G-Cube Blog

Game Based Learning (GBL) is increasingly becoming an alternative way of training. But how effective can this medium be – the medium which has been traditionally used for entertainment?

Our chat with Helen Routledge, GBL Instructional Design Manager at Pixelearning, revealed the answer and more. Game based learning caught her interest early on in her career and she is now held as one of the few spear-headers instrumental in building GBL as an industry. Her work with the many leading serious gaming companies coupled with an experience in the field of education, gives her an edge to understand different learning groups and how to effectively reach out to them.

An excerpt of our conversation, all about the world of GBL.

Has the corporate world truly adopted gaming as a way of learning or are serious games still referred as a pastime and the major reason that it is being adopted, is that it is something ‘different’?

It is a bit of both. Many organizations look at GBL as a differentiator between themselves and their competitors. They see it as a way of appealing to new staff members, that they are offering something new and different in the training side of business. But at the same time it has to also be accepted by their current employees.

There is a culture of being risk-averse, especially in large organizations. But then every organization is different. And in recent years, we are seeing a change in outlook and serious games are being adopted as training application. It is not just about being adopted, there is also a willingness to push the boundaries of technology and try different things in terms of serious gaming.

While most of us are aware and accustomed (even addicted) to computer games, does serious gaming cater to all learners? Is there a ‘learner profile’ for the effectiveness of game-based learning?

I would not say there is a particular profile of learner for GBL. I think the learners must have an open mind, because if the learner has negativity towards any training mechanism, it will not succeed. So, the main thing is that the learner should be open to try new things and learning in a slightly different way.

For learners, who might not be too familiar with computer games, it is kept in mind when designing a serious game – to keep it simple. Most training applications are Flash based and simple to use. Most people are familiar with the Internet and can navigate a web page. That is the type of mechanism in design which we try to use. As long you can ‘click’ and use it as an interactive mechanism in a web page, you can navigate through a serious game as well. Once we explain that to the learner, they usually understand what it is all about.

For first time adopters, game based learning might not be very easy to implement across organization. What are the major challenges one faces while implementing GBL? Does the ROI justify the change management?

If we are talking about technical changes, all our games run on a browser and are Flash based. So there is no need for new installations or plug-ins. We always keep in mind from the very beginning, which browser version our client is using or which Flash version do they have. This makes sure that we are not creating a serious game that they would not be able to use in their existing technological structure.

A serious game is a part of the LMS as any other traditional e-learning course; it brings back updates on the learner in the same way. So, in the technology side, serious game do not generally bring along a whole lot of changes.

As far as the cultural changes are required, the up-selling within the organization is the key. The people who champion GBL need to sell the concept and its effectiveness. That is where we come in, providing collateral material supporting GBL, which in turn helps them to convince their peers and superiors.

We might not be able to share actual numbers but from the qualitative response that we get from our clients, GBL definitely shows positive ROI. It allows the learner hands on experience and a chance to make mistakes before going out in the ‘real world’ and that definitely pays.

While gaming provides a highly interactive and engaging environment for the learner does the ‘fun’ part of gaming take away from the seriousness of learning?

We do get that from many quarters but less and less now. ‘Fun’ might be the wrong term, really. Sure, we like to have fun, but we should be able to engage our learner. And we do that through the narrative, the storyline and the interactive aspects of the game.

We may take the example of the ‘Leadership game’ that we have developed. One of the key criterions for it was an incredibly challenging environment, for it was to be used to train upcoming leaders. The client did not want the learners to have fun; they wanted them to be challenged. A part of the environment was such that they would experience some frustration and the aim was that they should be able to overcome that. So, when designing the game, we had to keep the challenging and frustrating qualities in the environment, and at the same time, we had to make sure that it was motivating and engaging as well.

So if you go down the path of making your serious game a 100% fun and learning is not the main focus, then it is definitely the wrong direction to take. There has to be a balance in making the game engaging as well as getting a definite learning message across.

What are the best practices of learner evaluation in serious games?

