We’ve been listening! Our customers are telling us they want Blueline innovation… but at a lower cost and with high value. We’ve borrowed a little bit of seasonal North Pole magic to make your wishes come true.

Today, we’re introducing lower cost-alternatives to Blueline custom training solutions. But we’ve got a few other surprises under the tree, including innovative methods for saving on travel costs, implementing mobile learning, and sharing training and communications resources.

Introducing a new suite of high-value, low-cost solutions from Blueline Simulations:

eBooks: The contemporary online elearning solution that can also be delivered via iOS, Android and Blackberry mobile devices.

Imagine your favorite interactive “magazine” format (e.g. CNN.com or the Wall Street Journal Online). As a learning and communication tool, these eBooks are incredibly effective… and are far more accepted by the new generation of learners than old school rapid development platforms like Captivate, Lectora and Articulate.

And the new technologies introduced in 2011 enable our team of developers to design eBooks that will run on all Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), as well as Android devices and Blackberry’s new Playbook tablet.

In other words, it’s a single solution for a broadly distributed audience operating on multiple operating systems. The applications are endless, and we’d love to show you some of the innovative ways we’ve put eBooks to work for our clients.

Journey Maps: The simpler, faster, lower cost alternative to a Blueline Blueprint –when only a picture will do.

A Journey Map is a smaller, 11 x 17 rendering that visually depicts complex messages. By design, these highly flexible images can carry change messages quickly and efficiently through your organization over a variety of media. The icon-driven approach, simple timeline presentations, and short marketing-style copy have been proven to be the perfect combination when rendering complex systems with simplicity and emotional engagement.

The value of the Journey Map just keeps going: The primary design elements of the document can be isolated and delivered as individual graphics for use in other applications. For example, individual icons may be placed within explanatory documents in Word format, or used in online documents. Our clients have used the Journey Map elements to add context to their company intranet, employee handbooks, strategy presentations, internal communications branding, and more.

Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT): Transform your classroom training into high-impact, virtual-instructor-led training online and save tens of thousands of dollars in travel costs.

At Blueline Simulations, VILT is much more than a “web meeting.” Today we are creating engaging, interactive learning events… while still saving time and money. We are exploring this new medium with:

•         Immersive story lines and passports

•         Collaborative team-based activities and assignments

•         Socratic discussions, remote synchronous role-plays and networking

•         Rich interactive debriefs

•         …and more.

Yes, it can be done. And when it all comes together, it is a thing of beauty.

Want to learn more about how cost effective it is to make learning a competitive advantage for your business? Call the talent management experts at Blueline Simulations today!

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2011 was supposed to be The Year of Mobile Learning, but it hasn’t lived up to the hype.  That is, until now!

While mobile devices like iPhones, Android Phones, and iPads have been around for a couple of years, the tools used to develop mobile learning solutions for those devices have made it all but impossible to serve a broadly distributed audience operating on multiple operating systems and platforms.

However, a couple of announcements made within the last month have literally transformed this space overnight.  Just last month Adobe released new versions of Flash Builder and Flex that allow Flash developers to create and release applications that will run on all Apple iOS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad), as well as Android devices and Blackberry’s new Playbook tablet.

In response, Blueline has introduced our clients to the concept of eBooks.  eBooks take a fresh new approach to Level 1 and 2 custom elearningthrough the use of an interactive online magazine format like CNN.com or the Wall Street Journal Online.  eBooks are incredibly effective for communication and knowledge transfer, and are far more accepted by the new generation of learners than old school rapid development platforms like Captivate, Lectora and Articulate.  They are a great replacement for pre-work or pre-reading, or any application that requires just-in-time knowledge transfer and communication sharing.

eBooks are built in Flash and have always been accessible through any web browser.  And now, because of the new tools announced by Adobe, they are easily ported to any and all of your favorite mobile devices.

eBooks bring your content to life!  Unlike print media, eBooks are easily navigated, have robust search capabilities, link to any LMS, engage through a broad range of interactivities, and can incorporate video and audio. And because the Flash designs pull from separate XML files, the content is easily updatable and makes translation and localization a breeze.

