The Engagement Economy: Social Learning, User Generated Content & LMS Gamification

Katrina Baker, the Senior Learning Evangelist, Adobe started with her definition of  “social learning”

  • Encourages communication and sharing among learner

  • Can be blended into any type of delivery format

  • Every learner is a teacher, collaborator, and in some cases a curator

 Learning technology promotes social learning through:

  • Discussion boards

  • Gamification. Gamification makes learners feel more empowered (and thus more intrinsically motivated) by being offered a range of courses, rather than a few that somebody else has determined they must take.

  • User generated content workflows (ties into gamification in some cases, for example by letting users earn points through curation and different activities such as sharing their knowledge). Since the L&D staff can’t possibly know everything an organization needs, it can be helpful to create a framework so everybody can share knowledge.

  • Motivation through reward, both tangible and intangible (badges give us a way to recognize an accomplishment, and a community that recognizes it)

 For a reward to serve as motivation, the learner has to want it. Obvious, but important. Ones mentioned by the audience:

  • Coffee

  • Cash

  • Free food

  • Give-aways

  • Upper mobility/opportunities

  • Time off

  • Employment

  • Education

  • Certification

  • Continuous system access (revoking privileges)

  • Bragging rights

  • Access to your workplace

 Badges:

  • Have metadata associated with them (course, name of learner, when learned etc.)

  • Are portable – can be displayed on social media platform

  • Open badges is a Mozilla created standard for badges

  • Badgr – intermediary between learning platform and social media site (so badges you earn can display on the social media site)

 Creating your intentional design for social learning. Tailor the approach to what you are trying to accomplish, using such things as:

  • Users groups

  • Courses or learning programs

  • Points levels

  • The behaviors being rewarded

  • Other social learning elements.

Tips:

  1. There is often resistance to social learning – try for a little victory with the learners you will have most success with (as a prototype) to then sell to your target learners.

  2. Don’t make it too hard to achieve something tangible – receiving rewards more quickly will build and maintain engagement. When you are using a competency-based model and you have different levels it gives them something to aim for.

  3. A paper certificate of the badge is a nice option – people like to have it to show off or prove/document their participation.

  4. https://kahoot.com/ is a free way to build games, one audience member finds it great for new hire training

  5. Sales organizations have found gamification – a natural fit for a lot of their (naturally competitive) learners.

  6. Escape rooms, RPGs and treasure hunts are popular frameworks for gamification in the audience.

  7. Some learners enjoy the friendly competition of leaderboards that let you see how many points everybody has, and what level you are all at.

  8. You can also give extra rewards for tasks being accomplished early (or even on time if that’s an issue).

  9. Very hard to get SMEs who have to earn billable hours involved (doctors, lawyers). A mentorship program is one way that might work in such organizations.

Create Scenario-Based Training

Ray Jimenez, the Chief Learning Architect of Vignettes Learning shared tips and reasons for creating scenarios in training.

A scenario triggers a story in the learners’ minds featuring themselves. It allows the learners to bring in their own stories. (remember, it’s not your story that you are telling, it’s their story.) Scenario based learning can be so compelling that learners sometimes revisit their mistakes even after passing just to satisfy their curiosity about what could have happened.

Tension, challenge and choice gives ownership to the learner and help them emotionally engage, forcing them to reflect and explain to themselves why they made that choice. Tension puts people off balance, and they have to do something to resolve it. Scenarios help move people from one situation to another – go on a journey to a place you want to take them. They provide a safe way to make choices and discoveries. Scenarios create expectations and accountability. They help learners connect abstract concepts to real life.

Don’t do scenarios unless you can use tension, challenge and choice. They don’t make sense for all situations, especially when you have to assess with multiple choice. Put reasonable limits in terms of the number of choices and time it takes. Otherwise it gets too expensive and complicated.

Don’t put in a speaker or lecturer to tell the learner what they need to do, this just takes them out of the story, as will interrupting participants interacting with character or story to provide an insight, resource etc.

The scenario does the teaching, so you don’t have to say “right” or “wrong”. In real life there is no voice in the sky that says “right” or “wrong”. But you do experience consequences from your choices.

