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.

Recently I was asked to make a presentation on elearning best practices for the elearning SIG of the Minneapolis ASTD chapter. Approaching this from a client perspective, what emerged was a collection of tactics and tips that the w/ team uses to save time and money, while improving results.

You can see this in a podcast, just below. If you want to quickly breeze the topics first, scroll down...they're bulleted at the bottom.

• Aim at business goals. Business goals should be at the center of your target for each course. And the ring next to the bullseye is...
  
  
• Scope and process. Find out why and how we re-engineered one client's elearning practices to be 20% more effective...
  
  
• Make it modular. Modular design gives you more flexibility and saves time and money. There are a couple of ways to look at this...
  
  
• Reuse your content. Plan to get double the mileage from your elearning. For instance, building two doors into the same content...
  
  
• Repeat and retest. We've all used repetition in courses to improve learning. Learn how creatively retesting can support learning...
  
  
• Practice, practice. eLearning is uniquely powerful at providing a chance to practice (and fail) in making critical business decisions...
  
  
• Avatars add impact. These characters connect with learners at a very human level. They increase trust, credibility, retention...
  
  
• Measure what matters. Forget assessments for a moment. Survey learners to see if you're achieving important business goals...
  
  
• Be learner-centered. Make your learners more successful and the ROI is relationships of trust, commitment, and real results...
  
  
• Rethink your LMS. Most company’s LMSs are two sizes too big for their needs. Think simpler and less expensive, if you can...
  
  
• Network and share. None of us is as smart as all of us. Keep networking with others, and share what works for you...
  

Thinking about the last point, please feel free to share what works for you in the blog at www.wslash.net. Even better, we'd like to know what your challenges and objectives are. That would give us a way to demonstrate what we mean when we say w/ is elearning not as usual.

I recently had a client who had been reviewing different avatars tell me that they all seem the same. Granted, this person is in purchasing, not in learning, but the comment does bring up an interesting issue. What makes a good elearning avatar?

We've learned by experience that characters that are too photorealistic are creepy. That's because the rigging and animation always fall way short of the visual features, causing a distracting Max Headroom kind of dissonance.

Simpler characters compliment learning, rather than distract from it...and yet, too simple also gets back to being a distraction. So not photorealistic, and not the rather crude talking heads you sometimes see. And while there is certainly a place for 2-D characters, we prefer 3-D, for most applications.

Just as the voice can convey important emotional cues that add significant depth to a message, so can body language. That's why we like to see a character that can walk and gesture, and of course lip-synchs with the voice. 

When it comes to production, a good avatar is easy to work with and keeps ROI in mind. That's one of the main advantages to the Codebaby characters we use. We can change clothes and hair pretty easily...and they come already rigged, with a broad selection of movements and gestures for us to plug in.

Bottom line? The avatar is there to help create a more human experience. They make practicing a learning objective much more real and powerful. You need them to do that job without being a distraction, and without causing you more work than the project is budgeted for.

Prospects are always impressed by our full-body avatars, and for that reason we're quick to demonstrate them.

But as I joined in the selling process with a new client recently I was reminded that, while we're always thinking sims, that doesn't mean that we should always be thinking avatars. Here's why:

• A sim is used to, literally, simulate real life decisions to provide a learner with practice. Here, by the way, we design in options for failure. If learners don't have a good chance to fail, they don't really have a good chance to learn, either.
• But sometimes the failing and learning have to do with software or with repairing machines. When there is no interaction with people, there is no call for an avatar...no matter how powerful they are.

So, while we're always thinking in terms of sims these days, we're also quick to determine what soft skills are in play. No soft skills, no avatars.

And depending on the audience, we may choose to use avatars in only one section of the course. That would be true with boomers, more than any other age group. They appreciate working with an avatar in a role-play, but tire of having them around when it's not necessary.

Corporate purchasing agents have to be good at investigating, and evaluating...and sometimes...good at beating people up, in order to get the best product or service at the lowest price. It's a tough job that I certainly wouldn't want.

At w/, we make it easier to buy from us by being an immersive botique.

We're immersive not just because we do immersive elearning, but because we truly immerse ourselves in our clients business and objectives.  And we're a botique because we're big enough to take on anything that our much larger competitors can, but small enough to care personally, about every project we do.

When we're scrutinized as being too small, I point out our global and Fortune 100 clients. But more importantly, I point out that, while a large company may have more employees, for the money a project costs, you won't get any more people working on it than you do at w/. And with a bigger company, it's likely that these people have never even met you...so how can they truly understand your needs, your business?

