This short presentation provides results and general design principles from what we call x-learning...a form of e-learning that relies on eXamples, eXploration, and eXperiences that leverage avatars and simulations into a very natural style of learning by doing.

If you find yourself wishing you could get more out of your e-learning efforts, there are a lot of alternatives to consider. x-Learning, as we've designed it, simply mimics the way we choose to learn, on our own, everyday. It's high impact, but it doesn't have to be high budget.

You can read more about x-learning in other recent posts here. And certainly, if you have any questions, you can always post them on this blog. You can also give us a call or send a quick email. We love to talk about declaring war on ineffective e-learning!

In the past few weeks, my posts have covered:

• 2 Things To Avoid For Effective e-Learning
• 4 Ways To Improve Your e-Learning Strategies, and
• 5 Reasons To Declare War On e-Learning 

Introducing w/ x-Learning^TM And PowerSims^TM

At w/, we contend that e-learning is mired in old paradigms of instructor lead training and page-by-page, PowerPoint delivery. It's really better described as e‑reading. Learners are stuck with a boring cycle of click-read-yawn...click-read-yawn. And companies? They're stuck with ineffective results.

To win the war, it's time to break out of e-learning and into x-learning through what w/ calls PowerSims. PowerSims give learners:

• Options to eXplore content in the order, and at the pace, that they choose
• Critical eXplanations concerning features, benefits and customers
• Opportunities to eXperience new skills, within carefully designed simulations

With PowerSims, it's critical to understand that the design starts by identifying risk areas where learners are most likely to falter or fail in real life. This approach results in the most valuable training possible.

PowerSims eXplorations & eXplanations

The eXploration and eXplanation elements provide an interactive overview that incorporates brand, customer, category and product information. They give maximum control to learners, allowing them to soak up new knowledge in the order they prefer, and at whatever pace they choose.

This part of the PowerSim is designed to replicate how learners use the Internet to learn, every day. And it helps them discover the relationships between similar products and solutions, so that they can choose the right one for any situation. For powerful eXplanations, we use a friendly, knowledgeable avatar to demonstrate good sales techniques for each important feature, benefit, or application.

We collect all of this information through a detailed template that's specially designed for each client. The template allows subject matter experts to provide maximum value in minimum time, while screening out non-essential information. This approach helps us to rapidly complete very high-quality modules.

PowerSims eXperiences

Simulations are the fastest way for learners to improve sales results. Each scenario provides a safe environment for learners to practice, make mistakes, and get the right feedbackto become more successful. This learning-by-doing approach is both familiar and effective. And it's always been the most natural way of learning.

The number of different selling scenarios required to complete the PowerSim depends on how many different types of products and customers are involved. And again, scenarios are designed around the risk areas where salespeople are likely to falter or fail in real life. In fact, we believe that if learners don't have a chance to fail...they don't really have a chance to learn.

And you know one of the most satisfying results we've found with PowerSims? Even the busiest people will go through these practice scenarios more than once, so that they can learn by trying different approaches. This proves that, when the value is there, so is the time, effort...and the results.

Please take a look at the work on our site. If you'd like to find out more about what we might do for you, click here. 

Friday. What better day to turn your back on work and do some blogging, right? Besides, I just linked from LinkedIn to an e-learning blog post titled: Information or Knowledge...Which is it? where the author and commentors were pondering the difference between these two commodities and their meaning in e-learning.

I don't want to sound crude here, but that mentality is so 20th century...and it's so wrong. And it's wrong because business as usual isn't good enough anymore. We have to be better and smarter than that to put the American economy back on track. And for that matter, we have to continually improve what we do and how we do it...not stay stuck in what we did a decade ago.

What e-learning needs to focus on is exploration, practice, feedback...leading to competency. In other words, instructional and creative design that provides a natural way of learning by doing. And in the process e-learning changes behavior, creating new competencies that turn into company new revenues and company profits.

This selling game lets learners explore related digital home media products, then allows them to practice matching products to three different customers' needs. You can experience this game yourself at: http://bit.ly/4qeDcQ

In fact, it was years ago that we told our clients that sales training had to be more than product information. If the end result is to be more sales, then learners need to practice selling. Learners need to explore (not just read about) new products and then be able to apply what they've learned by practicing selling in a safe environment. Moreover, they must fail some of the time...because if they don't have a chance to fail and get feedback, and try again, their learning will be limited. 

