Yet, of the three majorpushes within elearning these days, only one puts this astounding fact to gooduse. The three options I'm talking about are: social elearning, rapidelearning, and immersive learning simulations.

Social elearning tends tobe more about a different way to learn or introduce learning content. It'sabout collaboration and sharing, and it seeks to capture and share front linelessons without all the energy, time and expense of formally developed content.With this in mind, social elearning more or less falls out of the retentiondiscussion.

Rapid elearning is economydriven. It may be sold as some sort of step up, but one-size-fits-all templatesand game show contrivances are hardly advances. They're more like puttinglipstick on a pig, at least where retention is concerned. Let's get real here,remembering where a fact is on a game board so that you can match it withsomething else isn't the kind practice that the research is talking about.

Immersive learningsimulations, on the other hand, take learners into the gray areas of a subject,allowing them to discern subtle differences and experience the consequences oftheir decisions. In short: real, effective practice.

Simulations take longer tofor an instructional designer to create. They take longer to produce, too.There's no question, then, that immersive learning simulations are moreexpensive, on their face. But on the backside, when there's an opportunity for10 times the results, where do you feel better about spending your money? Whichresult would you rather be held accountable for...rapid elearning, or effectiveelearning?

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!

We recently rolled out the first ILS (immersive learning simulation) that a large audience of retail sales people have ever seen...with fantastic results.

This is a group we've worked with for years, in a very successful program for a global manufacturer. And while you sometimes worry about tinkering with something that has been so successful, but both our team and our clients agreed that simulations could add great value and should be the next step in our program's evolution.

We chose to use computer generated characters, or avatars, from Codebaby because they are full-body figures and we can easily make them walk, sit, gesture and lip synch to the voice track. The combination of voice inflections (from our narration) and body language provide a very social, very human experience for learners. In all, this course utilized two characters for customers, one acting as a retail salesperson, and one as selling coach.

In the first two weeks, over 600 individuals in our learner population completed this course where they were introduced to different customer types (represented by different avatars). Putting this customer information together with new product information, learners were turned loose in two different simulated selling scenarios.

Learner decisions about what type of customer they were dealing with, and what feature or benefit would appeal most to their specific needs, put them onto one of six different solution paths. For each path, learners received feedback on their performance. And they were encouraged to go through each scenario more than once, to improve their selling skills.

When invited to participate in a survey on the new course format, over 90% of learners chose to do so.  Learners were overwhelmingly positive and told us that the agreed or strongly agreed:

• 84%...Actually meeting the customer characters made them more real for me.
• 88%...It was helpful to observe the retail sales character's approach to selling.
• 92%...The coach provided useful insights and advice on customers and selling.
• 89%...It was useful to actually practice selling the tire to customers.
• 88%...It was helpful to go through the selling scenarios more than once.

If you're reading this, you probably got here from our immersive elearning demo at www.wslash.net (and if not, go to our home page and click on the Demo link in the right column).

The purpose of this blog post is to generate ongoing feedback from people like you, and get your take on immersive elearning. We used the w/ virtual office to demonstrate immersive possibliities, rather than just talk about them. But talk is good, too. So, let us know...

• What did you think of the Hall Of Immersions?
• What questions do you have about implementing immersive elearning?
• How can we share what we know, in order to help you?

Treat this as an open forum. We're looking forward to what you have to say...and you can be sure, one of us here at w/ will always answer your comments and questions.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Jack Pierce
w/ CEO

Everyone pretty much agrees that immersive elearning is better than simpler, linear, click-ahead elearning. Or maybe not.

We've sometimes experienced unexpected client angst when developing more immersive courses. Discomfort that immersive production takes longer. Concern that an immersive approach makes for longer learner seat time. Confusion that not every option in a simulation is black and white.

So maybe we should address the shifting paradigms that must accompany successful immersive elearning. Five immediately come to mind:

1. The point of immersive elearning is to slow the learner down, so that the learning sticks. Evaluating, studying, practicing...all take more time than skimming content just to get to the assessment. But while immersed, longer times actually seem like shorter times.
2. Immersive development time is greater than the time it takes to create click-ahead content. More time for the client, the SME, the instructional designer, and the developer. Create structure and processes that keep you focused and working more efficiently.
3. Instructional design for immersive elearning is more than linear content dressed up with avatars and games. You will have to fight to reorganize the way you think, to do this right. It requires more insight, and more levels subtlety to create a successful learner experience.
4. We learn best by doing. When you get right down to it, we learn by failing. If you are not providing the learner with practice at making decisions, and failing, you are missing out on a powerful tool.
5. When using avatars (and you should use avatars) don't use them simply as eye candy. Use them to create a social interaction, which will be engaging as it builds trust in your training brand. Use them, as with a valuable mentor or coach, to build better relationships with your learners.