Want to learn more about how easy it is to make mobile learning a competitive advantage for your business?  Call the mobile learning experts at Blueline Simulations today!

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Salespeople know they should listen more than they talk and if you ask them, they can rapidly list the steps in your selling process.  Yet when they are in front of a client they almost always talk too much and fail to execute properly on the steps in your selling process. Recent neuroscience research on working memory capacity explains why this happens. It also suggests the solution to the problem.

Working memory is the number of items that you can hold and manipulate in your brain for a purpose. For example, the number of steps in a sales process and the number of pieces of information about a client that you can hold in your head and manipulate to determine what you should say or do next.  Healthy adults can normally hold between three to five items in working memory. This means that if your working memory capacity is five, you can hold and manipulate five items at a time: Add a sixth item and the brain is forced to dump one of the items to make room for the sixth.

To experience the impact of your own working memory limitations try to solve the following two problems. Read each problem only one time and then look away as you try to solve them in your head.

1. Multiply ten times one thousand, then double the number and add ten.

Were you able to solve the problem? Are you feeling confident? Now try the second problem. Remember, you must solve the problem in your head with no pencil or calculator. To get the full experience don’t give up easily. Instead try hard to solve this problem in your head.

1. Please read the following problem only once and then look away as you try to solve it in your head. Multiply 267 times 431.

Welcome back! How far did you get before you forgot one of the two numbers in the problem? Don’t feel bad… almost no one can do this problem in their head. The question is why? After all, if most people have a pencil and paper they know the multiplication rules well enough to easily solve this problem.

The reason the average person can’t solve this problem in their head is that they lack the number of working memory slots required to remember the problem, the steps required to solve the problem, and the results of each step.

The fact that you couldn’t answer the second question is interesting. However, the epiphany comes when you ask yourself how you were able to answer the first question. After all, if you use the rules of multiplication the first problem actually involves more steps.

The reason you were able to answer the first question is that in school most of us mastered the use of 10′s. Mastery means that your brain wrote a separate program for solving problems involving 10′s in the same way it wrote a program for riding a bike. Since mastery-based programming runs automatically without using working memory capacity, you had slots available to remember the components of the problem and still solve the problem. When you read multiply 10 times 1000 your brain subconsciously ran the 10′s program and placed 10,000 in one of your working memory slots.

Now let’s examine the brain of a salesperson that just completed a sales training event. The next week they are out in the field trying to recall and use a specific strategy for overcoming objections. In this case it is an objection that a customer just raised in the form of a question.

To properly respond to the objection, the sales person must keep the following items in working memory:

1. Hold the question the customer asked. (One slot if it is a simple question, two or more slots if it is a multipart question.)

Minimum: 1 slot

1. Recall and hold the strategy for effectively answering client objections. (One slot for the current step in the process and one slot for remembering where you are in the process.)

Minimum: 2 slots

1. Recall the facts about your products or services and determine which ones to use in your answer. (This requires a minimum of two slots in order to compare one item to the next.)

Minimum: 2 slots

Danger – at this point most sales people are already out of working memory capacity. The next thing they bring into working memory leaves the brain with no choice but to dump something to make room for the new item. Often this is a critical part of the client’s question.

As bad as this seems, it is actually worse. This is because the salesperson is probably stressed out by the objection. The emotion of stress or anxiety takes up at least one working memory slot if the stress is mild, and almost all of working memory if it is extreme.

Before we leave this exercise, let’s count the rest of the slots a sales person would need in order to effectively execute the “overcoming objections” strategy.

1. Recall the customer’s primary goals and objectives for needing your products and services in the first place and formulate your response in a way that uses this information.

Minimum: 2 slots

1. Some systems stress the importance of remembering the personality style of the client and using this information to determine how detailed or brief your answer should be.

Minimum: 1 slot

1. Use the right emotions. For example, some systems teach a specific method for the level of emotion and energy you should have in your response based on the emotions and energy of the prospect’s question. Of course this must have been remembered.

