3 breaches in the month of October… Where are we going wrong with Information security training?
It’s Monday morning in the busy life of a compliance officer. Fresh off a great Strictly weekend (you still can’t get over Helen’s exit) you are absolutely raring to go, ready to attack the week. As your monstrously slow machine turns on a flood of emails appear. There has been a breach, the mother of all breaches, the Titanic of all breaches. “How has this happened?” you wonder aloud, “we’ve just rolled out a suite of information security elearning!” “We’ve blown most of the compliance budget on these courses” a nearby colleague mutters grimly.
With seemingly a breach every week since October, I’m sure this is a scenario that has played out in many organisations. But the fact is information security is changing.
Would you recommend your LMS to a friend? No? We can help with that.
We’ve been conducting some research at Saffron, intended to investigate the current state of satisfaction for learning management systems (LMS). We’ve surveyed people from various industries, from retail through to financial services – and one solitary but effluent waste management professional. We’ve gleaned fascinating titbits like ’44.5% use an open source LMS’, ‘50% are unsatisfied by the level of gamification/incentivisation in their LMS’ and ‘18% think LMS stands for ‘Lubricated Manure Shovel’’… OK, I might have made that last one up.
What lessons can be learned from MOOC platforms when designing an LMS?
MOOCs took the education world by storm. Since the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) was launched in 2008, the number of courses and users hasn’t stopped multiplying, mostly due to the fact that they are free to enter.
As a graduate sales and marketing assistant in a digital learning organisation, I couldn’t help but explore the possibilities MOOCs offer to elearning.
In this blog, I don’t aim to list the differences between a MOOC platform and a learning management system. Instead, I’d like to share five key MOOC platform elements I’ve identified as being transferrable to drive organisational performance and success in an internal learning management system.
Tacit learning and the lessons of content-heavy gaming for IDs
As an avid gamer with more than my fair share of first-hand gaming experience, my toes curl at the half-hearted attempts at ‘gamification’ that creep into elearning like a serial photo-bomber.
In an age of simplified, some might claim distilled, mobile gaming, where simple interactions lead to addictive gameplay (i.e. ‘flappy bird’, ‘angry birds’, anything to do with adjectives and birds -tepid seagulls anyone?) – businesses and instructional designers have desperately grasped for that golden mechanic. The one small interaction that can transform their learning from mind-numbing compliance into addictive learning experience.
For me, however, they seem to be grasping at the wrong mechanics. Scoring and rankings are great, but they require difficulty to become interesting (if Flappy Bird was easy, it never would have caught on). That difficulty is the mechanic through which a user, or a learner, becomes interested in bettering themselves and beating the game. The game puts the user into situations that test their abilities and this motivates the user, improving their performance and increasing their interest. In our example, the difficulty in flappy birds is derived from the precision it requires to guide the least aero-dynamically shaped bird in existence through an increasingly complex series of jutting pipes.
But nobody learns a thing from Flappy Bird, apart from perhaps the fact that life isn’t fair and that green metallic pipes are anathema to dysmorphic birds. Nor do we become better people through our increased aptitude at digitally flapping. The content is devoid of anything substantial (it barely includes a bird) and so the whole experience imparts nothing but a hollow addiction that is gone as soon as it arrived.
Learning, however, is content-heavy. It is full of material and to make this material difficult but addictive – to make the mechanic of guiding a learner through the content interesting – is a much more complex task. It requires more than scores and rankings tacked onto simplistic interactions.
If one wants to make this level of content interesting through gamification, one needs to look at popular games that channel enormous amounts of content. For example, role-playing games such as Mass Effect, Fallout and even Grand Theft Auto are infinitely better resources for instructional designers to study how gamification can increase a learner’s interest. These games revolve around freedom and how the user’s choices have implications on their environment. In all of these games, the user is compelled to empathise with characters, immerse themselves in a world and make important decisions that will affect the game’s conclusion.
Not only that, their future behaviour in the game is impacted by the lessons they learn (through story, difficulty and repetition) early on in the game. By the end, the user will be better at the game, and able to reel off unbelievable amounts of information about the game’s world and what they have achieved within it. They will have learnt. This exemplifies the real power of gamification to ‘sneak’ the learning in through the backdoor, achieving objectives and improving future performance by challenging and enthralling the user.
These games all have themes and messages which are built into their world, not explicitly stated but rendered through their structure. These are similar to the learning objectives we build into our e-learning. For example, Fallout is about the complexity of basic human nature and the resourcefulness of humanity. To describe it like a learning objective, by the end of Fallout the user will have learned that you can’t trust what desperate people say. Similarly, Mass Effect is about racial tolerance and the dynamics of a political system. By the end, the learner will have improved their negotiation skills and can distinguish between all of the alien races they have encountered. These things are implicit in the material and are taught to the user through story. Who says the content of elearning can’t similarly be implied and engaged with?
Nobody is suggesting we replace traditional compliance training with Grand Theft Auto, but the fact that someone can actively enjoy – not only enjoy, but consider a leisure activity – the learning of so much content is something that instructional designers have to sit up and notice.
So, how can we utilise the mechanics with which these content-heavy games become fun? How can we best apply the lessons of content-heavy gaming to our instructional design? We can build scenarios, include branching choices that make a sensible and entertaining impact on the outcome of these scenarios, even using traditional story arcs (beginning – middle – end; protagonist, antagonist, final showdown) to drive home allegorical points about the content we are trying to impart. The point is to have a coherent narrative that positively reinforces the behaviour, decisions and knowledge that we want to teach.