There are times when bigger is better, sure. But when it comes to high-quality, high-value elearning, an immersive botique, like w/, just might be the way to go. Just ask our clients!

You can argue all you want about the value and/or definition of serious games vs. immersive learning simulations, but let's stick with just immersive learning simulations. No, in fact, let's just stick with immersive learning.

It's not that I'm not interested in simulations.  I am. But does elearning have to be a game or a simulation to be immersive? You want the learning to stick, and you want learners to be eager to return. Getting a learner immersed in the content and its presentation can do this, even without games or simulations.

A lot has happened in the 10 or so years since CBTs became elearning. Bandwidth for one...a huge change. Mobile computing, multi-player online games, avatars, YouTube, Facebook, del.icio.us, Google...all are huge changes that have an impact on elearning and how immersive it can be.

Boomers will be around for some time yet, but we are also seeing Gamers in increasing numbers. Talk about change! Having grown up with computers and computer games, these tech-savvy, information-hungry 18 to 34 year olds are described as digital natives. And their experiences change how they pursue, interpret and use information.

The way Gamers use the Internet makes them elearners, by definition. Gaming, Googling, Facebooking or blogging, they continually search out new information in a way that defines their lives. That may make back/next elearning boring for them, but it also opens up lots of options to engage, entertain and immerse them in learning.

Here are three ways that you can engage and immerse Gamers in elearning:

• Does content have to be linear? We know that interests and levels of competency vary from learner to learner, so why not make information available in randomly accessed chunks and let them proceed as they wish?
  
  
• Does learning have to be directive? Gamers (and even Boomers, by the way) love to discover information by searching and interacting with their digital environment. And learning sticks better that way, too.
  
  
• Are SMEs in short supply? Sometimes a big boost to elearning can be as simple as focusing on a topic by bringing different pieces of expert information (that are already on the web) directly to the learner. We don't have to create all the content ourselves, you know.

We're going to have to explore these (and other) options for engaging and immersing elearners in future posts.

This post summarizes a Stanford University study that was published in 2002. Like a lot of academic papers, it's well, pretty academic reading. But it makes a very strong case for the use of animated characters, or avatars, in online learning. And it has a ton of impressive research behind it. You can (download) this study from us, but below is the short version.

First of all, we are all familiar with the concept of social intelligence. It's well documented that the quality of facial and emotional expressions, along with speaking ability and other personal skills, result in greater or lesser degrees of engagement, trust and satisfaction during a social interaction.

According to the Stanford study, a significant body of research shows that the presentation of social intelligence is just as critical in online interactions as it is in interpersonal interactions. They make the point that people do not discount interactions as unreal, simply because they are on screen. Further, it asserts that interactive media automatically engages brain systems that are meant to evaluate social experiences. Therefore online characters that speak and interact with learners can create a more meaningful experience, increasing trust, satisfaction, memory and learning, and a willingness to return for more learning.

The study goes on to say that online characters can create a positive feeling towards the organization that sponsors the interaction, make people feel special, rather than one of a multitude of learners, and make the web less lonely. The study goes on to fortify these assertions in a list of 10 benefits to using online characters:

1. Characters make explicit the social responses that are inevitable in online interactions, giving us more control over outcomes.
2. Interactive characters are perceived as real social actors; we know they are not real, but we treat them as if they are.
3. Interactivity increases the perceived realism and effectiveness of characters, as it simulates human-to-human conversation.
4. Interactive characters increase trust in information sources, and research shows that when characters guide interactions, people trust the information more than in identical interactions without characters.
5. Characters have personalities that represent brands, create predictability and help to build relationships.
6. Characters can communicate social roles, thus making their function--as a teacher, coach, teammate, salesperson, customer service rep--clear, and improving the message and experience.
7. Characters can effectively express and regulate emotions, responding appropriately to learner interactions and adding impact and meaning to what is being learned.
8. Characters can effectively display important social manners, with polite greetings, effective encouragement, and even simple apologies...all making the interaction more human and more effective.
9. Characters can make interfaces easier to use because they make it more obvious where to find help, and more like getting help from someone down the hall than from a manual or help file.
10. Characters are well liked because they make online interactions more personal. When presented with only a single character for interaction only 15% of users dislike the character. When presented with a choice of multiple characters, more than 90% of people prefer interaction with the character, to no character at all.

The Stanford paper is well documented, referencing 36 different studies, articles and conference proceedings. It is well worth the read, if you have the time, but this summary gets to most of it. Bottom line, if you're wondering about using characters in your online learning programs...you can probably erase any doubts you previously had. Online avatars can crate immersive learning.