Minimum: 1 slot

If we count up just the minimum numbers and don’t account for any spaces taken up by emotions, we come in at nine slots. This is far more than the average person’s brain possesses. Yet, everyday millions of sales people effectively execute on this and similar strategies for overcoming objections. The reason they can exceed their working memory limitation is the same reason you can do mental math involving 10′s. The salesperson practiced the strategy on enough different days to stimulate their brain to grow the connections required to reach mastery.

Of course, if the sales person hasn’t mastered the strategy disaster often strikes.  Instead of listening to the customer and effectively executing on the objection handling strategy the sales person interrupts the customer mid-sentence to blurt out information.  The sales person does this out of fear that they will soon forget the important point – which they will as soon as the next thought enters working memory and bumps out the important point.

The most important conclusion regarding working memory is that nothing should be taught in your sales training courses unless it is important enough to teach to the point of mastery. Lots of extra nice-to-know information might make your sales training seminar seem more interesting, but in the long run you are doing your sales people a disservice because during the pressure of the selling situation these extra, un-mastered pieces of information or strategy tips will take up too much working memory capacity.

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Scientists have mapped the entire human genome and there is no gene for test taking – so no one is naturally bad at it. However, researchers have shown that if a student believes they are a naturally bad test taker or for any other reason fears the test, their brain will engage the fight or flight mechanisms the moment they sit down to take the test.

Here is how Jack Schafer PhD describes the fight or flight mechanism.

In humans, incoming signals from the five senses are directed to the thalamus, often described as the gateway to the brain. The thalamus divides each incoming signal into two separate signals. One signal goes to the limbic system, more specifically the amygdala. The amygdala is the processing center for our emotional responses. The other signal goes to the reasoning parts of our brain in the cortex.

The pathway to the amygdala is shorter than the pathway to the cortex, allowing the amygdala to process the incoming signal first. If the incoming signal matches a previously known threat, the amygdala secretes hormones that trigger the fight/flight response. One function of the fight/flight response is to inhibit the second signal from reaching the cortex, preventing the logical evaluation of the incoming information. The body then goes into automatic response mode.

Here is an example for how the fight/flight response works and why it is so important. If you walk down a road and happen upon a rattlesnake, the normal reaction is to immediately jump out of harm’s way. The amygdala causes this automatic response. Once at a safe distance, you can logically evaluate the snake’s potential threat. This automatic response increases your chances of survival. Had the automatic response not engaged, you would have stood in the road and observed the characteristics of the snake, such as the rattling sound and the shape of the head, and would have logically come to the conclusion that the snake was poisonous, but too late to avoid a snake bite.

Test anxiety is another form of the fight/flight response. Students who know the test material backwards and forwards still might have difficulty recalling the information if they perceive the test as a threat, or have the fear that they are bad test takers. In both of these cases, it is the primary emotion of fear that causes the student’s fight/flight response to engage. This response reduces the student’s ability to engage their cortex to recall and effectively use the information they have learned to answer the questions on the test.

Here are two strategies for overcoming the fight or flight response that produces poor test performance:

1. Learn to control your fight or flight response. Just before you start a test, tell yourself to calm down and that the test is not a threat. Just telling yourself to calm down actually works because you feel empowered and less threatened. It also causes your cortex to send a signal to your limbic system to dampen the fight/flight response. Remind yourself that you know the material and tell yourself that you are actually happy to have the opportunity to demonstrate what you know; the fight or flight mechanism.
2. Learn to recognize the signals that you are entering the fight/flight mode. If you start to feel the jitters and a surge of adrenalin, recognize that these are the first signs that your brain is entering the fight/flight mode. Stephen Daugherty PhD, who is one of the leading experts on test taking strategies, suggests that when you find yourself entering fight/flight during a test, the best thing to do is take a short mental time out. Push your chair a few inches away from the desk. Close your eyes or at least take your attention off the test and think about something relaxing. When you feel the jitters and tension go away, remind yourself that you know this material and go back to answering questions on the test.

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Part 2:

I stared at the number: 28%.