This change in approach can be understood by the less gimmicky phrase ‘tacit learning’. Tacit learning refers to knowledge taught by how the content is represented and the way in which the learner engages with it, rather than the words of the actual content itself. It is like the brand messaging that all clients care to build into their courses; “We want it to feel sharp and innovative”, “We want it to feel cosy and friendly”. You achieve this by telling the story in a certain way, involving characters in a certain way, constructing interactions in a certain way (all so they are ‘on-brand’).
Intangible messages, often so desired by our clients, ranging from soft-skills like attitude change to improved performance, are best served by this same tacit approach. These can often be the hardest lessons to impart, because you cannot change someone’s attitude by just yelling ‘WRONG!’ in their face, you have to demonstrate it. I implore you to think about how your interactions and the structure of your stories or characters, when done correctly, can complement your content and demonstrate your message.
We also need to embrace difficulty. It is very easy to shy away from complex and nuanced interactions that some clients may patronisingly deem ‘too hard’ for their learner. Difficulty isn’t boring, it is quite the opposite. So long as it is structured correctly to take into account the content and learning objectives, a learner should rise to a challenge. If they do, you are capturing their interest and improving their performance. It’s not about frustrating the learner. It’s about demonstrating that the bare minimum isn’t good enough. Showing them an attainable skill level that will motivate them to improve. In an easy game, people want to avoid being the worst. In a difficult game, people want to be the best.
‘Gamification’ has a bad reputation because it commonly focuses on the trappings of superficial mobile gaming: the timers, scoreboards and simplistic interactions. What instructional designers are missing is the content of games, how they are structured and how the story arcs and themes are realised within them. It’s important to note that this doesn’t mean big-budget graphics or gun-toting criminals talking about anti-bribery; some of the most addictive and engaging experiences I have ever had were from detailed text-based games. What I mean is that great scenarios and difficult interactions are examples of great gamification, and therefore examples of great learning.
For better gamification, and therefore better learning, we need to focus on our content and not cheap, simplistic ‘flappy bird’ mechanisms. We should flesh out our scenarios, by paying attention to story and the ‘world’ of the elearning and how that world pertains to the ‘themes’ (the learning objectives) of our ‘game’ (the course). We shouldn’t be afraid to challenge our learners and create interactions that thereby captivate our learners and encourage them to improve their performance.
I am lucky to work for Saffron Interactive, a company that has figured this out.
Edward White
Edward was an instructional designer and project lead at Saffron Interactive. Full of ideas, with a huge passion for sophisticated narratives and gamification, he’s always looking to push the elearning envelope and challenge the status quo.
How to decide between using a rapid elearning tool or bespoke development
It seems as though it’s all about rapid tools or bespoke development in elearning lately. But defining these terms does not receive the attention it needs and unsurprisingly, their meaning is not undisputed. That’s where my post comes in – I want to shed some light on this.
Rapid development
First off – what exactly is rapid development? Don’t let the terminology fool you, the term ‘rapid’ doesn’t actually describe the whole building process. In fact it refers to the software that is used to create the course. There are several in that category, among which are Adobe Captivate, Lectora or Articulate Storyline, that my colleague Karthik describes in his very insightful blog post. All offer a slightly different user interface and approach to creating a convincing elearning experience; what unites them is the output: a SCORM package in some shape or form which is compatible with most learning management systems.
What you’d never expect to find when you type “compliance” and “culture” in the same search box…
First things first, just to make sure we avoid any misunderstandings and confusion: What exactly is compliance?
When looking for a definition I consulted the Oxford Dictionaries, which defines compliance as “the state or fact of according with or meeting rules or standards”. Organisationally, compliance is about following a set of rules on a particular area of the business.
Having just left university, and begun my working life, I’ve seen compliance in a completely new setting. In a working environment, compliance stipulates (or should stipulate) the vast majority of decisions we make on a day-to-day basis. These decisions should have direct correlation to the outcome, and the outcome is what matters: it’s directly linked to organisational performance.
Each action performed by each and every employee independently in an organisation impacts overall performance. Non-compliance starts with individuals – and it can stop there too. Do employees need to be constantly warned and bombarded with endless workshops and training to stay compliant? Thankfully, the answer is no.
That’s why building and sustaining a culture of compliance in an organisation is critical.
Saffron Interactive seminar on strategic use of personalisation in learning technologies at eLN Conference
Toby Harris, creative lead and platforms product manager at Saffron, will emphasise the need to personalise learning and development technologies.
The early evolution of elearning in blended programmes: what’s next?
Forty thousand years ago, Palaeolithic man started drawing pictures of bison and deer on cave walls, and no one really knows why. Some theories suggest that these were part of a shamanistic ritual to bring luck to the hunt; others posit the idea that they were recording elements important to their lives. Yet a third interpretation is that they were practicing the earliest ever form of blended learning. The blend, you see, was the mix of oral and pictorial methods for teaching new generations of hunters about what makes the tastiest dinner.
Training Industry recognises excellence and innovation: Saffron Interactive again a Top 20 Gamification Company
Saffron Interactive has held its position on the Top 20 Gamification Companies list since the award’s inception. Its commitment to behavioural learning experiences has resulted in serious games that drive business performance. Read more
Four surprising reasons why you need to personalise absolutely everything (and see my session at the ELN conference)!
