G-Cube Solutions: e-Learning Products and Services

“Go-go’s find” happened because we wanted to continue with our series of short films. Also, as the team was between projects at that time, it seemed like a good idea. So, we got together, Bijan Samaddar (still-life man or the illustrator), Suhail Qureshi (life giver or the 3D artist) and P. Kasturi Rangan (the glib talker or the Manager). We decided that we would show that love and hunger co-exist. This story was our funny side of a ringside view on universal love. Anyways, days passed to weeks and then into months before we could sit after our initial discussions as other projects took priority. The 3D part of this story is still under construction and we hope it sees the light of day, someday. Till then, here is a rough cut 2-D version of “Go-go’s find”.

(P. Kasturi Rangan is Assistant Project Manager at G-Cube)

Software as a Service (SaaS) has fast emerged as a huge value proposition for people using software. Not only does it drastically cut down upfront capital expenditure for customers, it also takes away lot of headache related to maintaining the software and hardware resources.

We at G-Cube are experiencing a definite shift from ‘owned’ software to SaaS model first hand as more and more of our customers demand the learning system to be hosted and managed by us. Here is some insight on how Wizdom Learning Suite’s implementations have been distributed between two models in this fiscal year (1st April 08 onwards) – 

Some observations & deductions based on the graph shared above and historic data available for last year –

1. Last year only 10% of Wizdom implementations were in SaaS model, which has now increased to 33%. There is thus a definite shift towards SaaS that is only going to increase in coming years.
2. As of now only SME’s are going in for SaaS model, whereas large organizations still prefer to host the system on their own infrastructure that is managed by their IT teams. However, I must point out that in some of our upcoming implementations even large organizations are seriously considering SaaS, and I believe this graph would look very different by end of the year.
3. I believe with e-learning entering into ‘Early Majority’ phase in most geographies, more and more small & medium organizations (along with larger organizations ofcourse) would start using e-learning to train their staff and to build new businesses around e-learning. This would lead to further growth of SaaS model in future.

So why are SME’s opting for SaaS and why are large organizations not so inclined towards the same? Here are some factors that play a key role in decision making process –

As is evident from the table given above, SaaS model is particularly suitable for organizations/businesses who wish to start quickly with minimal investment, don’t want to setup their own IT team, and who don’t have too many customization or integration requirements.

On the other hand ‘Owned’ model is preferred by organizations who have IT infrastructure and support system already in place, who wish to get the learning system tightly integrated with their existing software systems so that data can seamlessly flow between different systems, and who may like to have the flexibility to modify the learning system to suit their process flows rather than making a huge workforce adapt to the laid down structure of the LMS.

Both SaaS & Owned models have their own pros and cons, but for me odds seem to be stacked in favour of SaaS model for the simple reason that it gives you the agility to move fast and the flexibility to change the underlying system with minimal cost impact.

I’ll be interested in finding out what has been the experience of other LMS providers, and what people think in general about this topic…

(Mr. Manish Gupta is Head - Business Development at G-Cube)

Games are at the verge of evolving into a serious method of teaching pretty soon. Why? Because they are fun, they involve intense and passionate involvement, they give us structure through their rules, they are interactive and can be adapted to a learner’s teaching style and pace, they can take various routes to learn the same concept thus catering to a much larger audience profile. Is that not all? No there is more, they spark creativity, interaction and a challenge, and they also give us emotions. All of this can fit into a game and are needed if a game is developed keeping in mind a basic rule: “Would I like or love to play this game?” I use this rule of thumb while creating a game, if the answer to this question is ‘like’ I know that it is time to relook the strategy, the graphics, etc. If the answer is ‘love’, I take a second opinion

The educationists have been trying their hands on teaching and learning through ‘hands-on’ methodologies. Really great work, I too have for some time worked on such theories with some renowned educationists. And I completely agree with them that having a hands-on experience makes learning most easy and fun. I have sat with children who have been put through some of these teaching materials, gathering scientific data, and no quantitative number can suffice for the joy that you see in the child’s eye when they understand the ‘Why?’ or the ‘How?’.