The way we look at serious games, is that it is a training mechanism to highlight awareness about key behaviors and instill behavior changes in the end user. Use of serious games as a tool for learner evaluation is an area many people are looking into right now, but is still not very evolved. Most of our serious games are mainly used to create awareness and encourage reaction or behavior in a particular situation or environment.

But if there are any key points of evaluation that the client wants, they have to be kept in mind right from the beginning when designing a serious game. They can be then treated in various ways and can vary in form. At the end of the game, the learner may get a verbal feedback or scores gathered in the course of the game.

The evaluation part of GBL, I would say is an area which is still growing and should be taken with a pinch of salt!

Do serious games provide opportunities for re-use or updating, as and when the learning objective or the audience changes? Any design philosophies one should keep in mind to increase re-usability?

It is a key factor when adopting GBL and must be considered when designing a serious game. We rarely design games which are for one-off use. We always try to build in re-usable aspects in design.

For instance, I can cite an application we built for a US company for call-center sales and service training. We built in a role-play engine and the agents were allowed to go through realistic conversations to build in skills before actually going to the front line of selling. Through traditional classroom training, they might have gotten two or maybe, three chances at the maximum as everybody needs to have a go. But what we did in this training application was that we built in conversations that lasted on an average of 10 minutes. Throughout the conversation, there was the possibility of many outcomes, many routes that the conversation could take, leading to several different endings, positive and negative. So you could replay the conversation several times, and experiment with the many ways of dealing with the customer.

Following on from that example, in all of our applications, the text and content is in XML. It makes it very easy for the client to go into the code and make small changes like changes in prices and such figures.

To be able to update or add new scenarios is crucial in GBL. Most games are modular in structure and this makes changes in environment or scenario possible. Old ones can be replaced by new, changes in existing ones can be made or more scenarios can also be added. Challenges or difficulty levels can be adjusted as per learner requirements. And all this at the click of a mouse!

While entertainment games are reaching new levels of sophistication and quality, are serious games following suit? How important is the ‘look and feel’ factor of an educative game?

We have to follow suit, to a certain degree. But we have to look beyond eye candy in serious games and focus on the learning, for that’s why we are building them and what we will be measured against, eventually. But as the sophistication of the games industry increases, serious games also have to have some of it reflecting.

There are of course, budget restrains that are bound to keep us a few years behind! But I always say, it’s always about first impressions. You should look at it and say ‘Wow… that really looks good; I want to go in and have a look’! It should have the quality to grab attention, but along with it, there should be substance. If it’s all visuals and no real message, then we will not have our desired outcome, there will be no behavioral change. It is necessary to have that balance between visuals and content

Most of our applications do not have a lot of animation; most have flat 3D still images but still gives an impression of a realistic environment. However, if you are to implement 3D animation, it has to be done very well. If it’s not attractive, it will just turn learners away. So we should take a good look into our project budgets before making the choice. In any case, there is a lot that one can do with 2D as well.

Social learning is being hailed as the next big thing in the learning industry. How does game based learning provide opportunities for social learning?

Yes, you definitely learn more effectively when in a social environment. In GBL, one of the key trends that we see coming up is multi-player serious gaming. Our first experience with multi-player gaming was with the ‘Leadership Game’ and that went really well. In addition to being able to lead real people, make mistakes and learn from them, it also gave learners an opportunity to share their experiences. The game is linked with wikis and forums so that learner can share and learn from other learners as well. So the learning goes beyond the limits of the game.

We are also looking at linking training with applications like Facebook and Twitter. A lot of these are blocked by firewalls at many corporate organizations. But we can look at the success of social games like ‘Farmville’, its addictive quality and the involvement that it encourages. It surely provides a competitive element and building trainings around them would be an interesting avenue to explore.

Finally, what are the future trends that are predicted in the field of serious gaming?

The GBL industry today is vast, there are so many different styles, different applications and the audience is huge. So there is no ONE particular direction that it is heading, it is actually exploring all possible avenues.

