Effective training in 3D learning worlds – doing more with less.

If you are thinking of how you and your team will survive current downturn, you are not alone.  Over the last couple of months this became a theme of many conversations I heard and for a good reason.  Training is not going to be immune to this round of belt tightening.  Regardless of the level of your optimism, budget slashing seem to be the inevitable next item on the agenda, or perhaps it already affected you and your organization.  This is exactly the reason why AHG created a new training tool that allows you to cut budget without jeopardizing your work and future growth.  Trying to preserve budgets in current environment is a loosing battle. The better strategy is to concentrate on a solution that saves significant resources while improving training results – KPI’s, time to ready and durability.  Immersive Communication Training System (ICTS) can create uniquely-effective training solutions in 3D learning worlds, such as Second Life.  But this is only half of the story.  The second half is that you do need to hire or involve inside or outside programmers and training designers do not need to have technical background.  You create training simulations using intuitive Graphic User Interface.  If you are capable of using computer mouse to move color rectangles on a screen, clicking them to interconnect rectangles with arrows, then you can create a training simulation as simple as short sales call, or as complex as equipment handling lesson.

Prior to the age of personal computers, professionals would hand-write their notes and then have them typed by typists.  Similar situation still exists in training where instructional professionals design training and have programmers implement it using computer technologies.  It certainly looks like a silver lining of this downturn might be in the 3D learning environments (i.e. Second Life), and technologies, such as ICTS, to get rid of intermediaries.  Doing this might just be the key to preserve and position your team for better future in the times of slashed budgets.

You will find more information on http://www.ahg.com (click on the Immersive Communication Training System button, or click on the direct URL:

http://second-life-training.ahg.com/training_simulations/second_life_immersive_communication_training.htm

)

Virtual Worlds Training for Corporate Executives

Corporations researching virtual worlds as a training platform quickly realize that they lack expertise to fully capitalize on the benefits and avoid costly mistakes.  If they don’t, quite often they become a good candidate for me to talk about during the next seminar “Avoiding Costly Mistakes When Starting Corporate Virtual World Training Program”.   Steve Prentice, VP of Gartner recently noted that early attempts [working with virtual worlds] suffered from a lack of clear objectives and a limited understanding of the demographics, attitudes and expectations of virtual-world communities.  As a clearer understanding of the dynamics of this new media channel develops, Gartner expects this situation to change.  Despite understandable concerns about investment during a time of growing business uncertainty […] the internal deployment of virtual worlds offers most enterprises significant benefits in cost savings and improved productivity. 

To help corporations realize this potential to its fullest, AHG started a series of new courses taught by a team of experts who have real life experience creating, consulting, and supervising successful Second Life / Virtual World programs. We share our expertise in a series of hands-on courses that encompass corporate training, HR, marketing and other activities as related to corporate use of virtual worlds.  AHG offers two separate tracks: Executive and Instructional Designer / Developer. Instructional Designer track provides hands-on training focused on day-to-day development and maintenance of Virtual World projects. After the courses are completed, students are able to design and build Second Life environments, create simple scripts, implement and modify scripts developed by others. They also develop an understanding of human factor issues that affect productivity and quality learning in virtual world environments, techniques to "flatten" learning curve, importance of standards, methodologies, and life cycles in the management of Second Life projects and resources. 

Executive Track courses provide in-depth understanding of virtual worlds from an executive perspective as a tool for the creation of a sustainable competitive advantage. These courses offer up-to-date information on theory behind successful Second Life implementations, practical approaches, promising new developments, successes, and problem areas in other companies’ implementation of virtual worlds in corporate environment.  As an added benefit, AHG shares audio recordings from our Second Life round table where executives of companies such as Accenture, Michelin, Philips and others describe their experience with Second Life projects.

You will find more information on http://www.ahg.com/courses/second_life_courses.htm

Second Life Corporate Training Roundtable Audio Record

Late June, Linden Lab celebrated the fifth anniversary of
Second Life.  The whole week, starting  June 30 was devoted
exclusively to business uses of Second Life.  AHG, Inc. was
asked to run a round-table discussion "Starting Corporate
Training Program in Second Life: Best Practices, Security
Concerns and Future Developments".