On 11 November at the exciting and brand new eLearning Network Conference I’m going to be giving a session entitled: “The tyranny of Taylorism and the digital citizen: a manifesto for a brave new kind of learning and performance environment” as part of Stream 1. “Strategy and Tactics for Digital Learning”. It is going to be a belter.
Not just because of my aggressive presentation style, but also because it’s the second session of the morning – just when the audience’s first strong cup of coffee usually kicks in.
My manifesto is directed primarily at a man – F. W. Taylor – who died exactly 100 years ago. His famous theories on manufacturing efficiency are, of course, obsolete, long since replaced by better ones like Kaizen.
But Taylor’s ghost lives on the Human Resources practices that his pseudo-scientific management theory gave birth to. They stopped building cars like Taylor thought we should decades ago. But we still build the kind of learning programmes and learning software he would appreciate.
It’s all summed up in his phrase: “the one best way”: everyone has a separate goal, and there’s one best way to achieve it.
So he wouldn’t like personalisation. Because personalisation requires the opposite: everyone shares the same goal, but there’s no best way to achieve it.
I can’t possibly hope to explain myself without a list of four surprising reasons which miraculously came to me whilst I was putting my slides together.
So here we go with my preview: four reasons why you need to personalise absolutely everything (“everything!?” I hear you cry). Yep, you heard me: everything.
Transforming performance through technology: Saffron and Michelin also shortlisted for Learning Awards
A cutting-edge blended programme by Michelin and Saffron Interactive has been shortlisted for another prestigious industry award. Brand Usage by Dealers is now a finalist for the Learning Technologies Award at the 2016 Learning Awards in addition to its eLearning Awards shortlisting.
Augmented reality: Learning in new dimension
Augmented reality (AR) has been a buzz word for some years, in fact, Minority Report already had me hungry for the chance to experience a new digital dimension. Companies like Disney are using static content, a marker and a camera (could be webcam or my personal favourite, a mobile phone camera) to bring content to life and in this example they take sketching to a whole new level!
The marker, which is sometimes called “a target”, can be a barcode or simple series of geometric shapes. When the computer’s AR app or browser plug-in receives the digital information contained in the marker, it begins to execute the code for the augmented reality program. So far, AR has been mainly used in: entertainment, retail, travel, advertising, and social communication.
In search of elearning nourishment
How best to respond to “We’d like just nuggets, please”?
Am I right to feel a little uneasy when a customer or potential customer (I can’t bring myself to use the ugly term ‘prospect’) says that all they want is ‘just nuggets’?
In the back of my mind there’s a kindly relative asking “Just nuggets, Dear? Really? That doesn’t sound like a nourishing meal to me! “
“Are you sure you’re eating properly?”
The joys of a generic LMS — Spoiler alert: there aren’t many
written by Paul and Sophie – two sorely afflicted students
Don’t forget to complete our survey on the role of the learning platforms and get a chance to win tickets for the football game between France and England on 17 November 2015 at Wembley Stadium, London
It’s that time of the year again: Thousands over thousands of new students have started University recently, which brings along countless little obstacles they have to overcome. It seems a bit hard to understand that an LMS is one of them. Don’t get us wrong, it is indeed a wonderful platform, as it provides loads of functionalities and enables a fantastic remote workflow. We just want to get the message across that organisations which use an open source software should not take this ‘out-of-the-box’ but instead go for a bespoke version which is customised to their specific needs. This post shows why saving costs at the outset will eventually annoy everybody to no end: students, teachers and most of all IT administrators. So if you are in the position of choosing an LMS for your organisation, please do consider the following five stories, fresh from University:
The environmental factor: Saffron Interactive to sponsor strategy stream at eLN conference
Saffron Interactive is sponsoring the ‘Strategy and Tactics’ stream at the eLearning Network conference in London on 11 November 2015, entitled ‘Beyond “click next”… digital learning solutions come of age’. Saffron’s session will tackle the need for learning infrastructures that improve performance.
Boot camp elearning – train your employees CIA style
You’ve been transferred to a foreign branch of your company. You’ve studied the language at school but you haven’t used it in years and you’ve never been to that part of the world. Besides, to comply with local regulations the work procedures are different. Now imagine, it’s your first day in your new role. You walk to your desk, log into the local system and start your work as normal. The phone rings, it’s your local client who wants to amend something on their project. The call isn’t in English but you manage to understand your client and agree on how to implement the changes. After the call, you email your team to inform them of the changes… all of this in the local language.
The social production line and the lessons of NUMMI for continuous performance improvement
A recent episode of This American Life told the story of the NUMMI car manufacturing plant in Freemont, California. In 1984, NUMMI was opened in a joint venture between General Motors (GM) and Toyota. At NUMMI, Toyota showed GM the secrets behind making, back then, some of the world’s best built and most reliable cars.
When it opened, the majority of NUMMI’s workforce were old hands from the old Freemont plant, which was considered one of GM’s worst. Employees drank on the job, were frequently absent, and even committed acts of petty sabotage.
But Toyota execs believed their system would turn bad workers into good ones. So in the spring of 1984, Toyota started flying the old GM workforce to Japan in groups of 30 to learn its system for making cars.
Do you sincerely want to be agile?