Some traits of good scenario material:

  • Relevant

  • Emotional

  • Tragic

  • Shocking

  • “You know the problem without having to state it”

  • Generates questions why

  • Tells a story

  • You want to know how to avoid it happening to you

How to Develop Online Soft Skills Training Part 2

Once you’ve done the analysis detailed in last week’s post you can start to develop out your scenarios and the flow of the lesson. Scenarios where users can make choices are so much more effective for knowledge retention and transfer than just telling the learner something.

She uses Adobe sketch to map out scenarios. It’s easy and free, but only works on an iPad. You can do the same thing in PowerPoint with hot spots to different spots, then import in Captivate (or other systems). Define what the storyboard is for and how detailed it needs to be for your stakeholders. It can be a lot of work to put things in a storyboard that you know you are going to use anyway.

  1. Start with the problem.

  2. Provide some content about the problem so they feel they are learning something.

  3. Present the scenario.

a. It’s very important that your scenario has believable and relatable characters.

b. Charlie Brown is an example, he fails, but he keeps trying and learning and you want him to succeed.

c. The learner becomes like the coach who guides them.

d.  SMEs should be able to give you realistic scenarios to work with.

4. Branch to three choices with feedback.

5. Present a second scenario. This one should be similar but a little harder to reinforce the learning. Also if the person just guessed the first time it gives them another chance to actually think it through.

6. Then review the material.

7. Then final assessment if required.

a. Multiple choice tests, while easy, are ineffective, as people can be great test takers, but miserable at doing and vice versa.

b. She encourages “Authentic assessments” that examine the learner’s ability in a real world context. This promotes better transfer back to the job.

c. Assessments can be as simple as the learner making the best choice of three options after presented with a scenario. If students are struggling you can customize and give more until they make the correct choices.

8. But the learners’ responses to the scenarios could also be seen as measurable assessments.

9. This structure allows you to “sneak in” more content, especially for those who give wrong answers. 

Highlights from the 2019 Adobe eLearning Conference

In addition to great food and a hilarious keynote speech by Andrew Tarvin on using humor in the workplace I attended several very interesting presentations that I’ll post over the upcoming weeks.

My first session was Create Soft Skill Training with Jean Marrapodi, PhD, CPLP Chief Learning Architect, Applestar Productions.

Soft skills training is difficult because it attempts to teach behavior instead of knowledge and is not measurable. A lot of soft skills training is about observing what works in real life. 

 How to Develop Online Soft Skills Training – Part 1

 1.     Know where you are going and why (the who, what, when, where and how). Too many people think eLearning development is just about chunking up content and making it look pretty.

2.     Invest in discovering what the actual problem is -why are they asking you to do this? Make the client articulate what is behind the request.

a.      For example: “we need training on communication” – so many things could be behind that, so you need to ask – is it:

i.     Conflict?

ii.     Nobody is picking up the phone?

iii.     Poor listening?

iv.     Something hit the fan?

v.     Something else entirely?

3.     Figure out how this issue is impacting the business.

4.     What will the KPI (key performance indicator) be?

5.     Refine the question of “What do they need to know and do?” down to a single sentence. “Our learners will know X and be able to Y. She really focuses on working with SMEs to get it to one sentence, if she can’t the problem is not defined enough. Sometimes you have to throw your best guess together to give them something to bounce off of and help them figure it out. That one sentence gives you a goal, and also a way to fight scope creep and help focus people.

6.     Determine how will we know that they know and can do it? This requires research, finding scenarios etc. to get the right content to apply to the situation.

7.     Determine how will they know that they know and can do it? People need confidence to actually do and apply what they’ve learned. How sure is the learner of their ability to apply what they have learned?

8.     How do you know they know that they know and can do it?  It can be helpful for them to see what happens when they fail and what consequences are.

9.     Build the framework before you build the content.

10.   She always uses simple mindmaps. That one sentence you created is the goal. From the goal you usually have a few outcomes. The outcomes are supported by your objectives. The goal is “now”, the outcomes are “later” (i.e. things they will be able to do in the future).

11.   Only once you’ve clarified goals, outcomes and objectives should you build out content and activity.

12.   Always focus on the learners’ WIIFM (what’s in it for me).

Join us next for Dr. Marrapodi’s approach to developing scenarios.