An hour and fifteen minutes - long roundtable discussion
was full of insightful information from people who have
implemented Second Life projects on an enterprise level
and now have unique prospective on both advantages and
deficiencies of Second Life and virtual worlds in general.

Panelists included Chief IT Architect of Michelin and
Business Director of Linden Lab,  Senior Analysts from
ThinkBalm and O'Reilly, Accenture Internet Channel Lead
and Business Director of Royal Philips Electronics, computer
and behavioral scientists.  We discussed security issues,
corporate use and growth patterns,  world-wide recruiting
project,  ways Second Life helps in enterprise mission,
and other issues of importance.

The audio record of the event  is now available for
download. If you are interested, you can request audio at
the following page:

http://www.ahg.com/Second_Life/roundtable_reg.htm

Second Life roundtable / corporate training

It’s hard to believe, but Second Life is officially turning five years old.  Linden Labs (the company behind the Second Life) is celebrating the anniversary with a series of expositions, discussions, conferences and other events.  The whole week, starting June 30, will be devoted exclusively to business uses of Second Life.  I was asked to run a round-table discussion "Starting Corporate Training Program in Second Life: Best Practices, Security Concerns and Future Developments".  We already have a list of respected panelists that includes folks from the industry who implemented Second Life solutions in training and marketing, analysts with well-known technology and market research company, business liaisons from Linden Lab and others. 

Given that you are reading this blog I think it would be inconceivable to miss this opportunity to gather more valuable information in one hour then you otherwise  would be researching for years.  And the best part:  you will be getting information directly from the people who has been involved in business implementations of Second Life solutions. 

Tentatively, we set up round table for Monday, June 30th at 9 AM Pacific / 12 noon Eastern.

Please, e-mail me at info1 @ deltaltraining.com if you would like to attend.

Right now we are researching possibility of streaming video+audio from Second Life using GoToMeeting for those who would like to be present, but their corporate network prevents them from connecting to SL directly.  If this works out, the number of people who will be able to connect using GoToMeeting will be limited to 15, "first come/first served, single computer connection from a company," so if your firewall "filters out" Second Life, but allows GoToMeeting connections, you might want to register asap.

Caveman Training

There has been lots of discussion on this blog about teaching skills through pictures, rather than words.

What happens, though, if the skill that needs demonstrating is rather abstract?

At my company, I teach mostly sales skills.  How do you “show” someone, how to sell, especially over the phone?  In the past (as I suspect it is at most companies) I used a set “Sales Cycle” that followed a pretty linear path, and was expressed with words.

It seemed to work well for a while, but I was always hearing feedback from graduates about how things were “totally different out there.”  Something was missing.

Then I was inspired by a training program I went to (www.witzsolutions.com), and so I stole their best teaching tool.  Now I have the entire sales cycle on 12 brightly colored cardboard ‘bubbles’ that I can stick to the wall.

At the beginning of the sales training, I hand the trainees all the bubbles, and ask them to put them in order.  The secret though, is that there is no right answer, and throughout the training we go back to the bubbles again and again, to see where each step fits into a variety of fluid and unpredictable “real world” selling situations.

The one bubble that seems to have received the most attention, though, is one I made to demonstrate how I don’t want sales reps giving up too soon.  It is to help them to avoid using weak or conciliatory language to let an otherwise interested customer off the hook. 

The symbol I used was simply a clip art image of a weasel, in a bright red circle with a line through it.  “No weasel tactics” is the clear message, although no words are used.

I was trying to figure out why this reverberated so well with my reps, and I think I stumbled on the answer last night watching a show about archeology.  You don’t need to be a student of Carl Jung to see the Neanderthal drawings on the caves in France and know that people (in whatever form) have been using symbols to communicate for about 100,000 years.  Give or take.

In prehistoric times, symbols were the written record.  By the time the Egyptian empire rolled around, the symbols had even been standardized into a written language.  Symbols remain today one of the most powerful forms of communicating a message.  What do you think when you see the Mercedes Benz logo?  Or a peace sign?  Or a Swastika for that matter?

Is there room then, for replacing our cutesy clip art, and multicolored formatting (guilty as charged!) with powerful, compelling, and universal symbols?