Well, who wouldn’t want to be? Agile, I mean. Given that there are so many antonyms of ‘agile’, including dull, ignorant, inactive, lazy, lethargic, lifeless, rigid, slow, and for good measure, probably sluggish too.
My background is in software development and traditional IT classroom training on topics including programming and project management. I gained twenty years’ experience as a software team leader and programmer before my involvement in instructional design at Saffron, which commenced about fifteen years ago.
So you think you’re an Instructional Designer?
The Instructional Designer role has never been considered particularly cool. But, just like mainstream indie or double roundabouts, the only reason it hasn’t been replaced is that no one’s agreed on a suitable alternative. Come to think of it, it’s pretty hard to pin down exactly what an ID is meant to be doing. Wikipedia quotes Utah State’s University to say that Instructional Designers create “instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing.” That’s a start, but this kind of definition feels problematic. For example, what’s an ‘instructional experience’? Presumably, it’s one that instructs the learner in their topic of choice, but how can this be effective and appealing without the presence of an instructor to breathe life into the words? And why does the definition put such emphasis on efficient acquisition? Surely learners must be able to acquire knowledge at their own pace in order to retain new skills and information in the long term.
To be effective, elearning has to be on a par with the best face-to-face training in its engagement, memorability, and potential for behaviour change. It has to put the learner’s needs at its heart while living up to their employer’s expectations. It has to prove its own worth through creating measurable change. The world is awash with compelling digital media and new generations of professionals have a world of choice at their fingertips. How, then, is elearning going to make an impact? Well, we could lose the Instructional Design title for a start. And let’s face it, the market’s already flooded with alternatives. People are being as creative with their job title as they are in their design. Here are just a few options to pick from. Do any of them apply to what you do?
Boosting performance with blended learning: Saffron and Michelin shortlisted for eLearning Awards
Michelin and Saffron Interactive have been shortlisted in the category of “Best use of blended learning” for the “Brand Usage by Dealers” programme. The programme applied cutting-edge instructional approaches to deliver an astonishing increase in brand value.
Implicit learning and the real lessons of gaming for instructional designers
As an avid gamer with more than my fair share of first-hand gaming experience, my toes curl at the half-hearted attempts at gamification that creep into elearning like a serial photobomber.
In an age of simplified, some might say distilled, mobile gaming where simple interactions lead to addictive gameplay (i.e. ‘flappy bird’, ‘angry birds’, anything to do with birds) – businesses and instructional designers have desperately grasped for a mechanic that can transform their learning from mind-numbing compliance into addictive learning gameplay.
For me, however, they seem to be grasping at the wrong mechanics. Scoring and rankings are great, but they require difficulty to become interesting (if Flappy Bird was easy, it would never have caught on). That difficulty is the mechanic through which a user, or a learner, becomes interested in bettering themselves and beating the game. The difficulty in flappy birds is derived from the precision it requires to guide the least aero-dynamically shaped bird in existence through an increasingly complex series of jutting pipes.
How to avoid paying a £100 million fine…
No, the answer’s not having a very good lawyer or an alert public relations officer. The rules to the game have changed!
The Environment Agency has grown a sharper pair of teeth. It has recently used its new sentencing powers against a utility company to make a statement:
- Fines for environmental breaches are now going to be much, much higher…up to a 100% of a company’s pre-tax profits!
- No excuses will be accepted. Companies should allocate means to prevent or fix any environmental issues their business may face, no matter their size or financial situation.
- Self-monitoring and inspection checks are no longer the only means of reporting incidents. The general public has access to a 24/7 hotline.
We’re used to seeing dramatic depictions of corporate misdeeds in Hollywood movies. But usually, the focus is more on a black and white moral message than on the mundane reality of business processes. The bad guy gets his comeuppance at the end, but what you don’t get to see is the two thousand page report put together by the regulator. The harsher sentencing guidelines highlight that the consequences for companies getting things wrong aren’t the same as in the movies, but they’re very real nevertheless.
You won’t believe these seven unusual things I learned during my placement year at Saffron
Hej! (more on this in a moment)
I’ve just finished my placement year of my engineering degree at Saffron Interactive. But my placement journey began not at Saffron, but a while before that. Having been rejected from a few multinational tech organisations (not going to name any names), I felt deflated and so I decided to venture into a different field: elearning.
eLearning was an alien concept – not so much the invention itself, but in the thought process behind it. It felt for me like an after-thought, something that was regurgitated by companies who didn’t have the time or resources to give their workers or learners their full-fledged attention. Instead they could only afford to sit them down and have them interact with a plethora of meaningless multimedia, hoping that the information was actually being transmitted. How wrong I was. Now I feel proud to say I’ve worked in this industry, especially alongside the pioneers of learning technologies.
With my placement year at Saffron coming to an end, I’ve decided to reflect upon my time and articulate seven things that I learnt here as an engineering student.
Saffron and Coca-Cola Hellenic to explain “why compliance elearning has to change totally” in LPI webinar
Coca-Cola Hellenic and Saffron Interactive will deliver a webinar next week on 29 July at 10am GMT + 1 to showcase a radically new approach to compliance elearning. Eschewing the conventional approach to compliance, Saffron and Coca-Cola Hellenic (CCH) have used emotive storytelling, game-based features and tools to focus on application and performance.
Dale Carnegie’s four unexpected secrets to captivating compliance training…
Nothing can quite disengage me as much as being forced to complete a task, when I can’t see the point of it in the first place.
