My colleague, Bill Brandon, brought Brian Hall’s post 10 Technology Skills That Will No Longer Help You Get A Job to my attention when I was looking for feedback on what the most relevant and valuable professional development needs are of today’s training and learning technologies practitioners. Hall’s post ends with this:

“To justify any salary, it’s not only about what you know – now – but what you can learn going forward. The key to a long career in Silicon Valley, or anywhere in the tech world, is showing that you can learn and adapt – and master - constant change.”

OK, I’m nodding. It’s easy to agree. But how do you show that you can learn and adapt (and master) constant change? Do you just keep crossing out and adding on like this to show you can adapt to to change?

• Adobe Flash Developer/Designer  HTML 5 Developer/Designer

Mastering constant change is not illustrated this way. I’m reminded of a JFK quote:

“And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”

So my two-part question to you…(1) what are the most relevant and valuable professional development needs for today’s training and learning technologies practitioners and then (2) how do YOU show a potential employer that you’re progressing?

I was in San Francisco in 2003 at a conference that was held at the same time as The eLearning Guild’s “Annual Conference.” I remember sitting in a cable car that was loaded with the Guild’s conference attendees and wondered how I could bail on my conference and attend the Guild’s conference instead. The eLearning Guild’s conference seemed to be much cooler – lots of instructional design and e-Learning types. The theme of the conference I was trapped in was blended learning. I sat in a room and watched PowerPoint presentation after PowerPoint presentation about how to combine self-paced e-learning and face-to-face training (as IF that’s blended).

Fast forward a decade and next week I’ll be sitting in a cable car as an eLearning Guild employee. This past decade that has been nothing short of amazing. I don’t know what big thing I’ll learn in 2013 yet, but here are ten from ten years:

1. Keep it simple. In 2012 I realized that “everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler.” That’s an Einstein quote. I’m trying to work to that standard.
2. Keep it real. In 2011 I became more business-focused. There’s a whole lot of awesomeness out there that seems somewhat separated from reality.
3. Accept learning on your own terms. In 2010 I left my PhD program. At first this felt like a crushing defeat. In truth, it was empowering and made me realize that an education is not a degree or title.
4. Understand the value of humility. In 2009 I became acutely aware of weaknesses. Painful and valuable.
5. Pay it forward. In 2008 I shared a lot of my research publicly after a year of benefiting from others doing the same.
6. Reflect openly. 2007 was the year I started this blog and the year I began to understand the spirit and value of inquiry in an open, online environment.
7. If given a choice, take the chance. In 2006 I decided to work virtually from home for a very small company. This decision opened endless windows and doors.
8. Value practice. In 2005 I realized “in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”  Another Einstein quote.
9. Always work to perfect your craft. In 2004 I invested in my future by enrolling in a master’s program in instructional design. I learned from experts.
10. Choose to be influenced by the right people. In 2003 I realized that if I’m going to travel 1000′s of miles to a conference, I better make it a good one.

I’m looking forward to what lies ahead this year as I join The eLearning Guild.

While  writing our Mobile Learning Cookbook, I tweeted that…

This simple statement served as a catalyst for debate of sorts that extended to Facebook and then back to Twitter.

Andy Black jabbed at me a bit saying mobile learning has been around for a long time and that wearable integrated tech is the next wave.  (There’s almost always a snark.)

Yup, mobile learning has been around a long time but in reality, mobile learning hasn’t been implemented at the majority of organizations hence my discussion. (I don’t disagree that wearable integrated tech is here now and probably in the future for many organizations.)

Geordie Guy suggested that mobile means ‘able to be moved’ and what I was talking about is more portable.

Geordie suggested I get in touch with John Traxler about definitions and classifications. I was already connected to John so I sat down at my ball and chain (laptop), and I reached out to him. He preferred to have a conversation on my Facebook wall. I’ve summarized it here in an interview-like format which included Dave Ferguson and Aape Pohjavirta.

Me: Do you classify devices as portable or mobile? What are your definitions?

Dave: I think the usage is shifting a bit. “Device” used to be a slightly techno word for “thing.” A pacemaker, for instance, is a medical device.