28% has long been established as a standard, an ever-present challenge to developers of traditional elearning programs. That’s the percentage of material that you can expect your learners to retain two weeks after your elearning program. Some refer to it as “the problem of forgetting.”

There’s a reason why I’m waxing philosophical about numbers and percentages. It’s because my world has been rocked.

What if I told you that I have uncovered a proven solution that is consistently delivering retention levels of 95%?

That’s right. 95%.

I will tell you what I said when I first learned about it: “I have dedicated my professional life to staying abreast of learning innovations. If this were true, I would already know about it!”

But that’s when things start to unravel a bit. Because, I hadn’t ever before focused on the “hidden truths” that I outlined in my previous blog entry. And without knowledge of those paradigm-shifting learning insights, how would I know that I needed to search for a better way? I wouldn’t, and I didn’t.

Until now, when I was faced with the two numbers. 28%. And 95%.

It seems that, in fact, a little-known company based in California, run by a PhD whose expertise is in the Neurobiology of Learning, is transforming Public Education in California by routinely delivering these results to his students.

“Ahh, well that explains it,” I mused, “because high school students aren’t the same as adult learners. Even if he has delivered these results they wouldn’t apply to what we do.”

But then I was presented with a third-party analysis demonstrating that surgeons prepping for board certification showed a 300% improvement with less study time than a control group made up of their peers.

I was hooked. I had to know how they do it.

Turns out, these secrets are not out of reach. They’re all hidden, right there in plain view, within the learning insights I described in the first part of this blog post.

Think of the solution as your very own “personal trainer,” whose job it is to isolate your weaknesses, and develop an exercise program just for you. The only difference is that in this case, instead of building muscle, you build connections in your brain.

Specifically, the fastest path to building those connections is an “exercise plan” that prioritizes exercises based on learner need, optimally spaces study sessions over time, and utilizes open-ended questions that the learner self-evaluates.

That’s the secret. That’s what you have to do to increase retention from 28% to 95%.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right?

Here’s the challenge: in the corporate environment, efficiency and scale dictate that these personalized learning plans are all but impractical. I’ve spent much of my career delivering learning solutions to hundreds or thousands of students at a time.

That’s why I’m so excited about a new solution that I am extending now to my client partners in some of the world’s most influential organizations.  It’s a digital personal trainer that utilizes an algorithm that borders on artificial intelligence to deliver custom study sessions. And it exists.

I’m a believer, and I’ve got a story to tell. And I’d love to share it with you.

Look at the long-term retention rates of your elearning interventions. Then, don’t get depressed. Instead, give me a call. I’ve got some ideas that can lead your people to the 95% winner’s circle.

I look forward to hearing from you.

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Need to make an ROI assessment on whether a classroom program or eLearning solution is right for you? Now there is an app for that.

Brainvisa recently released a free iPhone app that helps you calculate the development, implementation and maintenance costs of a classroom program, and compares those costs to developing an eLearning solution. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) Tool for Learning Investments asks you a series of questions about the program to be develop, such as: “What’s the approximate length of this course?” — “How often it will need to be updated?” and, “How many times it will be offered?”

Next, the app steps you through similar considerations for implementation such as, cost of space, cost of facilitation, hourly rate of attendees, etc. Using all this information, it then calculates your total cost. Next, it asks if you would like to compare that cost to the cost of developing an eLearning solution.

CAB doesn’t ask any of the same questions about the eLearning development or implementation, so Brainvisa must be using their development costs for those calculations.

I did three test runs of CAB to check it out. The results of two of the test runs indicated that eLearning was a more cost effective approach. The third test run, with less than 50 people to be trained, said a classroom solution was a more cost effective approach.

Now there is nothing here that you couldn’t do with a simple spreadsheet – or even a pencil and piece of paper! But CAB is simple, the voice over that asks the questions is done with a sense of humor and the math is done for you. More importantly, it is an early demonstration that not only is mobile learning going to be a big trend in 2010, but I think we will also see more mobile tools to support the development, implementation and maintenance of learning solutions.

It looks to be a very interesting year!

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