If you'd like to learn more about why immersive simulations and serious games make compelling e-learning you might visit another post on this blog, Do games make compelling e-learning?: http://bit.ly/3ilXXG

That describes every popular video game on the market today. In fact, it describes every game ever made or played. And it's no accident, because it also describes life, and we design games as a reflection of how we experience life. That's why good games make for such compelling e-learning.

But as soon as I say that, it seems to me that I'm under-selling the product. I mean, game? It's not just a game. What we're talking about, really, is a mini-life experience!

More than that, we're providing the opportunity for people to experiment and make mistakes in a safe environment, so that they learn both obvious and very subtle ways to be more successful. You see? Game...just doesn't say all that!

Now...is it any wonder why people don't retain what they learn when we stand at the front of the room and talk though PowerPoint slides? Is it any wonder why reading, clicking next, and reading some more, is just short of fingernails on a blackboard, when it comes to learning? 

From day one, we've all interacted with our environment and learned...naturally, not by PowerPoint. And in a nutshell, that's why w/ continues to develop e-learning that more closely represents our natural habits of learning. Sometimes that means simple exploration, sometimes it's practicing skills within a simulation, and sometimes it means developing a game, er, I mean...mini-life experience. So, how do we go about that?

Well, to start, it's important to throw out two elements of the popular learning paradigm: pages and linearity. Throw them out. We can always go back and get them if we find they fit somewhere, but they're not a natural construct for learning. Certainly they offer a very incomplete construct for learning, do they? And while we're at it, throw out games like Concentration and Jeopardy, when used to simply develop a rote memorization of facts. Popular game shows aren't necessarily good models for e-learning.

Now, let's lay down some pretty obvious and sound guidelines: In general, learning is most successful when it's:

• Fun, challenging but not stressful, and relevant to other things that are important in our lives
• Purposeful (interpret this to mean driven by specific business expectations or desired outcomes
• Reflective of the skills we how we behave in real life, which includes having rules and being able to experiment, practice and make mistakes

There are a couple of other things that make learning more like real life: interacting within a group and being on the go. The first leads us to avatars, and social tools (blogs, wikis, online collaboration) while the second speaks to mobile learning. To be sure, there barriers to adoption for these tools, but because they imitate real life, they're destined to become part of real e-learning.

So what's the wrap-up here? The short answer is that your e-learning probably isn't compelling; probably has less impact than you want. But the great thing about that is, you don't have to be stuck there. You can start re-making your e-learning in a way that mimics life. Not linear, but exploratory...not reading, but practicing...not in isolation, but as part of a group.

Many times, managers approach e-learning with cost concerns. Fair enough...as long as you take a broad enough view. A wider perspective has to include the results you get from the money you spend. But ROI can be so difficult to measure, most of the time we just give up.

So take another approach. Sometimes a regular hammer does the trick, and it's cheap. On the other hand, a sledge hammer is only incrementally more expensive, but gets a whole lot more results.

As a case in point: in one survey, our sales learners--and their sales managers--both tell us that our courses helped them to sell 8% more product, on average. 

Now, there's no doubt that immersive e-learning costs incrementally more, but the results hit like a sledge hammer!

And you have to ask yourself: What's it worth to hit a home run with your e-learning courses? What if you spend 10 or 15 percent more, but doubled the results? No doubt that even a few points increase in sales could pay for your course...even your whole program!

So, the next time you start thinking about the cost of your e-learning programs, be really budget conscious and figure in the return on your investment, as best you can. The increased results from using avatars and simulations may be just what you need.  And even if you can't measure it directly, let us show you how to get data back from your learners that supports you in doing the best job you can do.

Most of the time, we concentrate on helping learners practice the decisions they need to be good at to succeed. Those decisions may be rooted in some kind of policy or procedure, or in many cases, they have to do with qualifying, recommending and overcoming objections in sales training.

Of course, interacting with an avatar is a really effective way to practice because we're closely simulating the real situation, in an environment where there are no penalties for mistakes.