I wish that here in the US the term “mobile” had caught on, instead of “cell,” for phones, but it didn’t, and I’m not going to try and change people’s minds.

I’d say define your terms at the outset and people will follow. If I were pontificating (which I’m not; can’t find my special hat), I’d say that a mobile device fits into a pocket (cell phone, smartphone) while a portable device fits into your hand or your carry-on (tablet). But that’d be only if I were making a distinction between the two. I haven’t seen an actual iPad mini, or whatever it’s called, so I don’t know how that works out sizewise.

Let’s face it; some of this is the 5.25 – 3.5 inch floppy debate (remember them?), which was won by the CD, yet another storage device now in its sunset years. Or months.

John: Devices and technology as the core of definitions is a blind alley. What used to matter was the mobility of learners and learning. Now what matters is whether learning is credible, authentic and aligned to societies, communities and cultures for whom mobility and connectedness are taken-for-granted, not-worth-mentioning.

Dave: I get John’s blind-alley point, though I think it’s very situational. People in different kinds of jobs may not be able to access particular types of information (whether formal training, take-on-your-own-time stuff, job aids).

If you’re on the road a lot, fewer employers are going to condone using a device while driving. If you’re in a public-facing job, interactions with peers and customers as well as limits on how much crap you can have in the workspace may hinder your ability to access what some AVP dreamed up after spending too much time with vendors.

Not that you need to be reminded of this, Janet, but your READERS may: none of this stuff makes learning happen. For fifty years we’ve struggled against the myth that instruction means learning, that courses mean learning, that testing means learning, that digitized content means learning. So the real question for devices, or anything else that’s intended to help support improved performance in the workplace (the main reason employers tolerate anything called “learning” or “training” in the first place) is “How is this going to help that happen?”

Even then, it’s a never-ending battle against the “they-had-to-look-it-up” crowd.

Me: I found a 2005 definition of mobile learning from you John. At that time you said mobile learning was “…any education provision where the sole or dominant technologies are handheld or palmtop devices.”

John: 2005 was quite a while ago.

Me: It’s helpful to look back at some early definition just to see how far the conversation has progressed.

John: The phrase ‘mobile learning’ portrays it as a version of learning, the mobile version. It ignores the transformative effect of mobility on the nature of learning and of learners and on the wider society; it might be easier to see not as the mobile bit of learning but the learning bit of mobile and mobile is the defining characteristic of our societies. ‘Mobile learning’ seems too often preoccupied with enhancing the existing curriculum for the existing institutions and their professionals and maybe extending the reach of the existing education system.

Me: I like that…mobile as a defining characteristic of our societies. Spot on too with the preoccupation.

John: I think in some ways Dave is saying that cultures is not coherent or consistent and fragmented by attitude, ownership, experience of digital technology and individuals are quite happy to hold mutually exclusive and irreconcilable points of view; once we mention jobs we mention differentials in socio-economic power. My friend Aape Pohjavirta always has thoughts about these issues!

John: Maybe obliquely I’m saying education and/ or technology are not ethically or politically benign or even neutral thus mobile learning won’t be either.

Aape: This discussion is interesting and should probably happen face-2-face but here a couple of comments:

-          I am thinking of starting to use the term connected learning = you log in to any content on any connected device and voilà – you have accessed your personal curriculum, the system giving you access to everything you need to continue learning here and now, recognizing the device, network etc. and giving you an optimized user experience for your specific environment.

-          As John rightly says, the advancements in mobile technologies have made “everything technically possible” thus moving the focus to the question of how to deliver actual learning to users of those connected devices. But there are not just one type of users – if you use your connected device as an “interactive textbook” in a classroom setting that usage is completely different from the usage patterns of the “lonely, mobile learners” who access the courses alone with no teacher / trainer present.

When we started creating the mobile media in 2003 we noticed that mobile is used “when you happen have the time” and only for a short period of time. This would mean that the mobile curriculum needs to consist of small pieces (5-8 minutes) of learning material including theory, examples & exercises. In addition to this the social aspects & a possibility for mentor-access would also be good to have – and some sort of a gamification too.

