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by Rich Mesch

This is the second entry based on my conversations with Dr. Keysha Gamor, a fellow aficionado of 3D learning. In the last entry, I wrote about Keysha’s experience implementing Virtual Reality solutions in secondary education. In this entry, I wanted to share some of the conversations we had on the effectiveness of Virtual World platforms and the acceptance (or lack thereof) that we’ve seen in organizations. As Keysha works mostly with government and military, she brings a unique perspective (I work almost exclusively with corporations). Generally speaking, government and military have had a higher adoption rate for 3D learning than the business world. What are they finding effective about the virtual environment, and what does the corporate world have yet to learn?

I asked Keysha if she was seeing higher levels of adoption of Virtual Immersive Environments (VIEs) in the public sector, and she agreed that was the case. However, many of these initiatives are in a pilot or exploratory phase. And the biggest concern in the public sector is similar to the private sector: how do we ensure data security?

So how do we mainstream this capability? We brainstormed many possibilities, but it really comes down to three categories:

• What are the barriers to adoption now? Much has been written about the technological barriers, but not enough about the cultural barriers. For example:

1. Treating VIEs as if they are a unique technology. Most people see learning and performance improvement as a system; they want to understand how each part of the system contributes to the whole. VIEs are too often introduced as the hot new technology; that builds temporary interest, but actually works against adoption. We need to answer the question: how will VIEs contribute to overall performance improvement and not just be a flavor-of-the-month.
2. Cognitive Load. The good news is that VIEs (like many simulated environments) can create a profound emotional reaction from learners. That’s a good thing, because we want a learning environment to mirror the real world and evoke the same response the real world does. But we also need to be prepared to address and process those reactions. It’s okay when training makes people upset (or elated), as long as that response is used for growth.
3. If you build it, they will come. Yes, they will. Once. So many VIEs are just like billboards, just a shingle hung on the wall where there really isn’t anything to do. There needs to be a reason to come back again and again and again. There needs to be a compelling reason to return, a reason to engage, not just watch.

• What are the clear success stories? One of the most successful implementation of VIEs today is military simulations. Military trainers have identified real problems troops face in the field and created scenarios to address those problems. Obviously, many military situations involve life-or-death decisions, so accuracy is critical. Military simulations use real geospatial data to map the terrain to closely match what the real life experience. And the military is not satisfied with 3D learning, but is also looking to bring smells into the virtual space; not only is the ability to analyze what you smell critical in combat situations, olfactory is often identified as the most evocative sense as pertains to memory.

• What’s changing in our culture that will support adoption? Some of us are old enough to remember when e-mail was a new and scary technology. But not only was it adopted, it became integral to the way we live our lives. As we move to adopt VIEs, we need to consider the social climate. We need to realize that we aren’t in the mainstream. One of the factors that is helping us to move forward is Social Media. Social Media has become highly integrated into our lives. Now that people have had their eyes opened to the possibilities of online social environments, they’re starting to dream a little bit. That’s the momentum we need to make this capability mainstream.
  
  One of Keysha’s parting thoughts was how much the movie Avatar helped her talk about VIEs. While the movie itself doesn’t have anything to do with VIEs, many people were unfamiliar with the word “avatar” before they saw the film. Avatar helped build the common language that allows us to have these conversations with others—and a common language is the first step to successful change.

by Rich Mesch

So what’s the goal of this story?

Okay, so there’s a question you don’t often get when discussing novels or plays. What’s the goal? Well, the goal is to get to the last page of the book, or the curtain call at the end of the play. But when you’re writing stories for learning, the question takes on a different meaning. Not only are you telling a great story, you’re supposed to be helping your learner improve his or her performance.

Great learning stories include Goal-Based Scenarios. In simplest terms, the story includes a goal or a set of goals that need to be achieved; the point of going through the story is to achieve the goal. That sounds simple enough, but here’s the key: the nature of the goal impacts the way you perceive the story. Confused? Let’s break it down.

• First and foremost, the goal of learning is not just to make you smarter; the goal is to help you build the ability to do something. A Goal-Based Scenario begins to answer to eternal question of performance improvement: what am I going to be able to do as a result of this effort? Why is it important that I’m able to do this?

 

• In the business world, almost everything we do has a goal. Why should our business learning be any different? What kinds of problems can I solve with this knowledge?