But a ‘hands-on’ approach may not always work. For example, how do you make a learner realize the demand and supply curve when all they have an idea about it is that it’s synonymous to food and hunger? Do you put them in the market with an assured sum and let them pick the details? No! Here is where a game can help. Learning from experience can only go that much. And for processes that are costly, where actual process life cycle is long, or where situations have a threat to life or property, or are dangerous or risky, games can be of great help. I played a game recently on the web about the situation in Somalia, which very distinctly played with my emotions. I could feel their pain and I was sitting no-where in Somalia at that time. But was this just an isolated reaction or a general reaction to people suffering? Either way there was learning happening.

I believe gaming as a learning strategy has not taken on off in a big way because it has not been researched properly. There is lot of feedback, both positive and negative, that can be found on the Internet, but not much of it is substantiated by any scientific process, so we cannot be sure. I however, found a research done at two universities in Canada and the US that show very positive and conclusive results. My work for one of our clients, where we had to create a similar game that uses student perception to market behavior as its concept helped me understand this research. I could relate much easily to the research work and its findings as I had sensed the feelings of utter confusion and then the dawn of realization too. I could see the results tallied with my initial reaction to our game and how I react to it now.

Now, I am not condemning books but games are more than capable of doing what the books have been doing since man scribbled on sand, and games can do much more than what the books have ever achieved.

Here is something interesting that you may want to read on the same topic - Everything Bad is Good for You - Steven Johnson

(P. Kasturi Rangan is Assistant Project Manager at G-Cube)

Debacle of many large financial institutions in USA has stormed the global economy and the crisis looks unending. I don’t want to delve on why and how it happened. There are many expert views and descriptions available all over the places.

It is really sad, and the impact of such a gigantic crisis will have medium to long term impact on global economies and a potential recession seems impending.

I have often heard CEOs/CXOs mentioning that there is a severe shortage of strategic and leadership talent across many industry verticals. It is my hypothesis- correct me if I am wrong- that while crisis is gripping US financial institutions, several other economies in the world and specifically certain sectors stands robust (relatively) for long term growth (10-20 years of growth is predictable in countries like India which are starting from a very low base of consumerism).

I can’t estimate the exact quantum of talent released by the busting, shrinking and restructuring of these banks and financial institutions. But, my guess is it would be big enough inventory of “high quality talent” that can’t be and shouldn’t be ignored.

Don’t forget the reduced stickiness of those who are not fired but getting along with limping institutions and hence they are easy prey.

I see this as a great potential opportunity by those sectors where talent can be absorbed to create a bigger economic value during these times.

This time around large corporate houses and visionary groups should gear-up their talent acquisition exercise to acquire desirable human assets.

Though it sounds contrarian, in my views it can prove very valuable to those companies where effects of a potential US recession are not seen.

Although with time talent get absorbed wherever there are jobs/ or they freelance - corporations should make targeted plan to make use of this unique situation on proactive basis.

This is an exceptional time when such high quality talent is available for such a deep discount. Rush! Plan your talent acquisition strategy.

(Ankit Jain is Head - HR & Strategy at G-Cube)

With growing realization of benefits of e-learning more and more organizations are moving towards adopting e-learning. One of the first steps in this journey is to acquire a Learning Management System, which can turn out to be quite a daunting task if done without proper research or guidance. What all features do I need? Have I missed asking some important questions? What are various challenges one faces during implementation? Here is some help.

First, let’s take a look at what does a Learning Management System (or LMS in short) consist of with help of this diagram –

As you can see there are varied set of features available in today’s LMS which cater to different business requirements. In addition, talent management features are now being introduced on top of LMS that allow HR department to manage resources from ‘Hire to Retire’ stage.

Your first step thus should be to list down “specific needs” of your organization, share it with various stakeholders, get their feedback and create a functionality requirement document specific to your company.

The reason I have highlighted specific needs above is because it’s very easy to get bogged down by all the sample RFP’s and checklists available on Net and loose focus on what you actually need (which actually depends on how you conduct your business and no sample RFP can capture that).

To capture YOUR needs, use examples/use-cases in the requirement document. For example, do you plan to group users together based on their departments or locations, do you want the managers to track their team’s progress, do you plan to give conditional access of catalog to different users etc. The more precise you are in capturing your requirements, easier it would be to actively participate in LMS demos and finally zeroing down on the system that best suits your needs. 