I think that this should be an easy thing to formulate to corporations, one big challenge though is that there is a very very very limited number of service & technology providers who can produce stuff that actually works across the majority of devices at reasonable costs.

John: I think implicitly I was also saying that the affordances of mobile technologies change our epistemology… what we know, how we know it, how we come to know, what we help others know, how we assess the worth and credibility of the known, what it is valuable to know for aesthetic, economic, cultural and any other reasons and who decides the worth of knowing…

Aape: John, very much so and also moving from for “Just In Case” to “Just In Time” learning – very complex, very complex.

John: Thanks Aape. Very coincidentally I just read an editorial saying, Epistemology deals with questions of what knowledge is, what counts as knowledge, the sources of knowledge, the different kinds of knowledge, and what we can know, or the boundaries of knowledge (Wiersma and Jurs 2009). And I should have added the impact of mobile technologies on existing epistemologies, which are a central and defining characteristic of each and every culture, sub-culture and counter-culture.

John: BTW I guess in the sense I’m meaning it, each corporation & company as well as every community, caste and culture have their own ever-evolving epistemology.

My conclusion:

• Classifying what is and what is not a mobile device is not very useful.
• The ultimate goal of mobile learning may be to deliver on the promise to ‘make learning happen’ through credible, authentic and aligned content.
• Mobile learning is transformative because it impacts existing epistemologies.
• Mobile learning is a characteristic not a version.

What say you?

**

Andy Black has been writing about technology futures since (at least) 2005. At one time he was technology research manager at Becta.

Australia’s Geordie Guy has been writing for years about privacy, censorship, copyright and technology.

John Traxler is Professor of Mobile Learning, Director of the International Association for Mobile Learning and author of Mobile Learning: A Handbook for Educators and Trainers

Dave Ferguson is an experienced, straight-talking and well-round learning professional specializing in solving on-the-job performance problems.

Aape Pohjavirta has worked 25 years in digital media, 15 in mobile and invented the mobile magazine (=app) in 2003. He’s a technology visionary & evangelist with a strong-ish belief in science & research with a conviction that anything good now is preferred to waiting for perfect forever.

For me, 2012 will go down as a year I basically went dark publicly. While I wrote a lot for my work, I think I posted here just 5 times.  Good grief, three or four years ago I probably was posting 5 times in a week! As 2013  begins, it seems an ideal time to reflect back on 2012, share some observations and predictions, and get blogging again.

• LCMSs are alive and well and the market will grow. In December, I wrote about Bankia’s learning content management architecture and how its use of a single source, asset-based approach to content led to huge cost savings and greater efficiency. I predict large organizations will increasingly utilize LCMSs  for mobile content development and deployment and to provide on-demand performance support for employees.

• LMSs are also alive and well and the market will continue to grow. Over the course of four months in late summer and early fall, I gathered data from nearly 100 systems and had demo’s with over 40 vendors for Bersin’s 2013 LMS Industry Study. I learned that there are more than 400 LMS solutions (probably more) in this growing $1.8 billion dollar market with the growth coming from outside North America and from SMBs. The market is very fragmented and can be broken down into integrated talent management suites and specialized LMS (extended enterprise, healthcare, etc.). The market is also being reinvented by social learning tools. Of course, 2012 brought consolidation among vendors driven by integrated talent management  (i.e., Oracle, SAP). Functionality is increasing commoditized with SaaS delivery models becoming the norm. I was stunned by the stark differences in the user interface. There are some really elegant systems out there and some real ugly ones.  I also saw deeper capabilities in analytics. Put the harps away, this is a growing, but changing market.

• A social talent management strategy will positively effect business results. At first this struck me as a fluffy marketing term but…as I went a little deeper I found in our research that organizations that were not excelling at social learning and integrated talent management, are less likely to be have a big impact on business outcomes. Fundamental to that success is the ability to drive value from a well-designed, well-adopted and sustainable use of profile and competency frameworks.

• Extended enterprise learning needs have sprung up as business networks grow. L&D will have to expand its footprint to support new communities of learners outside the organization.

• In the fall, I wrote about Booz Allen Hamilton’s use of Diversity Mentoring Circles to develop a diverse talent pipeline. Diversity and inclusion will become more important as we become a more diverse society. L&D will be expected to support strategies related to diversity and increasingly measure their effectiveness against different types of metrics.