One thing that is surely looking up in recent years is the increase in the types of organizations that are adopting GBL. A few years ago, we were looking at schools or a few forward thinking organizations but now we are seeing growth in different sectors – both public and private. So a definite future trend is ‘Growth’ in the industry.

More and more sectors are showing curiosity and an interest in the area and we are trying to build up evidence to show the success of GBL. And as many big companies are adopting GBL for their training needs, others are encouraged to follow suit. So it’s just a rolling stone now and it shows no signs of stopping right now

Continuing with our Knowledge Sharing Series, we took great pleasure in chatting up with yet another stalwart of the e-learning industry – Mr. Bill Rosenthal.  He is the CEO of Communispond, which works towards actively developing communication skills to strengthen the talent within an organization. Bill has worked in learning domain for over two decades now. Among his many accomplishments, he has served as President of Kaplan College, part of Kaplan Inc, where he was instrumental in developing and launching the online college. Prior to that as CEO of Element K f/k/a ZD Education (which acquired Logical Operations co-founded by Bill), he oversaw growth of the company from a start-up to one of the largest e-learning solution providers in the world. Apart from USA, Bill has also worked extensively in China & Singapore, giving him a well rounded ‘world perspective’ of learning domain.

Here is an excerpt from our discussion.

Since the beginning of your career, you have helped organizations across domains with their learning needs. How would you say corporate training strategies have changed over all these years?

That’s a really good question. Fundamentally, what people need or how they want to learn has not really changed much. The major shift is how people are trying to capture much of that into the space of e-learning. In the early days of technology, e-learning was very flat and linear. But as technology got more sophisticated, the shift is to arrive at an approach to e-learning which is closest to one-on-one learning.

In a way, they are now almost replicating the classroom environment with building more interactive courses and by having someone who they can react to or someone who can clear their doubts.

What would you say are the major challenges that L&D organizations are facing today, and how can some of these challenges be addressed?

The biggest challenges are people thinking too narrow and too small. Great companies listen to and meet customer needs and brilliant ones anticipate them. The biggest challenge is to then think about future learning needs and anticipate them, as opposed to just providing for the learning needs of today.

Taking the iPod as an example, nobody was thinking beyond CDs and Cassettes ten years ago. But inventor Steve Jobs came up with the idea of a device that stores all your music and can be carried around in your pocket. The iPod was thus born, not out of any specific customer need but anticipating the need.

I know you are quite enthusiastic about m-learning, but haven’t we been talking about m-learning for almost five years now without any real success. Why hasn’t m-learning been successful so far, and what makes you positive about m-learning this time?

The reason for this is nothing new, it’s happened before. In the early days of e-learning, there were learning disks, which required specialized hardware and software. And it was also quite expensive, so learning centers would have just one or two computers for the learners. What really made e-learning take off was not that e-learning got better. With easy internet accessibility and desktops being able to play audio-visuals, we were able to leverage it for e-learning.

The same thing applies now with mobiles too. In certain countries the majority of phones that are sold are smart phones, which have the access to high-speed data networks and can play audio-visuals. So it’s a case of reaching that magic tipping point and I believe we are at the cusp. When the majority of customers will be carrying smart phones, we can deliver some kind of meaningful e-learning to them.

So is it just about the number of people carrying smart phones reaching tipping point or is it also about creating smart content?

Its both, we can argue all day about which one is more important but the reality is that we need content as much as we need the network to be able to deliver it. While the ability to make and deliver meaningful content over the mobile phone is increasing, so is the number of people who are carrying the devices which support such content. So it is really about time that m-learning catches up.

The greatest challenge in developing content would be that some people might just make the mistake of taking what works at the big screen and adapting it to the small screen. But I also hope there would be people, who realize that they can use the mobile technology in many different ways to deliver content more effectively.

Another hot topic of discussion these days is ‘social-learning’ and how it is the next big thing. What’s your take on it?