Besides interacting with learners, we know that avatars can do a very good job of demonstrating and they can be used effectively as a coach, too. But there's one more role that we hadn't been so aware of, and that's avatar as facilitator.

Using our avatars as facilitators came into sharp focus as we were planning for an online resource that would take the place of several days of new employee training. The role of interacting so that learners could practice decision-making was greatly diminished because our learners would be new hires.

One thing about online vs. instructor led training (ILT), you can cover the same material much more quickly. Balanced against that advantage, however, you don't have the facilitator there to tell war stories or make important connections. Enter the w/ avatars!

As we looked at the content, we realized that, much like a facilitator on a leash (always enough, never too much), the avatar could intoduce and direct whenever it was required. That wasn't a big a surprise. But we were delighted when we realized that the avatar could also make cogent observations, pointing out when two plus two was more than four, anytime...heck, everytime it was appropriate. Not just a facilitator, this avatar would be insight-on-tap. Stored company wisdom-on-tap!

So just like any other conversion of ILT to online, everything could be done more quickly and directly...and we're not missing the facilitator at all!

Semantics is an academic's pastime. I'm usually more interested in action than talk. So let's boil it down. As learning professionals, what are we really trying to get at? The most effective learning possible, right? That should make it pretty simple, then.

While some read for entertainment, most learning content isn't entertaining enough to keep you awake. So that leaves out reading as the most effective method for learning. But let's face it: even if it's called e-learning, if I'm not actively engaged, it's just e-reading.

The best learning, all things considered, has always been learning by doing. Put another way, we're talking about practice. And practice makes perfect, so why not give learners a perfect place to practice? If two plus two is four, we're talking about a simulation as a safe place to practice.

Practicing on your own isn't always optimum. On the other hand, not being in front of others, and working at your own pace, can be the perfect combination for learning by doing. So, online simulations, or immersive learning simulations as some like to say, can provide a real advantage.

In our experience at w/, two things make learning simulations more immersive: valued outcomes that can be used right away, and avatars the learner interacts with and learns from.

There's nothing like the "ah-ha" of learning something new and using it to get ahead. That's what I mean by a valued outcome. And avatars...well, they make a simulation human. I mean, I'd rather have a relationship with an avatar than text on a screen. And unequivocally, we humans are wired at the factory, to work and play and learn most naturally from within relationships.

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In the past, I don't know, 10 years, we've talked carefully about different ways that people learn. Not bad conversations. In fact recognizing things like (regardless of learning style) we can confuse learners by offering them both text and audio at the same time is really important. Understanding the power of visuals in learning (because most people are visually oriented) is important to outcomes, too.

But how do we learn best? Read all you want...watch all you want...neither will ever replace good practice.

Luckily, when it comes to enterprise elearning and performance, much of what we need to practice is good decision making.

Input--Process--Output. Each step of the sales process (or any process), provides some sort of input, results in some sort of output, and in the middle, demands thinking and decision making.

All the product information in the world doesn't make a successful salesperson. All the training in the world doesn't either. You gotta get out there and practice. But before you practice live, practice where it doesn't matter...where mistakes don't cost you a sale or a customer. That's where avatars, or computer generated characters come into play.

At w/ we create immersive learning simulations where salespeople interact with characters on-screen. We use Codebaby characters because of their body language and ability to convey emotion. Our learners overwhelmingly tell us that using these characters:

• Makes different customer types more real for them
  
• Brings selling demonstrations to life
• Will increase their sales more than other elearning

Not bad results, right?

As we put our simulations together, we make sure that learners have a chance to fail. When their decisions are off the mark...just a little, or a lot...that's when the real learning happens, because it gives us a chance to provide appropriate feedback. If they don't have a chance to fail, they don't really have a chance to learn.

As you might expect, there's a lot less learner stress with this kind of practice than in live role-playing (which, of course, also has its place). And because it's online, the feedback is always consistent, too.

If you go to our homepage you can see a quick demo movie that shows the use of Codebaby avatars in several different courses. You can also visit with Matt Taylor in our Virtual World Headquarters. Or give us a call. We'll take you on a personalized tour of work that will help you think of ways we can help your salespeople practice making the right decisions in a safe environment.