• I wrote  about video and mobile video usage this year and definitely see growth here. There has been an increase in professional-looking  videos and the use of experts as green screens and tools become more attainable. Content vendors are springing up as organizations demand better quality e-learning. I think commercial off-the-shelf self-paced elearning content is dying albeit slowly.

• On-demand learning and performance support, especially in the context of mobile learning, will be more front and center for organizations as they struggle to keep up with the needs of employees for reliable, easily accessible information.

• Global learning will remain a big challenge for organizations. I spoke about that at our IMPACT conference in the Spring. We came up with a Global Learning Capability Index that differentiates high and low functioning organizations. Key to success include language expertise, localizing content and empowering local customization of content, assessing regional and cultural effects on learning success differences, core/regional alignment, and collaboration among others. Please join us this spring for another great conference.

• We continued our high-impact learning organization research building on a decade of research in this area. This is basically a how-to on doing L&D right with lots of examples. Efficiency, effectiveness, and alignment are still our key roles.

• Finally, I went to a few conferences this year and was struck by the number of women that are blazing new trails in our industry and will continue to do so. Clearly, goddesses will run the world shortly

So that’s a ridiculously long post that I hope will serve as a catalyst for your own reflections on 2012. I hope you’ll share your own additions to this list. I’m currently finishing up our Mobile Learning Cookbook, the first in a series. Mobile, mobile, mobile. Huge. I’ll share some highlights from that after its release.

Six months ago Thomas Suarez, a 6th grader from Los Angeles, spoke at a TEDS event about the making and sale of an “app”  he created on his own – “Bustin Jieber” (a whack-a-mole type anti-Justin-Bieber game.)  (There’s nearly 2 million views of the video on YouTube so you may have seen it.) Anyway, he’s quite eloquent and now owns his own company. While he’s clearly much further ahead than the majority of 6th graders I know, his actions offer a glimpse of our future workforce.

Suarez, who is self taught, started to build, create and sell his own apps and even created a club for fellow students where he shares what he knows about programming.  He thinks “students are a valuable new technology resource to teachers, and should be empowered to offer assistance in developing the technology curriculum and also assist in delivering the lessons.”

Amen. He’s taught himself Python, Java, and C “just to get the basics down” according to his bio.This DIY mentality is why online learning from CodeAcademy and Kahn Academy, are so popular.

Here’s his talk:

I had a glimpse of that kind of thing in my house two weeks ago. My son is a gamer. His current game of choice is Call of Duty (COD). He plays LIVE with various friends. He decided he wanted to record the game play so he Googled it (“How to…”) and ended up finding something called  Dazzle (about $50 US), a video capture device.

He asked ‘guilted’ me into buying it for him as repayment for the iPod Touch I accidentally dropped, cracking the screen. (He said since a lot of people have small cracks in their screen, he’d rather I not pay to get it fixed but instead buy this Dazzle thingy. This is extortion mixed with love and guilt.) So off we went to BestBuy  and, as it turned out, Radio Shack after that for the right connectors which we couldn’t find at BestBuy. (Dazzle is not created for the purpose of recording XBox play…it just does but you need to add some cords.) Oh, and we went to Wendy’s too. Why not make a day of it?

Back from the road trip….so my son often helps his friends out when they are first learning to play (they help each other) so he thought he’d record a tutorial. I’m not making this up.

Using Dazzle’s software, he couldn’t figure out why the audio control was grayed out (I suspect it had something to do with the default setting on the computer) and since I didn’t want to stop watching the Stanley Cup playoffs to mess with this audio glitch, I told him to look at Audacity (open source audio recording).

Unassisted (except for the Audacity tip), he recorded the audio, saved it as a file type he could import (because I later asked and learned Audacity saves with a AUP file type...so he figured that out) , narrated his video recording, set up his own YouTube channel and uploaded it. All in the  course of an evening…basically unassisted. He’s 13! Amazing since a few folks in the industry (no one reading this of course : ) still say “http what?”