I’m sure Carl Jung would approve.  To say nothing of the cavemen.

New Second Life Training Simulation

How many times have you seen a project hit a brick wall of teams’ inability to work together: from mild cases of overblown ego and tug-of-war to vicious in-fighting?  Some folks think these problems can be fixed with just a little bit of extra of communication and explanation. I beg to differ. Building a team from people who like working with each other is obviously the best scenario.  If it is unavailable, serious teamwork training is in order.  These ideas were the foundation of Delta L designing Teamwork Tester. We used Second Life platform and Education Island (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20Island) to create a simulation based on the following concepts:

• Observing a group of people performing a simple task that requires group effort, provides data allowing to draw conclusions on their teamwork abilities and attitudes (that is you will find if it’s a group of quarreling individuals or a team).
• Observations are important, but metrics is what validates conclusions. While subjects are working on the team task, each step is recorded and processed.
• At the end of the session you receive measurable results of the performance of the team as a whole, as well as metrics of a variety of characteristics of individual members. The results are saved in the database and are accessible via the web for review, analysis and comparison of different teams / team compositions.

Along with the team characteristics, Teamwork Tester allows you to assess individual characteristics of the team members, such as:

• speed
• effectiveness
• participation in the task
• ability to finish assigned part of the work
• helping others if needed

Important! I am writing all of this not to plug our latest and greatest product (although that as well), but to invite you to test and comment on the work and features. We are considering developing Teamwork Tester further and would like to “compare notes” with you. You can see the demo of Teamwork Tester on Education Island (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Education%20Island) and get more information at http://www.ahg.com/Second_Life/training_simulations/teamwork_tester_1.htm

Seminars Lead the Way to Better Customer Service

By  Mona Piontkowski

It seems no matter how many technological advances occur in our ever changing world, the basic tenet of business is still the same—the customer is king. Without customers, business is like whistling in the wind—who knows you're there and who cares.

We can e-mail, text, fax, and, or even snail mail our potential customers with the greatest offer to hit the business world, but unless anyone buys our wares we are nowhere. Sure I have the latest, greatest Web site—did you see the elves dancing across my screen?—just click on one and see what wonders you will find.

But unless the elves in the back room get the customer service right, my Web site elves and I will see little of your business in our future.

How many times have you heard your friends complain about calling the customer service department of just about any company and getting connected to some off-shore location half way around the world with service reps with little if any grasp of the English language? After 20 minutes of trying to explain why I've called  I'm so angry I usually toss the defective product right in the circular file and vow to never again cross the path of that product or company.

I was once told that the person who answers your phone at your business is the most important person in your business. I think it's more true now than ever. You want to get a hold of people who act like they care, even if they don't, about your problem and can  offer you a simple, quick solution—or at least promise to try to fix your problem. We need some who knows "The Secrets of Being a Front Desk Superstar".

So how do we go about fixing our own customer-service problems in our own company? We must begin by "Developing and Executing a Customer-Centric Strategy". I like that term—"customer-centric—it implies that we know where our bread and butter come from—the customer—the person who helps us pay our bills - the person we want to keep coming back to our "storefront." We need to learn how to provide "Customer Service Excellence: How To Win and Keep Customers."

Mona Piontkowski is the co-founder of SeminarInformation.  She has consulted with major corporations and helped them organize their training. She has also written a monthly column in Foresight Magazine, has published articles in Training and appeared on ESPN's "Nations Business Today."

Stop telling me. Show me!

How many trainees do you have that make you feel like a broken record?  You tell them the neat orderly steps in sequence, and have them try it – once, twice, then over and over again, and it never seems to click.

What gives?

What you may be dealing with is a Visual/Spatial Learner.  V/SLs process most of their information on the right side of their brain, and tend to think in terms of pictures.  They need to either see a picture to understand, or form a picture in their minds of a verbal instruction.

How do you know you’ve got one?  How about the trainee who’s always late for class, or “just in time?”  Time, and how it moves in a linear way, is too concrete a concept for most V/SLs, and they tend to have no idea how long it takes to complete projects or assignments, or even how long it’s going to take to get to class. 