 

• Ultimately, storytelling for learning works best when it presents real life conflicts. It can be pretty easy to regurgitate the “right” way to handle a problem, but can you really do it under pressure? You need to recreate that pressure for the learning to have emotional impact—and Goal-Based Scenarios do that. Rather than applying learning in a vacuum, you’re attempting to solve a real business problem—and actually having to apply what you’ve learned.

So how do you create a Goal-Based Scenario? In order to create good story-based learning, you need to be consultative. You need to understand the subtleties of the job and challenges your learners face in achieving success. For example, if I’m learning selling skills, my ultimate goal is probably to close a sale. But what are the subtleties of effectively closing? Is my customer more likely to buy if I take one path over another? Will I sell more if I’m able to meet my customer’s boss, who has more buying authority? Will I sell more long-term if I’m able to build a good relationship? Am I afraid to talk too much for fear my customer will realize I don’t know as much as I claim to know?

If you’d like to know more about Goal-Based Scenarios, here are a few references:

http://www.eduweb.com/goalbasedscenarios.html

http://www.edtech.vt.edu/edtech/id/models/gbs.html

http://www.engines4ed.org/hyperbook/nodes/NODE-227-pg.html

by Rich Mesch

Is there such a thing as too much reality?

In my first post on this topic, I said this:

“So how do you apply some of the rules of storytelling to our training initiatives? The key is to focus on how the world works in real life.”

The great thing about writing novels or screenplays is that you can make everything up. You’re not bound by the reality of what’s possible. But in a learning story, there needs to be some grounding in reality, however tenuous. In my simulation work, we often get hung up on reality. Does the simulation environment need to be a carbon copy of the real world? Arguably, the answer is no; one of the reasons we don’t always learn effectively is because our environments are full of distracters; your learning story can focus people on what’s important. But aren’t those distracters part of the learning experience? If you give me a nice clean environment to learn in, won’t I just have difficulty applying it in real life?

So how real do you need to get? The answer is, it depends. And not in a philosophical way. The real question is, what are the variables that need to be considered to tell the story effectively?

The most recognizable kind of simulation is probably the flight simulator. The failure to fly a plane properly will likely lead to mechanical failure, damage, and death. There are so many factors that can lead to failure (gauges, mechanics, alertness, weather, etc,) that flight simulators need to be completely realistic. The adherence to reality in a flight simulator is remarkable.

But in many environments, we want learners to focus on specific items. Where, in fact, presenting the whole reality of the job might actually be confusing. So it’s generally okay to leave stuff out or consolidate stuff. How do you that? Well, there are no hard-and-fast rules, but here are some guidelines:

1. Make sure you the stuff you leave out won’t distract the learner.
For example, if the learner works on a team where all of the members are in different cities, they might be distracted by a story that involves a scenario where everybody is co-located; however, they might be fine with a story where some team members are co-located and some are distributed.

I worked on a customer service simulation design with a company that made many different types of paper and packaging products. The client was very concerned that no one scenario (food packaging, office paper, print stock, etc.) would resonate with every member of the audience. Ultimately, we made the decision that the company in the simulation made bottles instead of paper. This way, the manufacturing and customer service environment was very recognizable to learners, but they weren’t distracted by the fact that the company didn’t make their exact paper product.

2. Make sure you leave in the stuff that makes the job challenging.
If we go all the way back to the beginning of this series, we established that one of the powers of storytelling in learning is that you can focus on those areas that make a job challenging. Is it a demanding boss? An industry that’s consolidating? Technology that changes rapidly? Clients who don’t know what they want? The power of storytelling is incorporating these elements in a way that affects people emotionally.

3. Focus on the element of time
For example, some businesses are seasonal; in retail, Fall is all about planning for the holiday season, Summer is all about planning for back-to school. If you leave this out, your story won’t have resonance. Also true is the impact of time; some decisions look different if you play them out over time; make sure your learners can see the short-term and long-term impact.

by Rich Mesch

I was first exposed to the concept of mirror neurons when I attended the NASAGA (North American Simulation and Gaming Association) Conference in Vancouver in 2007.  I was privileged to hear a talk by Dave Chalk. Chalk is an interesting guy on a number of levels, but most notably because he has had a highly successful career, including being a pilot, an entrepreneur, and a broadcasting personality, despite having been diagnosed at an early age of having a profound learning disorder.