So…later that night, I was watching some lame Stanley Cup Western division playoff game that was boring so I looked up his channel on the iPad and watched what he did. Did I tell you he is in middle school! Yes, these kids are our future workforce. Neither Suarez nor my son would have learned this in school. There’s no app class. There’s no live online collaboration and video recording class (and least in our school district in NY State).

Do you have a similar story?

(As an aside…I know there are people who would not let a 13 year old play a game rated “M” -whether live or not – but my personal approach is one of involvement  – Why is the game “M”? Is he mature enough? Do I know who he is playing with? Do I monitor that? Have guidelines and expectations been set along with what will happen if those are disregarded? Am I prepared to recognize the signs that the game is having a negative effect? Is he getting enough physical activity to stay healthy?, etc. The research is mixed on video games, especially violent games.)

I read the article Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years“  and, coupled with some research on mobile video I’m doing, paused because I suddenly felt like I was missing something. It was one of those “wait – what?” moments that I sometimes get as an analyst because you know, I have to know this stuff.

Anyway, the author of the article, Eric Jackson, shares two schools of thought – first, the outsized influence management teams have on organizational outcomes and second, the idea that managers don’t really matter all that much because organizational outcomes have more to do with industry effects. He admits to not thinking much of the latter (which comes from organizational ecology research) until recently. He believes that…

“More and more in tech, it seems that your long-term viability as a company is dependent on when you were born.”

In the tech world, Jackson identifies 3 generations: Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and Mobile and suggests that prior generations of organizations can’t quite see the subtle changes between generations. He goes on to say that social companies born since 2010 (i.e. Instagram), view mobile as the primary (often exclusive) platform for their application.

[Those companies born since 2010] “don’t even think of launching via a web site.  They assume, over time, people will use their mobile applications almost entirely instead of websites.”

There’s an interesting tidbit in the article that comes from Tim Cook (CEO, Apple) about the speed of change…

“…through the last quarter [Q2 2012], I should say, which is just 2 years after we shipped the initial iPad, we’ve sold 67 million. And to put that in some context, it took us 24 years to sell that many Macs and 5 years for that many iPods and over 3 years for that many iPhones.”

We don’t know the reason(s) why Facebook bought Instagram (born after 2010) for $1 Billion. Plenty of folks have opinions about it. Perhaps it’s because Instagram’s mobile  app doesn’t blow. Perhaps it’s Facebook’s mobile strategy in action. That’s my take FWIW.

What does this mean for L&D? We  have e-Learning 1.0 and e-Learning 2.0 and now have mobile learning -but are we just taking the 1.0 and 2.0 elements and putting them in mobile form? It seems we have to make sure our mobile learning can stand alone…you know, not totally blow.

(NOTE TO SELF: Change  personal website name  to Flushing the Social Web)

Blackboard’s statement of principles about open source says it is

“committed to supporting the growth, development and use of open source technologies in education worldwide.”

Blackboard also says it

“expects to make significant contributions to the community to help ensure that open source options remain strong, reliable and sustainable for all.” 

To that end, Blackboard has launched a new business called Blackboard Education Open Source Services – a good thing, right? Read on…

In support of this broader vision, Blackboard announced on Monday that it had acquired two companies – the first, Moodlerooms and the second, NetSpot. Moodlerooms is a solution provider that hosts Moodle for organizations, integrates enterprise features for Moodle, and provides consultation service and training for organizations interested in the low-cost, popular open-source Moodle LMS (they call is a CMS) and also customization, flexibility and extended features for the enterprise.  So, a competitor in the LMS space made up of customers that likely were trying to avoid Blackboard in the first place. Can you taste the irony?

By way of background, and in the event you don’t know much about open source LMSs, Moodle came on to open-source scene several years ago as an LMS/CMS used primarily by schools (K-12 to higher education) often as an alternative to Blackboard. (Perhaps the strategy here is if you can’t beat them, join them.). Anyway, over the years, as more corporations started using Moodle as an enterprise LMS, not surprisingly a Moodle services market sprang up which today includes several solution providers – like Moodlerooms and NetSpot.

Back to the acquisitions… and moving on to the second one, NetSpot. Like Moodlerooms, NetSpot is a Moodle Partner however; it is located in Australia servicing the Asia Pacific region. Like Moodlerooms (which BTW is based in Maryland), NetSpot provides services like hosting, support and help desk and integration and migration. So a global move too.

