners are able to freely communicate on their LMS. Check it out below!  The post Increase Your Organisation’s Intellectual Capital with eLearning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Genie is coming… He’s just not quite ready yet! As you may know, we’re in the process of developing Genie, a game-based authoring tool that will seriously change the face of eLearning creation forevermore. It’s a nifty piece of kit that focuses on making eLearning units that are fun - modules that are structured more like games than boring click-through slideshows. HTML authoring tools are becoming increasingly popular these days because traditional ‘Flash’ modules will not display correctly on tablets or mobiles. It’s a big problem! One of the great things about online learning is that it can be done anywhere, anytime, anyhow - so not being able to take eLearning modules on tablets and mobiles is a huge oversight! Not only do HTML units not have this problem and render correctly on mobile devices, but HTML allows for the creation of slide templates, which makes it really simple to drag and drop eLearning assets into slots to create fabulous online learning courses easily. Anyway, back to Genie. We want to make sure that Genie is perfect before we rub his lamp and release him out into the big bad world, so we’re still tinkering away and making sure he’s bigger, better and more badass than your wildest dreams. While Genie is pumping iron, training and flexing his mind muscles, we’ve been able to put our ear to his lamp and listen in as he tells tall tales of creating exceptional eLearning. One story that particularly captured our attention is a little old love story of Al and Jasmine. In fact, we loved it so much that we made it into a comic book! Check it out by clicking the button below. When you download the free comic, ‘There’s something about Genie!’ you’ll discover how creating eLearning that is fun and engaging can melt even the hardest of hearts…  The post Genie Game-Based Authoring Tool is On Its Way appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Are you an L&D (Learning and Development) professional? If so, you may find that these days you’re having to do more with less, on top of managing day-to-day training, implementing training plans, assessing changing business requirements and pulling rabbits out of hats. Ok, maybe that last one isn’t quite right, but it can sometimes feel like you’re being asked to perform miracles and feats on a daily basis! You may be wondering just what it takes to excel in the world of L&D - are you made of the right stuff? Are you on the right track? Do others have the same worries and problems as you? We’ve worked with a lot of training managers over the years - from Heads of L&D to L&D newbies - and there are a few traits we’ve noticed again and again in those really great L&D managers. These traits are: 1. Knowledge of the HR/L&D world: if you don’t know what the latest developments are within training (such as the explosion of eLearning, particularly gamification in online learning), you won’t search out these solutions for your own organisation. And you’ll be missing out on really great training that might make the difference between business success and failure! 2. Advocates of training: the best L&D managers are passionate about training and increasing the skills of their employees. Once they settle on a training programme, they’re behind it wholeheartedly, whether they’re talking to their seniors, employees who will take the training or their friends down the pub on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They live and breathe organisational training, and fully embrace how important it is to organisational success. 3. Knowledge of marketing: it can be tricky to get everyone on your side, particularly if they have had bad experiences of training in the past. Convincing them that your solution is different and that eLearning is the way forward can be like extracting Excalibur! But an understanding of marketing can make the process much simpler. Knowing how to market your training plan effectively is an important part of rolling out your online learning programme. Click here for some guidance on marketing your eLearning plan! 4. Lovers of technology: ok, you don’t have to love technology, but it helps to take an interest in technology - particularly because, as we said above, eLearning is becoming more and more popular. Knowing your way around your Learning Management System will reassure your organisation that they’re making the correct choice. Never, under any circumstances, claim to be a technophobe and use that as an excuse not to update your training programme! 5. Decisive: as an L&D professional, you may need to make some ‘scary’ decisions. The decision to overthrow your current training scheme - which may have been in place for years or decades! - can be terrifying. That’s why it’s important to run with any decisions you make (but only if you’re certain it’s the best option for your organisation, of course - see the next point). Be decisive, make the call and go with it. Trust in your decisions and, should things not go entirely to plan, make sure you always make the best of your situation. 