One of the concepts Chalk discussed was the idea of mirror neurons. Research has demonstrated that in primates, our nervous systems react in certain ways when we engage in certain behaviors. The research further demonstrates that they react the same way when we observe the behavior or when we engage in a simulated version of the behavior. As noted by Rizzolatti & Craighero in Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27:

Each time an individual sees an action done by another individual, neurons that represent that action are activated in the motor cortex. This automatically induced, motor representation of the observed action corresponds to what is spontaneously generated during active action and whose outcome is known to the acting individual. Thus, the mirror system transforms visual information into knowledge ¹

This is incredibly intriguing, because it seems to demonstrate a biological basis for the benefits of simulation. As simulation designers, we always make the argument that engaging in behaviors in simulation prepares us to engage in behaviors in the real world. But the argument has always been from a cognitive perspective—it helps us form the way we think. The mirror neuron research would suggest that it’s deeper than cognition. And for that matter, that simulation may not just be the next best thing to real world experience—it may be nearly equivalent.

Here are a few links to more info on mirror neurons:

http://www.interdisciplines.org/mirror/papers/4/printable/paper

http://www.interdisciplines.org/ mirror

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/050427_mind_readers.html

http://www.unipr.it/~gallese/Gallese-Goldman%201998.pdf

¹ Reference: Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L. (2004). The mirror-neuron system. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169-192.

by Rich Mesch

Stories are compelling when you think you know what’s going to happen next, and then the story throws in a twist. You can do the same thing in your learning stories; the only issue is that you need some grounding in reality.

Movies frequently build interest by inserting compelling story twists. I won’t include any spoilers, but most people will admit to being thrown for a loop when they learned the truth about Bruce Willis’ character in The Sixth Sense or who Keyser Soze really was in The Usual Suspects. But the technique is nothing new; Alfred Hitchock shocked the movie-going world in 1960 when he killed off the main character in Psycho ten minutes into the film.

One of the oddest twists is in the film Magnolia; the story takes a twist when it unexpectedly starts raining frogs. And perhaps that’s the key difference between movie storytelling and learning storytelling. If your story completely deviates from reality, you’ll probably lose your audience. So your story probably shouldn’t have any froggy precipitation.

For learning stories, I recommend the use of the “Predictable Unexpected.” That means, create events that are unexpected in the context of your story, but typical in the real world. For example, in a sales simulation I designed, you spend a long time building a relationship with a client, in hopes that he will introduce you to an executive. If you successfully build the relationship, the client agrees to invite you to a meeting with the executive. When you try to return his call, you get a message that his phone line has been disconnected. He’s been fired, he’s not going to get you that meeting with the executive, and you have to begin the process over again.  The event was unexpected, but completely realistic within the scope of the storyline. And still completely gut-wrenching.

We’ll take this a little further in the next post, where we’ll talk about the role of reality in storytelling. How much reality is too much?

by Rich Mesch



In the first post in this series, I provided an overview for integrating storytelling into learning; now, in the spirit of translating all complex ideas into a few bullet points, I wanted to provide some tips.  These tips come from my simulation design experience, but really, they apply to most learning opportunities. While storytelling is more art than science, here are a few points to keep in mind:

1. Engage the heart as well as the mind. The workplace is emotional, so don’t be afraid to get under people’s skin. People should feel elated when they succeed, uncomfortable when they fail.
2. Focus on what makes the job challenging. Is it the complexity of the product line? The demands of your boss? The intimidation factor of talking to a well-educated physician? Don’t shy away from the tough stuff.
3. Show, don’t tell. This is one of the oldest writer’s rules. Instead of writing “he was nervous,” show your character’s behavior, and let your user/reader conclude that he’s nervous.
4. Storytelling needn’t involve narrative. While a novelist employs narrative as her primary tool, the simulation designer has many more tools available. Computer users can only tolerate reading in small doses. Tell your story with video, audio, graphics and animation.
5. Don’t feel you have to tell the entire story of a job in a simulation. Simulation stories work best when they are focused just on those parts of the job that are complex or difficult. In designing a sales simulation for a large pharmaceutical customer, we determined that reps did well at product detailing, but had opportunities for improvement in opening and closing calls. We designed a simulation that incorporated the entire call, but focused decisions specifically on openings and closings.
6. Good stories demonstrate actions and consequences. Your user will be more engaged if you create a sense of anticipation, a driving desire to know what happens next.  Watch the way an audience leans forward in their seats during an exciting movie, and determine what will get your simulation user leaning forward at his computer.
7. Don’t lose sight of the basics. Good stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. They chart a logical progression of conflict, resolution, and conclusion. That’s part of what makes the process of reading a book or watching a movie so satisfying—the feeling that you’ve shared a journey with the characters. Make sure your story develops throughout your course or simulation and reaches a satisfying conclusion (or potentially several satisfying conclusions!) at the end.