What the heck does all this mean? I found myself agreeing with Christopher Dawson’s summary at ZDNet Education about these acquisitions. He wonders,

“Is this a major play for market share, a genuine effort to promote development and cross-pollination in the LMS market, or a bit of both?”

None of us are naïve enough to not realize that Blackboard is no longer publicly traded but owned by a private equity firm. But…still. ?

For now, enterprise users of Moodlerooms and NetSpot can rest easy knowing that Blackboard plans on letting them run as they are now vs. swallowing them whole as they did with Elluminate, the virtual classroom. Enterprise users of Blackboard might look forward to more options. That’s a good thing. I’m just  going to make a bag of popcorn and watch it play out.

Here’s some interesting reads on this topic:

•  This kids, is why hallucinogenics and the internet don’t mix by George Siemens at elearnspace  (higher ed-focus and funny)
• Blackboard Acquires Moodlerooms, NetSpot To Offer Open Source Learning Technology, Leena Rao at TechCrunch
• Blackboard buys Moodlerooms…And no, this isn’t an early April Fools by Christopher Dawson, ZDNet Education
• Evolution Unbound: Blackboard embraces open source. By Ray Henderson, President of Blackboard Learn
• Blackboard Confronts Erosion of Market Share, Makes a Major Change in Strategy by Phil Hill at e-Literate
• Blackboard Education Open Source Services – a personal view by Mark Drechsler, Director, Consulting NetSpot Pty Ltd

I have been playing around with Curatr for a few weeks now not only as a platform for social learning but as a social publishing tool as well. Curatr is a stand-alone or integrated (with API) cloud-based platform that allows you to browse content  in a more visible fashion and more…

Publishing research and publishing self-paced, text- and image-based e-learning are similar. Over time, you end up with a great deal of content. Search for something broad like “RSS” and you’ll likely find links to documents, videos, presentation, case studies, research reports, tools, answers to questions, etc. It can be a  bit onerous leaving one rummaging through links asking questions like ‘what should I read first?,’ ‘where can I find examples of how specific companies are using RSS?’, ‘what do analysts say about RSS in 2012?’. I found that with Curatr, I could arrange various research objects in such a way that they would flow together a bit better in a nice visual format (which looks great on an iPad BTW).

Take for example the topic of virtual instructor-led training. That’s a topic that goes back for years. I could lay out content as objects that one  could choose – from ‘primer’ to ‘case study’ to ‘definition’ to ‘research study’ to ‘video’ to ‘webcast’ to ‘benchmarking data’ to ‘training and development’ to ‘ask the expert’ question responses. These are some of our assets our members know well. What makes it social is that I can interact with each asset – leave comments, add content, share, etc. – they become more alive that way.

There are gamification elements as well – “leveling up” based on difficulty and interactions. Below is a pretty basic look of just a few Bersin & Associates assets. If you want to really see it in action, take a look at some  videos Curatr has produced or you could even set up a demo account and play around. Put a time limit on it though…it’s easy to get carried away.

Here’s a screen shot with just 4 assets. I could easily add our BersinBasics, Tools, Answers to “Ask the Expert” Questions, etc. (click to make larger)

Here is a recent video from founder Ben Betts and a link to the iPad app.

Have fun and let me know what you think of published content presented in this way.

Alternate Reality Game (ARG)…an interactive story-based game, delivered through multiple “real world” modes (i.e., text, phone, Internet, print, and others) within which players must participate interactively and work collectively to solve “real world” problems the story presents.

In our most recent High-Impact Learning Organization research, to be published shortly, we asked organizations to rate themselves from poor to excellent on their e-learning capabilities. Not surprisingly, the entry point for e-learning – the creation of simple, self-paced e-learning – isn’t viewed as something too difficult to do.

On the other hand, expertise in things like serious games is viewed by most organizations as very difficult to do. Over 81 percent of organizations rated themselves as either “poor” or “below average” and just 6 percent rated themselves as “excellent.” 81 percent. Wow. Why, do you think?