While we are all social learners, whether in a classroom or through e-learning. We tend to talk to our friends about our experiences and often share knowledge. Social learning structures this, but it also exposes the danger of learning from a source which might or might not be accurate. Also social learning is mostly about topics that are of personal interest. And the reality is that e-learning for most people is the means to an end and they might not be in love with the content! e-learning is about content that one needs to get their job done, but do not have a pure affinity to it.

It might work for certain scenarios like for a sales team across the globe, selling the same product – they might have a common shared interest. But most training topics are not so enthusiastically received! So while we spend all our energies into building social networks for learning, it is difficult to find active participation – it is like you have a party and nobody shows up!

With so many technological advancements happening in learning domain, what future do you see for classroom trainings or is it increasingly going to become a dying art?

No, not at all. At the end of the day, there will be certain topics which will be delivered best on-demand and only when people need them. But then there are topics which can only be effectively delivered in a classroom. So the reality is that the two (e-learning and classroom learning) will go hand in hand, indefinitely. I would never want to be operated by a doctor who has never operated on a human being. Or board a plane flown by a pilot who has experience, but in a simulated environment.  But if I was going to China and I would want to drive on my own there, there is no need to take a two-day course on it when I can learn about all that I need in a simulated environment in 2 hours.

So both e-learning and classroom learning coexist and in some cases even, overlap. This brings us to the whole idea of blended learning. There are times that you begin in a classroom, go on to e-learning for a refresher course, and then head back to the classroom after some time.

You have headed learning organizations across the world and worked extensively in Singapore and China. What are the major differences that you see between audiences across the globe that a learning developer or a deliverer should keep in mind?

It was a belief that once a product was developed, it was first introduced in the First world, then the Second world and then the Third world. Lesser developed countries could just be sold the old stuff, but that is not true anymore.

Even in the remote reaches of China, I have seen people using smart phones and having an access to the Internet. So the idea of a differentiated product does not sell well, as buyers all around the globe are getting more sophisticated. There is no first, second or third world when it comes to how people think or how they gather information, its just one world.

This is good news for developers who do not have to think up different set of products any more.

And my last question – e-Learning development is being substantially outsourced to countries like Ireland, India etc. From an American company point of view, what are the benefits one can look at, and what should one be careful against?

For the need of a better term, it is the fear of the unknown. For some people, outsourcing becomes a challenge because the people are far away, there are in different time zones, there are some language barriers – but mostly its just fear. The main thing is to get beyond that fear. Agreed, that for most people it is the cost savings that drive them to outsource e-learning development, but it is also true that if it was not good, they would not stick with it!

Technology is enabling a lot of fear to diminish. Tools like web conferencing make people come together and feel not ‘far way’ from each other.

Also, mainstream media is so multicultural nowadays, that the cultural differences are fast fading away. Young people are getting used to communicate with each other all over the world. Thinking back, making an international call was a huge deal even a few years ago, but not so anymore.

The world’s a smaller place today and it certainly makes it easier for us to work together

Starting this month, we bring a new Knowledge Sharing Series to our blog, where we will be interacting with industry experts, and e-learning practitioners. Our first guest is Mr. Kartik Swaminathan, AVP-HR Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. Kartik has been instrumental in large scale LMS deployments and brings with him a wealth of experience when talking about e-learning.

The essence of our conversation was Learning Management Systems, but it touched several avenues of e-Learning and provided interesting takes on learning domain as a whole. An excerpt from our discussion, guaranteed to raise some questions of your own!

In your opinion what are the most important things one should keep in mind while selecting a LMS?

There are certain drivers for each learner group and if one knows ‘what one wants’, the selection is simple. LMS usage can broadly be categorized under three main categories – Content Delivery, Assessment/Certification, & Search. Now each organization would use a particular aspect of LMS more than other. For example, generally an IT firm would use assessments/certifications more than other features, whereas a consulting firm would tend to use search more.

One can further break down the feature requirements based on organizations training culture. For example, your content can comprise of web-based tutorials, presentations, or videos. So, if one intends to use more of videos than LMS should have good streaming capabilities.

