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