6. Evaluation skills: you’ll likely have a lot of information in front of you when you’re thinking of updating your training and development solution. Online/offline? Blended learning? In-house eLearning units? A fully-functional LMS or hosting on your intranet? Being able to effectively evaluate the options available to you (and, as you get further through the process, the companies you may use) will be a massive help. You don’t want to make a mistake and regret it - as we saw above, once you land on your choice, you’ll need to go ahead full-throttle. No takebacksies here! These are just a few of the qualities that awesome L&D professionals possess. How many do you recognise in yourself? Find out more about what it takes to roll out an incredible L&D training plan by downloading our free white paper below!  The post The Qualities of a Great L&D Manager appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re really proud of our Academy LMS. Well, who wouldn’t be? It was ranked the #1 Learning Management System in the world in early 2015, after all. There’s lots to the Academy LMS that makes it special: gamification and social features through the roof, classroom booking functionality, an awesome Admin area and our brand new Performance Centre, among other things. In this LMS feature list, you’ll find just some of the functionality that makes the Academy LMS so great! The Assessment Centre Here’s where you can assess employee knowledge to find out how much they know as they begin their learning journeys, and check how much they’ve learnt as they complete their training. Academy Admins can set content to be pushed to the learner automatically on failure, meaning that if a learner doesn’t quite have the correct product knowledge or they don’t understand a theory, they’ll automatically receive further training to make sure this is rectified quickly and easily. Push and Pull Libraries It’s quite common for Learning Management Systems to be able to ‘push’ content out to learners - just invite the learner to take the content and it’ll appear in their emails. But the Academy LMS also offers learners the opportunity to ‘pull’ content. This means they can view certain eLearning units, assessments or other learning materials and choose to take whatever they feel is relevant. This is great for allowing learners to continue their development and expand their training in directions that interest them personally. No more forcing content down learners’ throats - they’ll scoff the lot themselves! Development Streams These allow you to group a collection of online learning content together for learners to progress through. Creating a catalogue of learning to work through allows learners to see what they’re required to do, plan their journey and monitor their own progress. It’s motivating for them to see how far they’re getting through the required training, and knowing what’s coming up can encourage them to come back again and again. These Development Streams can relate to specific products, job roles, promotion opportunities or management training. The choice is yours! Classroom Booking Just because we rock the online learning world doesn’t mean that we don’t recognise that some training programmes do need real-life experiences to ensure the learning content is fully understood. In some instances, purely online training doesn’t cover everything that needs to be learnt - take health and safety for example. It’s simple enough to teach the principles online, but real-life training is required to make sure employees how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The classroom booking functionality on the Academy LMS allows Admins to create, manage and invite learners to classroom events, set pre-class reading and assessments, and work out costs. It makes it much more simple to create a really great blended learning experience for learners. The Performance Centre We’re committed to helping people unleash their potential, and our new Performance Centre brings a whole suite of performance management tools to help learners reach new heights of awesome! The Performance Centre is split into five areas that let you monitor your learners’ key metrics, goal completions and competencies. Let’s take a look at each in turn: Objectives & KPIs: This section lets your employees clarify their professional goals and monitor their own progress. Adding departmental and organisational objectives lets everyone see at a glance how their contributions help the whole business succeed. Competencies: This area lets you gauge the potential value of your employees. You can rate their performance and leave comments and feedback to give them extra guidance in areas in need of development. Values & Principles: It’s a good idea to clarify the behaviours and attitudes that underpin your business - it helps your people gain the recognition they deserve for demonstrating them! Reviews: The Reviews tool makes your review process more structured and streamlined. It’s also fairer, since it takes other metrics into account, and more transparent. It’s easy to see what’s good and not-so-good. Personal Growth Plan: The PGP section helps employees to grow, over and above their structured training. It contains learning content relevant to the individual’s professional development, and houses everything they need to close any gaps in their knowledge and make real progress! Want to find out more? We’d love to show you around the Academy to touch on all this and other awesome functionality! Click the button below to arrange a personalised tour of the Academy LMS:    The post The Academy LMS Feature List appeared first on Growth Engineering.