Along with functionality requirements, these are some of the things you should take care of in the evaluation process –

1. Standard Compliance – SCORM or AICC. SCORM is more popular among the two and the LMS should be at-least SCORM 1.2 compatible if not SCORM 2004 (SCORM is a standard which lets courseware and LMS talk to each other, and allows you to seamlessly host third-party content or content created by popular content authoring tools on to the LMS – more on SCORM in next post). Ask for a SCORM conformance report of LMS for verification. Other standards to consider are QTI (allows you to import assessments created from 3rd party QTI compliant tools into LMS), and PENS (allows the LMS to automatically pick up courseware published by PENS compliant LCMS or content authoring tools).
2. Content Compatibility – Check whether the LMS is compatible with the courses created by your content authoring tool (s) you plan to use for courseware generation. Ask for sample courses published by your chosen tools to be uploaded on to the LMS. It is important because even though LMS’s and Content Authoring Tools may claim to be SCORM/AICC compliant they may not always be compatible with each other due to different interpretation of standards by each party. Yes, it’s sad, but that’s how it is.
3. Flexibility – LMS should offer you the flexibility of choosing only the modules you need without having to pay for the rest. Any decent LMS nowadays is built in modular fashion thus providing you the option to ‘Switch ON’ a feature as and when you need it. So don’t let the salesperson sell you anything you don’t need at this moment!
4. Scalability – You should have the ability to scale up the LMS as your user base grows. LMS should not only be able to support large user bases, it should do so efficiently. An in-efficient LMS would start consuming disproportionate amount of hardware resources as your user base grows thus increasing your capital expenditure and maintenance cost. You should therefore ask for hardware requirements for your anticipated user base, and what would be the additional resource requirement with increasing user base.
5. Support for ‘Other’ Content Types – Check whether the LMS supports common content types such as PDF, Word Documents, Flash Files, HTML, and Videos.
6. Intuitive User Interface – The LMS should have easy to navigate user interface so that users can easily log-on, navigate through their courses, and see their progress reports. Ask for demo learner logins to get a feel of how easy to use interface actually is. Also ask if the interface can be customized for different user groups, departments, or customers – is it inbuilt functionality, or would you have to pay professional charges for the same.
7. Reporting – Besides comprehensive reports, your LMS should give you the ability to export reports to XLS or some other common format, and to take a print of the same. You should also have the flexibility of applying different kind of filters on the same report so that you can generate the report which is most relevant for you.

Ok, so now you know what all is included in an LMS and what are some of the important questions to be asked during analysis phase. But what about the challenges you may face during and post implementation? Here are few things you should keep in mind -

• Have IT guys on your side – IT department will be a key stakeholder during discussions with vendors and post implementation as well. So you must involve them from the start – ask them for their recommendations on vendors, involve them in demonstrations, get them to meet short-listed vendors to work out hardware requirements and its availability/additional cost estimate and integration requirements with existing systems.
• Follow Course Rollout Plan Religiously – I know it sounds elementary, but you can get so caught up in LMS implementation that you may loose sight of how course development is getting along. If you are buying a library then check some of the courses on LMS sandbox to ensure everything works together.
• Communication Plan – You need to put on the Marketing Hat for some time and create a buzz about the new initiative. Make some fliers, e-mail announcements etc. and send them out at regular intervals. Create some reward programs to get people to the LMS.
• Feedback – Check with different stakeholders about course uptake and user experience, and fine-tune the courses or the system to better your service.

Have more questions? Please don’t hesitate to call us.

(Manish Gupta is Head - Business Development at G-Cube)

Senior executives look at financial balance-Sheet with keenness as it reflects the standing of a business. Though these statements are useful they don’t reflect the true standing of a business and its future potential.

Today large part of global economy comprises of services where human competence (read talent) is the biggest contributor in creating business output (read revenue, profit and value). Unfortunately human assets have no place in these books and gross assets that they capture are so insignificant in the perspective of evaluating the business potential. Are we really interested in knowing gross value of executive work stations or PCs particularly for services economy? No, we rather need to know potential business output-revenue & profit- from our current and future talent. Therefore we need to have a rather more important balance-sheet: Talent balance-sheet.