 

 

by Rich Mesch

Storytelling is one of the most effective yet underused methods for enhancing adult learning.  Ever heard someone yell at characters on a movie screen or talk back to the television? Ever stay up way too late one night because you had to read just one more chapter of a best seller? Ever rearrange your schedule to make sure you’re home for the conclusion of the cliffhanger episode of your favorite TV series?

Odds are good that you answered “yes” to at least one of the questions above, and very possibly to all of them. It’s not surprising. For many cultures, storytelling is one of the most pervasive methods of sharing information. A good story speaks to our minds, our hearts, our deepest emotions. When we’re truly wrapped up in a great story, we sometimes do things that are irrational; we speak to characters we know are fictional, we give up sleep that we desperately need, we laugh or cry or rejoice or despair over the lives of people we know are completely made up, completely fabricated. We’re human beings; we are able to connect on many levels.

We hate to admit it, but the workplace is irrationally emotional as well. On a good workday, we can feel fear, anger, joy, despair and elation. But for some reason, when we train people to be effective in this environment, our approach too often becomes dry and bloodless. We engage the mind (if we’re lucky), but not the heart. As a result, we reduce the likelihood that we will gain learner attention, that our message will be heard, let alone retained and applied.

I’ve been fortunate to spend most of my career working on performance simulations. The word “simulation” means many different things to different people. But at its core, simulations provide a realistic environment for learners to try new behaviors and experience the likely outcomes. And this is where storytelling becomes critical. If I’m going to truly apply new behaviors, I need to feel the same pressures, trade-offs, and barriers to change that I will feel in the real world. If those aspects are not present, I’m likely to dismiss the whole enterprise as “just another training exercise.” There are good simulations and bad simulations (and really bad simulations that don’t simulate anything). Some interpret simulation as a complex multiple choice test, which isn’t even close. Ultimately, what raises a mediocre simulation to a great simulation is the ability of the designers to engage the learner with a compelling story.

Novels, movies, and TV may be more appropriate metaphors for adult learning than classrooms are. The key factor is immersion; an experience that takes you out of the here-and-now and fully involves you in another environment. When people care about how the story turns out, they will start making decisions based on their internal assumptions; they will start getting distracted from the textbook “right” way and start making decisions emotionally, like they do in real life. This creates an opportunity for not just learning, but real behavior change—by allowing you to examine what drives your behavior in the first place.

So how do you apply some of the rules of storytelling to our training initiatives? The key is to focus on how the world works in real life. There’s tons of good leadership content out there, and most of it is not hard to understand. So why is there such a shortage of good leaders? Because when someone actually tries to apply this stuff, they meet challenges, encounter resistance, and need to change the way processes and systems work. Although they may agree that this is the “right stuff,” they don’t do it, because the risk and effort of doing it “right” outweighs the potential consequences of doing it “wrong.” Your story needs to address that. The same constraints and pressures that make your content difficult to implement in the real world need to exist in your training solution. Otherwise, your users will recognize it as a work of fiction, separate and divorced from the real world. Nobody can consider how to overcome the barriers to success until they comprehend what the barriers to success actually look like.

In the next post in this series, we'll review 7 key tips to using storytelling in your learning. See you there!

by Rich Mesch

[This is part 2 of series that started here. I met Dr. Glynn Cavin at this year’s ASTD TechKnowledge conference. He shared with me some of the work he is doing using Virtual Immersive Environments, and was good enough to allow me to interview him for this article.—RM]

Is your training a matter of life and death?

For Dr. Glynn Cavin, it is. Glynn is the Director of the Transportation Training and Education Center at Louisiana State University and a PhD in Human Resource Education and Workforce Development. One of his responsibilities is training road maintenance crews in Louisiana. Road crew errors have resulted in thousands of injuries and deaths over the years. How could he turn those numbers around?