You may ask yourself questions like these from time to time: Am I getting the most out of my eLearning? Is it achieving what we need it to achieve? Is it proving successful? Or, on the other hand: Why isn’t my eLearning working? Why aren’t I seeing the results I expected? How can I make sure my online learning is a success? If you’ve got questions like these and you really can’t tell how successful your online learning is, you’ll want to work your way through a specific evaluation process. It can really help to put things in perspective and help you to see whether your online learning roll-out is working well or is, err, not. Here’s what you’ll need to be able to answer: What do my learners think about the eLearning units? You can get them to rank and rate learning content, complete surveys and answer questions. Alternatively, just keep your ear to the ground: you’ll soon hear grumbling if learners aren’t enjoying their online learning! What do they think of the Learning Management System? With the Academy LMS, gamification not only captures learners’ attention and gets them engaged - it’s also a way of seeing the extent to which employees are interacting with their LMS. Those who do the most (who log on most often, explore their Academy and try out new functionality) will gain the most badges and climb up the leaderboard. So the leaderboard is not only an indication of who is completing the most eLearning units, but can be a sign of who is enjoying their LMS. How much are employees learning? You can’t really guess at this. To figure out how much employees are truly learning, you not only need to test them pre-training and post-training, but also at regular intervals after training is over. That’s because of the ‘forgetting curve’, which is the idea that we can lose up to half of what we learn over just a few days if we don’t work to recall it. How are employees recalling/remembering learning content? Now, we don’t mean how often are they required to answer questions on the content. Instead, we’re talking about the opportunities employees get to really put their newfound knowledge into practice. Are they able to use their skills daily? Are you seeing an improvement in their work? It’s one thing to pass an eLearning unit - it’s another thing entirely to be able to put it all into practice at work! If they sit back and relax after doing the ‘hard work’ of completing training, they won’t actually cement the learning. You can find out more about this by clicking here. Are you seeing a difference in the organisation? Ultimately, in order to know that your training programme is proving fruitful, you’ll need to see a change in your organisation for the better. Whether this comes from increased sales, fewer complaints, lower employee turnover or faster induction will be particular to your company and what you’re trying to achieve. Just make sure you measure where you start from to be able to compare how far you’ve come! Want to find out more about making sure your online learning programme is delivering return on investment and achieving what you hope it will? Download our free white paper below!    The post Are You Getting the Most Out of Your eLearning? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Do you try your best but just can’t seem to get online learning right? Are your learners disengaged, dissatisfied and dismayed? If you believe in any of the following statements you may be suffering from eLearning cliché syndrome! Check your symptoms here: The more images the merrier! You wouldn’t add more seasoning to a mouldy meal, so why would you add more and more images to a poor piece of training? If your eLearning is boring, squeezing in more images isn’t going to save the day! Quizzes are fun, right? If you want to make your eLearning courses more fun, that’s great. But forcing your learners to take quizzes like they’re going out of fashion is not the way to inject a bit of fun and frolic into their training. Value for money If you’re creating eLearning for an organisation, you’ll want to give them value for money and make sure they know the effort has been made. However, this doesn’t mean squeezing as much text onto the screen as possible, or making the eLearning unit as long as you can stand! Cover the basics. All the basics It’s a great idea to make sure eLearning modules cover all the pertinent issues and learning objectives. You don’t want there to be gaps in people’s knowledge and you certainly don’t want to leave anyone confused or second-guessing themselves. But beware: don’t teach people to suck eggs! If the eLearning module is on Managing a Sales Team, don’t include the basics of selling in the unit - if learners don’t already know what a sales proposal is, they’re certainly not ready for a management role. Simple is smart There’s no point overloading your learner with videos, voice-overs and complicated tasks. The right way to encourage learners to complete eLearning units is to make them easy and simple - just like clicking through a PowerPoint slideshow and then answering a quiz question! Err, no! When’s the last time you sat through a presentation and truly engaged with the content? How much of it did you remember after you clicked ‘Close’? We’ll bet not all that much! If you believe any of these clichés, it’s time to kick them to the kerb and revolutionise your eLearning. Here are the correct beliefs you should hold: Make it interesting Say ‘No more!’ to slideshows. Say ‘Goodbye!’ to boring. You shouldn’t focus on making your eLearning super short, nor should it take hours and hours to complete. Find a happy halfway point where learners are able to get stuck into the subject but where they don’t end up falling asleep on the job. Make it interactive There is so much technology available to us these days, why aren’t we creating interactive eLearning units? Why aren’t we taking advantage of cool functionality and using drag and drop quizzes, interactive exercises, data input and personalised eLearning that calls us by our name and knows where we work? And finally… Make it fun That’s right! Learners should enjoy logging on to their Learning Management System and taking eLearning courses. They shouldn’t hate their training, drag their heels or bang their head against a wall. You can make eLearning fun with gamification - just click on the button below to find out more!  The post 5 eLearning Clichés You Should Avoid appeared first on Growth Engineering.