That’s how I used to feel when I had to wake up early on a Saturday for the dreaded “Spring Clean”. Two things used to bother me about this. Firstly, it was just as likely to happen in November as in April. And secondly, I couldn’t, at the tender age of 7, see the benefit in it for me. Why was I cleaning when I could’ve been playing football, riding my BMX or better still playing even more football?
That’s how I think most people feel about compliance training. Even the word itself removes choice from the equation.
So how then do you engage learners from the outset and throughout? How do you influence a learner to choose to be impacted?
Enter Dale Carnegie. Not literally Dale Carnegie, but his book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. The book sets out a framework for people to become better influencers in their workplaces, schools and homes. But why is this relevant?
Saffron Interactive to explain how to build platforms that increase revenue and improve productivity in free seminar at Learning Technologies Summer Forum
Saffron Interactive (Stand 16), the award-winning provider of knowledge and performance technologies, will host a seminar entitled “How to create networked knowledge and performance platforms” at 11.15am in Theatre 3 on 16 June at Kensington Olympia. Based on survey results and research, the session will ask why knowledge workers favour commoditised social networks over existing internal platforms and propose an alternative.
Saffron’s head of design and development, Alastair Maclean, will showcase a new approach. Saffron Share uses intuitive search, learning networks and playlists to generate new insights and drive real time productivity and real world performance improvement.
Embracing uncertain rewards and the implications for designing digital learning
Life is full of uncertainty. It is something most of us try to avoid and, for centuries, it has long been assumed that humans favour certainty over uncertainty, especially when making decisions. But new research published in the Journal of Consumer Research has thrown up some surprising revelations.
Micro-learning only augments what’s there already — it doesn’t create new behaviours
A recent email campaign from our friends over at Training Industry promises big things from small learning:
“Microlearning is a training method that solves the challenges of aligning and educating organizations in the 21st century. Carefully designed 60- to 90-second lessons deliver content in bite-size pieces to increase learner consumption, retention, and performance gains. In an era of shrinking attention spans and rapid technological change, microlearning is the most effective way for organizations to give their employees the skills they need.”
Is it?
(If you don’t have time to read this whole article, jump to the summary)
I think the idea of micro-learning is pretty great for learners, for designers, and for stakeholders. And we are big exponents of ‘quick’ here at Saffron. Over the years our typical unit has got shorter, the amount of text on the screen has fallen, the platforms have got snappier, and the devices themselves have got smaller.
This reflects the way the digital environment is changing our brains and it’s no bad thing.
But the radical proposition of replacing everything with “carefully designed 60- to 90-second lessons” is even more alluring. Learners like it because it sounds short. Designers like it because it sounds quick to make. Stakeholders like it because it sounds cheaper.
Five advantages driving the adoption of mobile-first learning
Last October, it was announced that there are officially more mobile devices than people in the world – over 7.2 billion. “Mobile,” with respect to technology, is summed up in the words “portable” and “personal”. For the new generation of digitally connected workers and students, it means carrying a device which enables you to learn in a new way compared to the old model: just in time and just enough.
So what is driving organisations to adopt a mobile-first learning strategy? Here are five key advantages of the mobile miracle.
1. Convenience and ease of access
mLearning provides easy access to learning at a time and place convenient to learners. Since learners normally have their smartphones or tablets with them most of the time, they can have access to courses or learning tools anytime and anywhere, such as between client meetings, while travelling or waiting.
Six incredible HTML5 interactions for elearning!
“The utmost thing is the user experience, to have the most useful experience.”
Marissa Mayer
Slick interactions create a more dynamic elearning course that responds to the user and allows the user to really play and interact with your content instead of just looking at it. HTML5 has come a long way from its predecessors, and with the JS libraries which are currently available it’s time for us to push it to the next level! Below are six ways you can start exploring the full potential of HTML5.
1. SVG – Scalable Vector Graphics
SVG files are completely scalable to any size without quality loss, unlike PNG, JPEG or GIF files. SVG files will also be much smaller in file size generally. We can control graphics and elements within the SVG file using technologies like CSS and JavaScript.
In this cool example they show how to create an interactive infographic with SVG and CSS. This experiment with motion blur effect shows that there are plenty of ways we can bring life into animations with an SVG object.
Six awesome design hacks for elearning
“To design is to communicate clearly by whatever means you can control or master.”
Milton Glaser
To turn a good design into a great one is not rocket science – you just have to think outside the box. The box I refer to here is a colossal text panel over a bland image – which is usually what elearning ends up looking like. But there are hundreds of ways to bring a new dimension to your design. Here’s six to try out:
1. Substitute large chunks of text for images that tell a story
Thinking visually, large chunks of text often look dull. Instead, try telling the story using a scrolling, parallax animation. Here’s an example that comes to mind.
The uses of artificial intelligence in learning technologies — where do we go from here?
There’s been a colossal amount of development in AI research. Last week my colleague Jay wrote about the origins of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application to modern day society. Today I want to talk about its future and highlight some of the challenges that currently prevent AI from becoming mainstream in learning technologies.
In elearning there are undoubtedly benefits to using artificial intelligences which correspond and react to human behaviour. Wherever it may not be possible or desirable to incorporate real people (for example, a mentor who guides you through the introduction to a programme or LMS) is where an artificial intelligence can come into play. A system that learns with the student simultaneously and acts as a peer that can match its own capabilities to that of a human creates just the right level of competition.