A former Air Force Colonel, Glynn spent 24 years in the military. His military experience taught him that he needed to be out there, working side-by-side with the people he was responsible for, and to get to know them.  "It felt like training had two different camps," says Glynn. "There was more sophisticated training for professionals like engineers, but only classroom training for the highway maintenance crews. There's nothing wrong with classrooms, but a lot of the crew members were intimidated by the classroom.  It isn't their natural setting, for many of them it's an environment where they haven't historically been successful, and it isn't really relevant to their job. And then we wonder why they aren't getting it."

As a curious learning professional, Glynn had spent some time in Second Life, and found himself wondering if Virtual Immersive Environments (VIEs) might be an option for him. After all, road crews didn't work in classrooms; they worked out on roads and highways. Although the classroom training provided opportunities for practice, it wasn’t very realistic; there’s a big difference between trying a skill in the classroom versus doing it in the midst of busy traffic, noisy construction, and unpredictable weather. What if learners could practice in a safe environment that replicated many of the auditory, visual, and emotional cues they’d experience in real life?

“There’s no way to experiment or practice in the classroom,” says Glynn. “You learn the basics of work zone safety, and next thing, you’re out in the real work zone with cars whizzing by at 50 miles per hour. At least if you get clipped by a car in the virtual world, the only thing that gets hurt is your feelings.”

“We don't know a lot yet about how people learn virtually,” Glynn adds. “When the virtual world has the same cues as the real world, then those cues should help in the recall process when it's time to subconsciously recall that learning. We are looking to get the ‘Sense of Self’ and the ‘Power of Presence’ that Kapp & O’Driscoll talk about.”

Glynn set out to create a training experiment, where he would compare the effectiveness of blended training using both classroom and a Virtual Immersive Environment with training that used classroom lecture methods exclusively. In order to make his experiment work, Glynn put together a collaborative team, including Marty Altman of the Louisiana Immersive Technology Enterprises (LITE), an incubator for innovative technologies; Dr. Krisanna Machtmes, from the  LSU School of Human Resource Education, and expert of distance learning and statistics; and Mary Leah Coco, a doctoral student at LSU.

The team chose the Unity 3D engine as their platform. “We chose Unity because we could track everything-- where they put their avatar, how long it takes them to do certain tasks,” Glynn notes. “We may use something like Second Life in the future, if it could support our data tracking needs.” To avoid any intimidation involved with using a PC, learners will use a Logitech game controller, similar to an Xbox controller. To further simplify the learning curve, the controller has only a few buttons enabled. While this is technology-based learning, the goal is for the technology to be invisible to the learner.

“In a traditional classroom, when you ask for volunteers, everyone looks at the floor,” Glynn observes. “You may get an extrovert, or the instructor may select someone. Nobody wants to be the one making a mistake; in a VIE, everyone gets a chance to do it, and there's no 'public humiliation'-- nobody knows but you and the instructor. And you get to keep doing it again and again until you get it right.”

The experiment will be held in mid-March. The initial audience will be 200 learners from various parts of the organization. The control group will receive the traditional classroom training, while the treatment group will experience the blended approach. “We’ll have a Beta model for testing by March 1, and then the experimental group by March 15. We will have up to 15 classes with 20 students per class; it’s about a four-hour class. When the students report for training, they will not know which group they are in, or that there even are two different groups. Control and treatment classes will be on different days.”

Effectiveness of the blended learning will be measured in multiple ways:

1. Pre- and post-tests on content

2. Empirical data from use of the virtual environment software (decisions made, reaction time, etc.)

3. A qualitative interview with learners after each class

4. An evaluation of learning retention after 6 months

Actual improvements in road safety will also be tracked; however, with so many variables impacting road safety, the team isn’t convinced that they can make a directly correlation of the results to the training

While the experiment hasn’t been completed yet, the team is already excited about it.  Glynn says, “We think this is a big step forward. In our literature review [on Virtual Immersive Environments], we did not find a lot of empirical data to back up the claims. We hope this will add to that body of knowledge, especially for a diverse workforce. We couldn't find any literature where researchers were using blue collar workers who hadn't been in a school a long time.”

In the end, Glynn thinks this effort will be successful because he knows these learners very well. “There are a lot of naysayers out there who say this won't work because this group doesn't use technology. But if you watch them day-to-day, a lot of them have Smart phones or Wiis or Xboxes. So they may not be comfortable with a PC, they are comfortable with technology.

"This has the potential to be transformational for the adult education community as virtual learning reaches out to those who learn best visually or who may be functionally illiterate.  Virtual learning environments could offer a whole new frontier for educators and developers hoping to reach out to marginalized populations.”