Or maybe it’s the trainee who’s manual looks like a random clump of papers and handouts, with no organization whatsoever.  V/SLs organize by piling.  Sometimes the piles are horizontal, vertical, or even in a binder, but the pile is the thing.  You will quickly find that if the concept, subject matter, or job tool is not in plain sight, it might as well not exist.

Finally, it could be the trainee who seems to take longer to grasp concepts that others get quickly, but once she does, is able to synthesize the information into the big picture, rather than just performing the task by rote.  Visual spatial learners often skip competency, and move straight to mastery, but it can take a little longer for that first step to happen.

Studies by Dr. Linda Silverman have shown that 65% or so of people in a learning setting need some kind of visual/spatial stimulation in order to learn, and yet as trainers, we often spend more time telling, than showing.

Teaching VS/L’s in the way they learn best is one of the quickest, and least expensive ways of dramatically increasing retention and application.  Some of the simplest methods include:

q       Minimizing the amount of text you put on white boards and power point presentations.  Replace it instead with pictures, diagrams, and flow charts.

q       While it’s important to break down complicated tasks and concepts into small chunks, V/SLs need to see the whole picture first – they need a road map.  Begin instead with a theoretical framework and overview of what they are going to learn, and how each upcoming piece fits.

q       Remember, a picture is worth 1000 words.

So if you feel like you’ve hit a brick wall with a trainee, and they’re just not getting it, then maybe stop telling them, and start showing them.  You might be surprised with the results.

Jason Allen is the Training Manager for Myron Corporation’s Hamilton, Ontario Sales Office.  He has been researching learning styles and personality types, and how they impact instructional design, for over a decade.

Welcome to Education Island

Sorry, didn't have a chance to post anything last month. But that's for the good reason – we just opened Education Island.  As always, regardless of all plans and schedules, most important questions had to be answered, problems solved and options added immediately before the opening.  Luckily, this is all behind us and Education Islandhas become a known Second Life destination for educators. We tried to make it interactive and fun – after all these are the qualities that make Second Life an attractive educational and training tool. 

One of the examples of interactive tools is our Team Tester.  Psychologists have known for a long time – and we, lay folks, have known this forever -- that a team of individuals can be more and can be less than a sum of its parts.  Results of a team effort depend much more on how well people work together, rather than on how great they are as individuals.  There is an experiment that allows you to test a team – give a group of people a simple task they need to complete in cooperation with each other and you will find if it’s a group of people or a team.

In Team Tester #1 we created a puzzle consisting of 9 cubes. The task is for several people to solve the puzzle without direct communication with each other.  We have been offering Second Life tours for educators and Team Tester seem to be very popular.  Interestingly, the difference in time it takes several randomly assembled people to solve the puzzle together varies between a couple of minutes to … forever (that’s when people just cannot work together).  Even more interesting that it happens to educators who know what the test is all about and one would think they would be able to better organize team effort.

There is also another variant of Team tester and an open auditorium with a few movies showing Second Life educational capabilities. Of course, you are welcome to sign up for a free Second Life tour. We currently run at least two per week and I would love to see you there.

                                 ###

Alex Heiphetz received Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Pittsburgh. After working for a

consulting firm he started an independent company in 1997. Delta L Printing specializes in business services to training companies and educational institutions: training management software, publishing, audio and video production. Dr. Heiphetz can be reached via e-mail at alex.heiphetz@deltalprinting.com or through the company web site www.deltalprinting.com.

Society for Applied Learning Technology: Orlando Conference

Three days away from winter cold always are a welcome break, especially if you spend them with interesting people. I was lucky to spend three days in Orlando on a SALT New Learning Technologies Conference. There were over eighty presentations separated into several tracks: Design, Mobile Computing, Gaming and Simulation, Training, Knowledge Management, Assessment, Content Development, and e-Learning.

Delta L presented the first results of our Second Life work: Teamwork Testing tools we developed that specifically take advantage of Second Life platform and environment. Live demonstrations created very noticeable interest – which is to be expected when you show avatars doing something in a virtual 3D environment and allow people to control them. Even those without prior experience with Second Life were interested in this kind of “play”.