I imagine when I dig a little deeper I’ll hear things like “we don’t have the capacity,” “what’s a serious game?”, “we don’t have anyone on staff with specialized gaming skills,” “they’re too hard to create” and “the cost is too high.” I probably won’t hear someone say “they scare the bejesus out of me.”

I don’t know about you but just a few years ago if you said “serious games” to me I’d think about simulations in a 3D virtual world. Maybe even head gear. That would be cool. Head gear. Scary but cool.

Games. Fun for kids. Scary at work. What happened?

Let’s reminisce about games…

Remember playing games as children where you undermined the rules at the start of the game or even during the game (hey, you’re cheating!). It was fun – you could make the game entirely different just by changing a few of the rules.

Today, as technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, games have become more complex (even Lego games) . For instance, “Geek Dad” Daniel Donahoo recently wrote about an alternate reality game (ARG) his 7 and 9 year old boys played to learn how languages are structured .

The game started with a letter in the mail (a Chinese character with a URL) that would lead the boys to a “rabbit hole ” that then immersed them in a game  (FYI…the entrance point for an ARG is called a “rabbit hole.” It is usually an online site. “Down the rabbit hole” is a metaphor for adventure to the unknown, from its use in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. You knew that but I thought I’d tell you anyway.)

Donahoo noted that through Skype sessions with “virtual agents” and missions, the kids felt they were part of the story; it felt real. That is the essence of an ARG.

Of course ARGs are not just for kids. Today we see them used extensively in marketing campaigns (Catch the Mini and Why So Serious ), events (the Olympics ) and now we see it in workplace learning.

ARG stands for alternate reality game (not to be confused with augmented reality). ARGs have been around for ten years. Back then (and today still) they were used to promote movies, video games and music. Dr. Jane McGonigal, a world-renowned ARG guru, defined ARGs in 2008 as

“an interactive drama played out online and in real-world spaces, taking place over several weeks or months, in which dozens, hundreds, thousands of players come together online, form collaborative social networks, and work together to solve a mystery or problem that would be absolutely impossible to solve alone .”

That is a great definition, especially for the type of ARGs Dr. McGonigal designs –games that focus on improving the quality of life and the greater good – but it may be a bit onerous for a group of 20 sales executives at an organization.

A simpler definition  for workplace learning might be something like…

“…an interactive story-based game, delivered through multiple “real world” modes (i.e., text, phone, Internet, print, and others) within which players must participate interactively and work collectively to solve “real world” problems the story presents.”

Based on my reading, talking to organizations and the research work of others, I see the following as elements of an ARG.

These games aren’t scary. While they can involve  3D virtual worlds, they can also be as simple as combining a page on your intranet and Skype (or any other communication tool for that matter) and a document.

Now designing ARGs can be challenging and requires special skills but it DOES NOT mean you need extensive technology skills. Web page + Phone +Piece of Paper + Sound Game Design + Whatever = Serious Game. It’s do-able.

This post is a tad long so we’ll call it part 1. In part 2, I’ll give you some examples of ARGs for workplace learning and share with you my thoughts on why they might be a great fit for L&D.

References

Bersin & Associates, The High-Impact Learning Organization 2012 (in press and you’re gonna love it!)

Büscher, M., Ellis, R., Ferrario, M., Kortuem, G., Whittle, J., Schorch, M. & Zimmerman, A. (2011). Collective Intelligence and CSCW in Crisis Situations. Retrieved December 21, 2011 from http://www.ecscw2011.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ws5.pdf

Kim, J., Lee, E., Thomas, T. & Dombrowski, C. (2009) Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games, 2001-2009. First Monday, Volume 14, Number 6, June 2009. Retrieved December 20, 2011 from http://frodo.lib.uic.edu/ojsjournals/index.php/fm/article/view/2484/2199

Szulborski, D. (2005) This Is Not A Game: A Guide to Alternate Reality Gaming (2^nd Digital Edition) (2005) Lulu.com. Retrieved December 21, 2011 from http://books.google.com/books?id=M7VwtUa2TYAC&lpg=PP10&ots=QfFCDisjY2&dq=alternate%20reality%20games&lr&pg=PP10#v=onepage&q=alternate%20reality%20games&f=false .