How do we go about it? Some ideas-

Gross talent in an organisation should be captured by segregating “People- as- assets” (PAA) and “People-as-Liabilities” (PAL).

How do we identify PAA and PAL? PAA is the ones whose competencies are completely aligned to their job roles while PAL are the ones whose competencies are completely misaligned to their job roles. 

It is not important whether someone is under competent or extra competent, important for business result point is that the person’s competencies should be exactly aligned to his/her job role. It is possible that someone with certain competencies is a complete misfit for a job role whereas the same person is completely fit for the some other job role. Talent Balance sheet should have a few categories to capture the PAA- PAL continuum (people with partial alignments).  To explain this idea of misalignment here I go with a small story……

In the City of Ancient Rome there lived a skilled Cobbler. He was popular for his finer skills in mending and designing products with animal skins. He used to impress the royals with his creations-articles such as shoes, purses, decorative items etc.  He had acquired and honed his talent over years of hard work. There was no parallel to his level of dexterity as far as animal skin is concerned.

One day in the court of king someone had met with an accident, and there were internal injuries all over his body. Unfortunately there was no good surgeon available to operate the injured man. Cobbler heard this and approached the king to offer his services (again to impress in the hope of earning a reward!). Cobbler was very confident of his skill and ability and thought that he can work upon the diseased person. So he expressed his interest in operating upon the person. Seeing the confidence of the cobbler and his reputation in doing a similar job no one disagreed and the person was handed over to the Cobbler for surgery.

Cobbler did a wonderful job in neatly cutting and stitching the skinned flesh of the person.

Unfortunately, despite all the finesse in conducting the cutting and stitching, cobbler could not save the person and the person died sooner then he would have.

The moral of the story is that though visibly required competencies for conducting a job may look very similar there can be finer significant differences. Lack of understanding of nuances of competencies certainly proves fatal. Referring to this story though Cobbler did a perfect job (a perfect Cobbling Job on the body of the diseased) he still failed to achieve the goal of saving the person.

Trusting a cobbler to do a Surgeon’s job is a Syndrome called “Cobbler-Surgeon Syndrome”! I call it a syndrome because it is not a one of case; it’s a phenomenon and a trap for potential mistakes. For example if someone is outspoken, he is considered as a good candidate for sales, if someone is suave he can be taken up for senior leadership.  Judging a person on these visible qualities may prove completely wrong- competencies require much more than these visible aspects –out spoken and suave- for sales and senior leadership roles respectively. Cobbler is dexterous in turning the dead skin into attractive and useful articles not operating a Living body.

Unfortunately in our industry many cobblers are hired to do surgeons job.  I hope your organisation is not hiring cobblers for the job of a surgeon or a vice a versa.

With this small story I wanted to convey that aligning a set of competencies to the required job is very important achieving effective goal in a job.  It is the responsibility of recruitment to define the job role and competency for each role and screen talent accordingly.

There is a possibility that some cobblers pass the screening criteria and enter the organisations gates in surgeons’ skin.

In my views having a mandatory requirement for including Talent Balance-sheet in financial reporting will have very positive impact on business value of a corporation. I expect the following positive changes over a period of time:-

1. It will make the role of Chief Learning Officer strategically at par with CFO (isn’t that a big jump!).
2. It will make recruitment personnel more accountable to have a perfect screening system and hire right people
3. It will make T&D more accountable to fulfil the competency gaps and make them proactive to impart new desirable skills in shorter period
4. It will require an optimum mix of class room, eLearning and blended trainings to achieve competency goals of globally dispersed people within very short time.
5. It will create requirement for new roles within HR to assess and categorize people in PAA-PAL categories

Overall the fallout benefits can be really huge. I am keen to know your views on these ideas.

Image Source - Monster.com advertisement available on World Wide Web

(Ankit Jain is Head - HR & Strategy at G-Cube)

Have you ever heard of a severe chronic disease called “Finaemia”? Interestingly it does hurt a human or any other living being. It’s an economic disease. It’s a disease which slows down the growth of economic entities only and its adverse effects are seen over medium to long-term (say over minimum of two-years). So, it doesn’t seem to be a visible problem and doesn’t hurt the normal functioning of the economic entity over short term.  “Finaemia” is the term coined by contracting “financial anaemia”.