So the most important thing in my mind is to understand organizational needs, training culture, future training needs and decide on LMS features accordingly.

You have handled various large scale LMS implementations. What have been the main challenges you faced during such implementations?

The greatest challenge of all, is surprisingly not technology, but is the mindset of learning & development teams itself. Managing change thus becomes the most important factor between success & failure of new systems like these.

To elaborate, we in L&D come with preconceived notions about e-learning, such as either we try to use it as something to replace classroom training, or at times keep it in a completely segregated silo having no relations with other training programs. Both the approaches in my opinion are flawed. How I look at it is- like hands and feet do NOT have interchangeable roles, classroom and e-learning have their own set of strengths- and either one cannot be a substitute for another. They have to work in combination with each other for successful training delivery.

Apart from this, technological challenges during system integration are also an area where the robustness and adaptability of a LMS is challenged.

And how about post implementation phase? What is the kind of support an e-learning manager requires from LMS partner once you go live?

Small issues that are overlooked at the LMS assessment and overview stage can prove to be a problem later. Once you go live, you start receiving feedback from user community, and changes are requested in work-flow, user interfaces etc. LMS partner at this stage should be flexible in providing customizations and support.

LMS partner should also have a clear product road-map, and should show the way that learning will take in the future. Finally- snags, technical or others, can also hamper the success of a LMS. LMS partner needs to provide constant assistance in all these areas.

Moving on to next topic, what according to you is the best way to get senior stakeholders/management buy-in for LMS?

The senior stakeholders are all about the bottom-lines and numbers get their attention. The Return on Investment for the LMS should be attractive to them and it is best if an insider – from the Training team or Human Resources Department, is clear about how different business units work. If that is clear, then making and presenting ROI model is easy.

Since we are on the topic of ROI, what are the kind benefits one can expect from e-learning?

The unseen benefit of e-learning is that it allows seamless re-enforcement of training. It also triggers a knowledge culture within the organization, where experts within the organization start to contribute in form of content created using simple tools like PPT, Word etc.

This culture of knowledge sharing also enables experts from outside the company to get on-board and initiate interaction with a group who is already in a state of awareness.

As you know, in India, e-learning is still a relatively a new concept for many domains. In such scenario, how can one get learners on to the LMS?

Start with asking what benefits them. Also, e-learning is not an alien concept and introducing it as a new concept might actually hinder than help. End of the day, e-learning is just Learning, albeit with the support of technology. Encourage Learning and not e-learning.

Another area of importance is that of presentation. While you can get all the information on board, but if it is not structured as per the learner’s ease, it fails to make an impact.

And finally, instead of big courses, breaking down the module into compact learning objects is better.

Ok, so learners have started using the system. Now, how do we keep them engaged?

Lookout for learner feedback. How many are getting certification? How many are putting up presentations of what they have learnt?  How many of them are getting appraised on the basis of e-learning modules completed?

Continuously analyzing the needs of the learners will keep them interested and if the value that a learning module provides becomes clear to them, the job of keeping them engaged is done.

Timing is of essence. Shorter, crisper modules that are delivered on time work better and show better retention. So identify key events in the organization or learners life and make quick modules around that. For example, a short module on how to give effective feedback can be a great hit during performance analysis cycle, or a course on cross-cultural practices can be a big help when one is traveling to a different country.

And finally, in your experience, how has been the effectiveness of e-learning as a learning medium, and what is the future you see for this medium?

As I had mentioned before, e-learning is as effective or non effective as classroom based training. One cannot replace the other.

e-Learning, due to its very nature, has certain advantages, such as the capability of providing instant feedback in knowledge delivery, which classroom based learning cannot. It is undoubtedly the preferred medium for the generation of today, who are ready to accommodate learning on demand. Reading habits are changing and classroom learning is also being broken down to sets.

So, e-learning as a medium of Learning is only going to grow. What remains to be realized is that there needs to be a direct bridge between the knowledge source and the knowledge consumer – and no broker in between!