EDUCAUSE: 7 Things You Should Know About Alternate Reality Games (2009) http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7045.pdf

This is a cross post. Original at Bersin & Associates.

We know from our LMS 2011 research that the LMS market is experiencing more fragmentation, specialization, and globalization. We also know that we primarily see this in three overlapping spaces: (1) integrated talent management suite providers (the fastest growing space, especially for large organizations and where we are also seeing mega LMS/TMS mergers), (2) social learning platform providers, and (3) providers specializing in niche solutions (i.e., specific vertical markets like healthcare, unique needs like extended enterprise learning, and specialized delivery methods like mobile).

However, for such a mature market, we also know that many buyers of LMSs are generally frustrated with their systems and that is one reason we are seeing these changes – you are driving them. As the character Howard Beale said in the movie Network, “WE’RE MAD AS HELL AND WE’RE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE.” That’s probably why I sat up in my seat a bit during my briefing with Intellum when I learned that they had a 98 percent renewal rate. 98. Percent. Not many frustrated buyers there.

Intellum has been around since 2000. My briefing was on its Rollbook LMS with a sneak peak at something call GroupDock.

Here are some of my rough notes from the Rollbook LMS briefing:

• Add users (or have them self register)
• Specify data capture requirements
• Put users in groups if needed (by manager, by geographic regions, etc.)
• Simple upload of courses (taken a YouTube and an iTunes-like feel) for learners. (i.e., what learners are used to)
• Don’t have to use “slideware” (built-in capabilities)
• They will host video courses (overcome the video issue organizations face)
• eCommerce capabilities
• 3P integration with Exam Builder (confirmation button or testing/assessment)
• Creator of content sees what the student will see as they are creating a course
• They sell everything offered and customer decides what to turn off
• Can send data to other systems
• Partner with several 3P COTS courseware providers. Can just buy courses.
• Create learning paths

Intellum also does custom content. Implementation is 1 day. My impression is that it is ridiculously easy to use. That’s really their value proposition.

Now if you’re a small or medium sized business shopping for an LMS to administer and track training and create and serve up e-learning you can use the following tips for avoiding long sales cycles and complicated comparisons.

• You must be able to answer these two questions: “What do I want the system to do?” and “What business problem am I trying to solve?” Do not pass GO if you can’t answer those questions. Do not collect $200. Go directly to jail and do your homework. Homework may involve the investigation of things like “What is an LMS and how is it different than an LCMS, virtual classroom, or authoring tool?” (We have a primer on that.)
• Make a decision on how much you want to spend. And remember even “free” solutions have a cost (support, documentation, add-ons, etc.). Our LMS report includes cost considerations.
• Look for easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain systems. In the words of Homer Simpson, Doh! Yes, that’s common sense but I am reminded of a quote from Steve Krug’s awesome book “Don’t Make Me Think”: “If something is hard to use, I just don’t use it as much.” So…when you’re “trying on” systems, move along if it is hard to use.
• Go with a hosted system. ‘Nuff said.
• Evaluate the system against your use case(s) not just an RFP response or demo. Comparing which-systems-do-what using a checklist can be a painstaking and futile exercise (OMG…all boxes are checked for all of these!). Use case = here’s what I need it to do (from Q#1), can you do it? Good. Now show me or better yet, let me try.
• Separate “must have” and “nice to have” features. “Nice to haves” are the tiebreakers. Must haves are well, *must* haves. You might just want a couple of basic reports not über analytics.
• Keep track of demos using some sort of scorecard. Have you ever bought a house? How easy is it to remember which one had the upstairs laundry room? So like that.
• Leverage industry research.
• Check references. Most companies have clients listed on their website or just ask them.

Yes, Intellum will accommodate any organization’s years-long sales cycle. Yes, Intellum can crank out an RFP response if that’s what you require (and you’ll find a wealth of info in that link). But you can also just test drive Rollbook, buy it online (SaaS), and be up and running without even talking to a sales rep. I once bought a minivan on my lunch break. Now I can buy an LMS that way. There are many organizations – especially small and medium sized – that won’t find that a maddening experience AT ALL.