Allocation of financial resources to critical aspects of business is akin to supply of oxygen to a living system. Just like consistently lowered supply of oxygen in a body has adverse long-term impact on living organs, inadequate allocation of financial resources to important business activities does have similar adverse effects.

Unfortunately and paradoxically so, that  L&D is one such business area where business leaders recognise human as a business critical asset but still don’t allocate sufficient funds for optimum maintenance and up-gradation.

Reason-decision of capital nature involves higher level of risk and board or CEO normally would not take a subjective decision for any aspect of business.

And therefore there is a need for a comprehensive yet simple framework which can assist the board level people to take a shareholder friendly decision in favour of L&D investment.

In my June 08 post  I emphasized that similar to Plant & Machinery (P&M), human competencies need maintenance. Objective of schedule maintenance is the keep the asset in good condition so that it can produce the desired output. There I pointed out that akin to physical assets, human assets need schedule maintenance (maintenance of competencies) to be in good condition and perform the desired output.

I am taking up another important aspect and drawing similarity between physical and human assets. “Up-gradation”- is another established characteristic of physical assets. Investment decision on P&M up-gradation is normally a capital budget activity which follows an established financial analysis framework. Investment on P&M up-gradation has to qualify a certain cut-off IRR rate. If it meets that cut-off level board decision is automatic.

We need to understand characteristic similarity between the physical and human asset with respect to “Up-gradation” aspect. To understand this clearly we should know the goal of up-gradation. What Up-gradation does to an assets?

Up-gradation can either increase the through-put, improve quality of output  or produce different variants of outputs from the same asset.

Isn’t it true about human asset?

Competency or set of competencies up-gradation can lead to higher level of service output. There is no doubt about the fact that up-gradation of human competencies improves the quality and consistency of output (we take any number of examples- work process improvement, soft skills etc.).

Upgraded competencies in a human being make him competent to engage in wider variety of tasks (some are the variant of standard tasks). Example, improved level of competency in communication skill can add to training & mentoring potential of a human asset apart from enhanced performance in his/her job role.

I can clearly see that there is characteristic similarity w.r.t. to up-gradation aspect both for physical and human asset.
Then why corporate board are able to take decision in favour of P&M up-gradation (and these investment can run into hundreds of millions of $ depending on absolute economic size) with such an ease whereas investment in human asset up-gradation doesn’t figure-out anywhere.

Because again, there is no such financial analysis frame work which can give an investment cut-off number, such as IRR (for investment in physical up-gradation). Where board members don’t have to take a subjective call and take a risk of such a decision.

So we need to create a simple financial framework- may call it “diagnosis report”  to indicate level of “finaemia” that organisation is suffering from due to under investment in human asset.

For sure, global economy is suffering from huge inestimable loss every year due to under development of human assets, in the absence of such framework. To make realisation, imagine the amount of loss if business across the globe didn’t investment in up-gradation of physical machinery!

Let us save global economy from such a loss, saviours please chip-in!

(Mr. Ankit Jain is Head - HR & Strategy at G-Cube)

Graphics are an integral part of learning, be it standard classroom or online trainings. It is often seen that e-learning fails to leverage the potential of graphics as a strong medium of teaching visually. Maybe it is because we have spent lifetimes writing text-based training material that we produce lot of trainings without much or any use of graphics. At the other extreme, we sometimes create elaborate visuals for training, so much so that learner ends up mesmerized by the jazz and plays little attention to the content.

All graphics are not effective! A research conducted by Journal of Educational Psychology shows that if not used properly, graphics can depress learners and bring down interest level. The effectiveness of visual treatment requires a clear:

• Instructional goal  
• Learning landscape 
• Standard characteristic of the graphic 

If you ensure that graphic meets the goal of the instructions it is supporting, the landscape is designed keeping the audience in mind, and all the graphics are designed and developed on the same standards, the graphic will definitely add to the learning. You can vary the above three to design one of the following graphics:

Decorative: Adds aesthetic appeal and humor (Usually part of a bigger graphical representation)

Representational: Depicts objects in the real-world manner (Simulations)

Relational: Depicts quantitative relationship among variables (line graphs and charts)

Mnemonic: Provides cues to retain facts and information (Graphical aids but not literal representation)

Transformational: Shows changes in object over time (Animation)

Each category of graphics mentioned serve a different purpose and need to be carefully chosen and aligned with specific instructional content. Therefore, to design the best graphic for a given instruction, you must first understand the instructional goal and then, map your strategy to it.