Remember that AI has been involved with computer games for decades. By 1950, Alan Turing had invented a software programme to play chess named Turbochamp. There was no computer powerful enough to run the programme at the time, so Turing played games himself by simulating the computer – taking half an hour per move. Finally, in 1997, the hardware caught up with the software. IBM built a computer program, Deep Blue, which beat the world chess champion at what he does best – chess. The involvement of AI in computer games gets us thinking about how it could be used as part of a gamification strategy: a simple AI program could compete with learners in an adaptive way in order to produce a more challenging and addictive elearning experience.
Artificial intelligence and its application to learning
Although artificial intelligence as an independent field of study is relatively new, it has some roots in the distant past. In fact, we could say that it started 2,400 years ago when the Greek philosopher Aristotle invented the concept of logical reasoning! The effort to finalise the language of logic continued with Leibniz and Newton. George Boole developed Boolean algebra in the nineteenth century, which finally led to the base design of computer circuits.
However, the main idea of a thinking machine came from Alan Turing, who developed a hypothetical model for a ‘Turing engine’ that could handle any algorithmic computation, and proposed the Turing test which is still used today to measure the success of artificial intelligences. The term “artificial intelligence” itself was first coined by John McCarthy in 1956.
AI is now known as the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. It’s related to the concept of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.
How to bulk upload users to Moodle in ten indispensable tips
Bulk uploading can be an effective way to maintain large sets of users on an LMS when connecting to external databases and self enrolment are not options. This can often be the case in a corporate environment when an LMS is in its early phase of deployment or when HR systems are in the middle of an upgrade.
Moodle provides powerful and flexible bulk user upload and update facility. If you can learn to exploit all of the functionality it removes a lot of the pain from managing users and enrolments. So are you ready to transform your monthly upload from a brain-trauma into a breeze? Try my top ten tips for CSV success.
Ten things to remember when including video in elearning
For consumers and many companies, gone are those days where low bandwidth and connection problems were an issue with accessing the internet. But because of those problems, elearning companies or developers are used to taking the ‘minimum’ approach to visual and animated assets when designing elearning experiences.
A survival guide to digital disruption
Reconciling the networked learner with the drive to centralise
2015 promises to be a turbulent and difficult year. Many indicators now point to the likelihood of a second financial crash and a further destruction of capital on a global scale. In part, this is because the changing technological basis of world economy is undermining the ability of inefficient (or perhaps insufficiently inspired) businesses to make profit.
What’s been called the ‘third industrial revolution’ – the digital revolution – is eliminating a reliance on production lines, rising prices and rising wages which characterised the boom years of the twentieth century. The digitisation of the economy has now entered free-fall. It will sweep away industries and employment just as it has already plunged high street retailers into crisis.
At face value, the learning and technology sector is better placed than most to benefit from digital disruption (and has been benefitting from it for the past few decades), but its acceleration also poses unique challenges. This article intends to probe further into what the third industrial revolution means: both in terms of the needs of individual learners and in terms of the profound challenges facing organisations and businesses. Each side has a different story to tell.
This revolution in production is profound. China may be the last economy to reach middle-income status by industrialising along conventional, twentieth-century lines. Now, driven by huge investment in robotics and automation, China’s biggest factories are going ‘dark’. Cheap manual labour is being replaced by expensive machinery maintained by software engineers. Just as the steam engine broke apart cottage industries and the internal combustion engine destroyed an entire industry for horse-powered transport, many will be left behind by this new revolution. The winners will be highly educated and digitally literate problem solvers. They also tend to be rather cool and respected Tweeters, activists, bloggers and forum users. The chic, it seems, will inherit the earth.
This change in economics and culture has implications for learning, performance and knowledge management. Harold Jarche predicts that we are entering an open, ‘networked era’, where:
Continuous learning will … disrupt established hierarchies as a management position will no longer imply greater knowledge or skills. Command and control will be replaced by influence and respect in order to retain creative talent. Management in networks means influencing possibilities. Rather than striving for predictability. We will have to accept that no one has definitive answers anymore, but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together.
Jarche is tapping into a trend identified by other commentators and consultancies: a reliance on fluid, open networks facilitated by digital technology will start to change some of the fundamentals of the economy. The impossibility of success without networking, continuous learning and creative talent will render the Taylorist, command-and-control model for a business obsolete, they say.
But whilst Jarche is right to some degree, this is also a utopian idea. Take a walk across the eastern boundary of the City of London or a ride on the Underground. Everywhere billboards once occupied by adverts for consumer products now feature striking propaganda from Google subsidiaries. Android’s motto of ‘Be together. Not the same’ embodies a new paradigm: highly personalised services for individuals which are held ‘together’ by vast digital eco-systems under the control of a few powerful businesses. The data networks which will drive consumption in the twenty-first century are expensive, complex and centralised on a scale which dwarfs what came before.
This dichotomy is mirrored within businesses. The horizontal working environment that facilitates dispersed, continuous learning, collaboration and high performance is based on complex enterprise software and data analytics run by expensive IT teams. The software relies on high risk, make-or-break deployments which must be matched by spending cuts and tough decisions elsewhere in the value chain. As well as demanding grassroots participation and contribution, unleashing the digital business requires bold, centralised leadership – even brinkmanship.
