The Talent Management Specialists at Blueline Simulations sweep the Brandon Hall Awards

Yesterday I enjoyed a little taste of what James Cameron must have felt the night that Titanic swept the Oscars.  Ok, so this may sound overly dramatic, if you will forgive the pun. Billy Crystal wasn’t hosting, and there was no red carpet.

But in our industry there are few awards that matter as much as the Brandon Halls.  Now in its 17th year, the awards program announced yesterday the winners from 22 categories.  Entries were judged by a panel of independent senior judges, Brandon Hall Group Sr. Analysts and Executive Leadership based upon the following criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, usability, innovation, and overall measureable benefits.

As Mike Cooke, Chief Executive Officer of Brandon Hall Group, Inc. put it: “This year’s winning entries were the best of the best. We are proud to recognize the award winners who have greatly improved the performance of their organization and have shown clear, measurable business results through these innovative programs.”

And in Blueline Simulation’s first year as a submitter, our client partners won five Gold Awards! 

You read that correctly: FIVE GOLD BRANDON HALL AWARDS!  Congratulations to Bank of America, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Verizon Wireless for being acknowledged as the “best of the best” by winning Gold Medals in the following categories:

• Best Custom Content: The Verizon Wireless Retail Sales Simulator
• Best Learning Game: The Verizon Wireless Retail Sales Simulator
• Best Use of Virtual Worlds for Learning: Bank of America Teller Readiness Simulation and Assessment
• Best Integration of Learning and Talent Management: Bank of America Teller Readiness Simulation and Assessment
• Best Onboarding Program: Booz Allen Hamilton New Hire Onboarding Program

And here is the best part: while awards in and of themselves are nice, for us the bigger reward was the opportunity to work with three of the most talented and dedicated client teams with whom we have ever had the pleasure to partner.

So how does the team at Blueline plan to follow up on this tremendous showing? We’d like to create some best-in-class learning solutions with you! Give the Talent Management Specialists at Blueline Simulations a call and find out why our client partners have been rewarded with these and other awards from Bersin and ASTD in 2011.

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What should be a training designer’s goal? The answer would seem obvious: design a training solution.  While that may be the product the designer produces, it should not be the goal.

Recently I’ve been reading Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jesse Schell. While at Blueline we often find a serious game or game-like element is an effective part of a training solution, I’ve found that the lenses that Schell offers extend beyond games to training solutions in general.

In chapter two Schell states, “Ultimately, a game designer does not care about games. Games are merely a means to an end. On their own, games are just artifacts – clumps of cardboard, or bags of bits. Games are worthless unless people play them. Why is this? What magic happens when games are played?

When people play games, they have an experience. It is this experience that the designer cares about. Without the experience, the game is worthless.”

I think we could easily substitute “training” for “game” in his statement and it would fit nicely. Yes, I’m fully aware of Bloom’s taxonomy and it’s importance in writing clear and specific objectives for a training solution. And I strongly support the theory that the ultimate outcome of any training should be a positive impact on business results. However, from a designer’s perspective, the goal should be to design an experience that leads to those results.

That’s why we say that at Blueline we focus on immersive learning experiences, whether they be simulations (classroom or esim ), virtual classrooms, learning visuals , or even large group communications events. To paraphrase Schell’s question, “What magic happens when Blueline training occurs?” it is the rich immersive experience that produces the results.

Keeping the learner’s experience in mind throughout the design and development process leads to a set of questions beyond just “was the content clearly communicated?” and “was ample practice provided for skill development?” Thinking about designing an experience that leads to powerful learning means continually asking questions like:

• What frame of reference is the learner likely to have at this point?
• How receptive to learning will the learner be? How can we increase that receptivity?
• How have the previous elements or activities likely affected the energy and focus of the learner? How will this element or activity impact that focus or energy level?
• How can we engage the learner’s interest, curiosity, and/or emotions with this material?
• How might we have the learner “disagree” to incite more passion about the topic?
• What methods can we use so the learner must actively engage with the material rather than merely serve as a passive recipient of information?
• Would a “failure”or a “success” at this point be more likely to engage the learner? Increase the stickiness of the learning?
• What situation can we setup so the learner actively creates his or her own learning? Or generates his or her own data?

When we design with the learner’s experience in mind, we keep the learner and not the content front and center. Developing a training that puts the learner at the center more often than not results in greater learning comprehension and stickiness.

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I recently had the opportunity to attend a conference with Bob Gerard from Accenture.

Bob gave a presentation that really opened the audience’s eyes to the true value of the Virtual World Classroom based on some research he and his team had just concluded.  Bob wasn’t lost in the allure of Avatars and 3D worlds, his research was aimed at evaluating learner engagement and proving positive returns.

Their theory was that virtual world classrooms are more effective than audio & slide virtual classrooms.  Feedback from the participants in the pilots seemed to overwhelmingly reinforce this theory.  Employees stated that the virtual world experience was more enjoyable, engaging, and collaborative than audio & slide based virtual classrooms.  Importantly, students reported that they learned more and could apply the learned content better than after an audio & slide event.  This is obviously bad news for WebEx and their cohorts.

However, when evaluated against a traditional classroom event the results were inconclusive.  Each approach had advocates and detractors.  On the one hand, there was a general bias toward traditional classroom events.  On the other, the advocates were extremely biased to virtual world classrooms.

So here is where this gets interesting for me.  In much the same way that Merrill Lynch was able to show a strong positive return on an investment in Mobile Learning as one mode of delivery for compliance training, Bob Gerard’s findings suggest we can, at least for a very specific population, improve knowledge transfer and retention utilizing virtual world classrooms instead of traditional classrooms.  I can easily see road weary sales executives, with a bias toward technology, appreciating effective new product training delivered this way.

I am anxious to get your thoughts and experiences!?

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