(Mr. Sachin Pandey is Project Manager at G-Cube)

In this post I am raising a few interesting questions (for which I seek answers from all you guys) to establish characteristic similarity between the tangible and human assets.

The intent is to get intelligent clues for getting closer to developing the framework of my proposed model.

I am trying to draw an exact parallel between the physical (plant & machinery) assets and human assets as both generate “economic output” and on that parameter qualify to be called as ASSET.

Let us first understand the characteristics of tangible assets-

1. They have fixed economic life so these assets depreciate at a certain rate.
2. They need scheduled maintenance to produce an optimum level of output.
3. They can be upgraded to produce a better economic output (either in terms of quantity, quality or mix)

Now, let us compare human assets with respect to above three characteristics.

• Do human asset depreciate?
• Do they need schedule maintenance?
• Can they be upgraded?

As per my understanding “human asset” can be equated to “human competency” which can be broadly classified into two categories- physical competency and mental competency. Now both these competencies are related of development of “mind” and “body”. Human output for a variety of economic output (for any output ranging from knowledge to labour or a certain mixture thereof. Say development of software to development of a building) is dependent on mix of suitable physical and mental competencies.

Aging is pretty much a human concept. Physical and mental competencies wither with time.

So, can we say that since human competencies wither with time and therefore human asset demonstrate depreciation characteristic similar to tangible assets?

Though economic lives of human competencies vary for individuals it can be argued that economic life and depreciation rate for tangible assets also vary with quality of tangible asset. Therefore we can infer that differential depreciation rates are applicable both for humans as well as for plant & machinery. Normally for tangible assets there is a certain fixed depreciation rate for each asset class which is based on average useful life of such assets (say 15% per annum for automobile). Similar averages can be worked out for different competency types in case human asset.

So, first characteristic-depreciation- seems to be common for both tangible and human asset. With this I feel couple of steps closer to the model framework. But, these are my tentative thoughts and they and are not conclusive unless rubbed against diverse and deep intellect. Let’s create the spark. See you soon with thoughts on 2nd and 3rd characteristics.

(Ankit Jain is Head - HR & Strategy at G-Cube)

This is in response to this month’s ASTD big question - Learning Design Differences for Digital Natives.

Lets first define relevant terms -

Digital native - A person who has had access to technology and is well conversant with its usage.

Digital immigrant - A person who has recently moved towards using technology.

So, basically a divide created by age.

The Vs - This differentiation between the two - Is it a real one or just a perceived one? Was this term coined by people who are scared of technology. Where are they now? Retired? Do they have an active role to play in the actual learning process between the ID or SME and the end user who would be a student in a school or a trainee in the workplace. 

What mostly happens in the real world is that the ID or SME who designs the course and the end user who is using this training or education are both digital natives. ID theories have not changed from when we were creating ppt presentations as e-learning nor while now that we create business games to teach the same old thing/concept. What has changed is our perception about the medium of instruction.

While creating ppt presentations, having a ball zoomed into and then fading off was a great thing, then the ball started bouncing around the screen with 2D flash and people said wow, now the ball has been made in 3D Max and has a 3D feel to it, it can also be rotated or be simulated. Even with the ppts and flash, content at times has been made so that learning may be in the hands of the user, albeit it was very low level scripting and so there were lesser choices available. With gaming, the number of choices available are more, so more students can be included with much more varied answers to the same situation.

I wonder if this influx of technology has had any impact on the learning outcome? Learning still remains the same, 10% high scorers, 10% low scorers and the rest in that 80%. The low and high scores take care of themselves. Its the middle ones that can be transferred, the ones that are targeted for e-learning.

When we say “Our student’s have changed drastically.” does that not sound familiar? Does it not sound something which we have heard over and over, something like a sentence that starts with “In our days…”. So, I believe that this divide shall remain even when the so called digital natives of today become the digital immigrants of tomorrow.

(P. Kasturi Rangan is Asst. Project Manager at G-Cube)