Bersin by Deloitte’s report on ‘HR Technology for 2015: Ten Big Disruptions Ahead’ indicates that centralising learning and development should be a key priority. Reigning in local SMEs and gaining the leverage to squash unnecessary spending on classroom training, and shedding jobs in the process, is the unpleasant flip-side to justifying investment in new collaborative learning environments which will drive performance.
So there are in fact two distinct versions of the digital story – one for the learners and end-users who are already digital natives, and another for whole organisations seeking to survive this wave of digital disruption. Reconciling these stories presents both a threat and an opportunity for L&D.
On the one hand we have learners who are increasingly self-directed producers and consumers of knowledge. They are clamouring for enterprise collaboration and frustrated with existing LMS and knowledge management systems. They are bored of hour-long elearning courses and they’ll hunt down training on MOOCs and Google before they self-enrol onto your next classroom programme. To win them over, they need personalised experiences which are targeted at the point of need. It will be hard to please them with conventional, linear elearning – no matter how snazzy it is.
They also expect an inspiring set of values. The best talent has become discerning and judgemental. Many organisations are struggling to keep up with the resurgence of ideologies focussed on social justice and horizontal power structures. Simple financial incentives aren’t enough in a world of abundance for the skilled (behavioural economics suggests they never were). The new learner’s ability to perform is bound up with complementing her personal narrative of success on several levels. She craves alignment right down to her favourite memes, video-bloggers or Netflix shows.
On the other hand, we have organisations battling to survive in a here-today, gone-tomorrow economy. Embracing digitalisation is game-changing, but it’s also torturous. Consumers now expect everything to cost as little as possible, be available anywhere and all within a totally seamless user experience. But they don’t have any idea just how much this end-to-end experience costs or what must be sacrificed or gambled in order to pay for the investment required. Digital disruptors like Uber and AirBnB are rapacious, well-funded and meet with little resistance as they undermine existing industries. In turn, falling profit margins put immense pressure on employees to innovate.
It seems hard to reconcile the two stories: the situation of a business dealing with profit-warnings and painful IT overhauls with the needs of talent which demands a values-led, empowering learning and collaboration environment. So how can these two sides meet in the middle?
I think that learning technologies practitioners are more than just wedged between the two sides: we can be a key interface between them (… or, alternatively, we’ll get squeezed out altogether). On that basis, what follows is a survival guide for navigating and closing the divide which is opening up:
Make friends with IT
If your IT department is not yet a key pillar of the organisational strategy for surviving digital disruption, then it will be soon. IT commands budget and frequently embarks on programmes which require big changes in behaviour. So it should be a natural ally for L&D in the digital era. Learning professionals have an awful lot to contribute to help make those system implementations a success through user experience design (see below), as well getting involved in the bigger questions.
Context is king – seek out and support the context-makers
If subject matter experts are distinguished mainly by their ownership of content rather than their ability to boost performance or produce new insights, then you should pivot away from them and towards those who do: line managers. Social context created by connected individuals, not content itself, is now king. Good line managers are key context-makers: they are natural foot-soldiers in the battle for digital engagement with organisational strategy.
Command the space for dialogue between employees and leaders
The gap between what learners want and what leaders are faced with will only be closed by dialogue and discussion – and it’s a space L&D should seek to dominate. The insights gained from a ‘big chat’ between learners and leaders in crisis-struck organisations will demonstrate the value of collaborative technologies to your stakeholders. Taking ownership of generating new insights should be your number one priority.
Be experts in the discipline of user experience design
Making technology investments easy to use is a key part of closing the gap between learners and leaders – it’s also usually what is neglected or left to external consultants in the rush to build functionality. The intimate knowledge most learning technologists have of user experience design in the context of engagement is a key asset. You’ve already developed an intuitive grasp of what will work for your organisational audience, so recasting L&D practitioners as user experience experts is a valuable proposition.
Toby Harris
Toby is the creative lead and platform product manager at Saffron Interactive and an open source enthusiast. He likes it best when he is adding value to the elearning community, developing new thinking about how people development programmes and platforms can drive business performance and prove ROI. Toby has extensive experience with learning management systems, a frenetic devotion to social media and consequently is able to keep a keen eye on best-practices in the ever-evolving world of elearning. His role at Saffron is to ensure that our team and our clients are continually developing best-of-class learning solutions.
Video: How user experience, personalisation and social context puts learners in the driving seat
At Learning Technologies 2015 we delivered an interactive seminar with IBC, a leading Danish business school, which is shaking up the market for online business education. In partnership with Saffron Interactive, IBC is spearheading the move to offer learners a ‘consumer-technology’ user experience on any device.
Three ways to leverage the “twitch-factor” instead of aping the X-Factor when delivering feedback
When was the last time you spent a day without receiving any performance feedback?
I don’t mean just at work (that was probably quite recently). I mean generally.
Such as: when was the last time you walked down a street with no awareness of how you were affecting other pedestrians, motorists… street furniture? Or how about the last time you received no ‘performance feedback’ at all from a nagging partner about an annoying habit you have? Or the last time someone rolled their eyes instead of chuckling at your particularly dull anecdote and you completely ignored the put-down, and told another boring story? Without the vital impact of performance feedback in the latter two cases you would be a very lonely human. And in the first case, you would more than likely be a very dead one too.
Selenium: Open source automated web browser testing at its best!
