It's easy for our jobs to get in the way of what we do. There's so much work to be cranked out! But as always, work should be about quality, not just quantity...and ultimately it has to be about results. We can't afford to put as much time and money into e-learning as we do, if we don't get a good return on our investment.

ROI is the WHY behind strategy. So your first checkpoint on effective e-learning is: are your courses supporting a well articulated strategy? Unfortunately the usual answer is, at best, only a partial "yes".

Check your own experience: is 90% or more of your sales training just product information? Or is it focused on how to sell the right product to the right cusotmer? Too many times, that's not the case. And while sales training is an easy example, we could be talking about any course that's fat on what and lean on how, why and practice.

This post would be way too long if I were going to cover HOW to incorporate strategy. It's more about WHAT you can be doing strategically, to improve both quality and ROI. But I promise, week-after-week in the coming months we will be talking a lot about the HOW-TO of integrating strategy into your courses.

Let's return specifically to sales training as our example for implementing e-learning strategy, allow me to introduce these additional questions:

• Do you understand your customer's point of view and are you training from that direction?
• Are you reusing e-learning content to help customers sell themselves?
• Is part of your effort working to create word of mouth (WOM) in the marketplace?
• And finally, does your e-learning support brand preference that leads to repurchasing?

If it never occurred to you that these strategies should be driving your e-learning efforts, that's okay. But when you're measured on the results of your program, as more and more of us are, this might be just the improvement you've been looking for. See you next week!

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.  

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!

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?

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.

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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.