Browser testing has to be a key part of any project process. Everything from IE8 to iPads are now widely used in corporate environments, and, users are beginning to expect multi-device options, meaning that all software is subject to increasingly rigorous browser testing.
Automated testing for web-based applications is a cost-saving tool way which allows us to focus manual testing where it adds the most value. Recently, organisations have started to rely on open source test automation tools (which have now become so advanced they rival the commercial ones) instead of investing in their costly commercial counterparts. With no licensing costs, these open source testing tools provide competitive features for automating the testing of software applications as well as web platforms.
Saffron’s Spicy Learning Blog is the world’s top rated elearning blog
On 16 February 2015 the Spicy Learning Blog was placed at number one by eLearning Feeds, whose team of experts rank and score hundreds of elearning blogs. The blog was rated on criteria including its publication frequency, levels of social sharing and the impact articles make on the wider elearning community.
The Spicy Learning Blog shares the top table with e-Learning Industry, the industry analyst and publisher of the well-known ‘Top 20’ lists, along with the LearningStone Blog and Speexx Exchange.
The blog is produced collaboratively by the entire team at Saffron, along with guest contributors. There are hundreds of posts available as far back as 2008 which share insights and document ever-evolving best practices in learning technologies and instructional design.
“The top rating by eLearning Feeds is a credit to the thought leadership which is regularly produced by the dedicated team at Saffron,” says Noorie Sazen, CEO at Saffron. “As a business which helps our clients to unlock the power of insight within their organisations, we think it’s equally important to give back to the community and the industry by sharing our insights, top tips and advice. Thank-you to everyone who reads and shares the blog!”
The Spicy Learning Blog is published weekly on Saffron Interactive’s website. Many blog posts are extended in the Insights area, which features longer articles by expert Saffron team members and industry thought leaders on key topics for learning and development.
A full list of the top rated blog is available at http://elearningfeeds.com/top-elearning-blogs/
Four things we learned at Learning Technologies
Did you miss Learning Technologies this year? Or perhaps the whole mêlée was so overwhelming that you’re still struggling to process some of the great ideas you saw in action? Either way, there’s no need to worry. Here’s four of our favourite trends and highlights from the event. It’s almost as good as being there, and you needn’t leave the comfort of your desk!
Saffron Interactive and AVA win silver at Learning Awards in coveted category of External Learning Solution of the Year
On 5 February, Saffron Interactive, the award-winning digital learning company, collected silver in the sought-after category during a ceremony at The Dorchester in London. Judges were impressed by the experiential elearning and unique knowledge platform developed in close partnership with Against Violence & Abuse (AVA). The project aims to educate practitioners working with children and young people about how to identify, challenge and respond to violence against women and girls.
We need YOU to help redefine what “elearning is…” at Learning Technologies this Wednesday
Saffron’s free, interactive seminar with IBC takes place in Theatre 1 at 10.15am on 28 January at the Learning Technologies exhibition.
I like to think that 2015 is the year that most of us realised we were now, in fact, living in the future. As I drunkenly yelled for several hours on New Year’s Eve, 2015 is in fact ‘the future’ of Back To The Future.
A straight talking guide to trends and vendors at Learning Technologies
Trade shows can be perilous places – sore feet, leaflet overload and worst of all, being sucked into a conversation about the ‘next big thing’ in learning technologies without being able to decipher the sense from the spiel. Here are a few questions you might want to ask to translate the trends into success at this year’s Learning Technologies.
Learning Technologies seminar to reveal how award-winning Digital Prevention Platform unlocked the power of viral learning campaigns
Creating a performance-focused platform using crowd-sourced content is the focus of Saffron Interactive’s seminar at 10:30am in Theatre 7 at Learning Technologies on 29 January. The Digital Prevention Platform, created in partnership with AVA, went viral to transform approaches towards safeguarding at a national level and won a European MEDEA Award.
Five reasons why you should replace the learning programmes on your LMS with learning playlists
Lists. Often when talking to clients about designing a dashboard for an LMS, we have to gently remind them that ‘at the end of the day, guys, it’s just a list’. A list of courses, a list of action points, a list of statuses or a list of things to do. That’s not a bad thing, as lists are also deeply satisfying things – they are how we throw a hoop around our complex lives so we can sit back and say: ‘that’s under control.’ And as BuzzFeed’s success demonstrates, absolutely any content is immediately more appealing if it’s in a numbered list.
Saffron to share how IBC are reinventing learning platforms with “OpenIBC” in free seminar at Learning Technologies
IBC, an innovative Danish business school, is disrupting the market for online business education. The seminar on 28 January at the Learning Technologies exhibition will present the radical new face of online learning, based on personalisation and networked learning, for a digital native audience.
Top 5 learning apps
After Christmas’s over-indulgence, self-improvement is most definitely at the top of everyone’s agenda come the New Year. In that spirit, we’ve compiled a list of our favourite learning apps. There’s no excuse not to get learning when these resources are at your fingertips (plus, they’re less taxing than joining a gym)!
Articulate 2.0 — Effectively engaging!
Creating a sequel is easier said than done. We’ve seen some software, games and movies losing the plot completely. But, with Storyline 2, Articulate have excelled themselves. Storyline 2 includes new and enhanced features, giving us multiple ways to bring our content to life with more control over how it looks and behaves. The new and enhanced features are exciting but I should warn you: as much as I love it, it runs a little sluggishly.