Serious thinking

E.learning Age, Mar 2008 by Corti, Kevin

Why chief executive officers should learn to get serious about serious games.

There has been much written about "serious games" or, as I prefer to call them, "immersive learning simulations" (ILS) over the last year. As with any nascent industry there are always early adopters, characterised by their willingness to embrace innovation, but most organisations tend to be more risk-averse and thus harder to convince. For the wider adoption of ILS to happen, suppliers and commissioners need to counter the fear of change with coherent designs allied to sound business reasoning. This article seeks to provide some ideas to support this.

Deliver upon organisational needs

To paraphrase the 1992 Clinton election slogan; "It's about the business, stupid!" Most corporate learning professionals lack an awareness of what is required to implement an effective ILS. Likewise many suppliers, especially those whose origins are in the entertainment games and multimedia industry, lack an appreciation of what is required to create a truly effective and appropriate learning solution.

If a potential client fails to feel comfortable with how to go about implementing an ILS they shall remain only a potential client. As designers of interactive learning applications we are naturally enticed by the potential of simulations to create learning experiences that are characterised by being "engaging", "fun" or "immersive". I have no doubt that many corporate training (and school education) activities could benefit with being, for example, "more engaging", but in order to obtain commercial buy in we need to link the descriptive terms we use to accepted business terminology, drivers and practices. That is to say, do not try selling an "engaging game" to the chief financial officer. Focus instead on the attainment of measurable performance, productivity and quality improvement benefits such as the reduction of induction time/time to competency, material waste and frequency of accidents or errors. Where it is not possible to be quite so explicit, focus instead on obvious opportunities for organisational improvement such as, for example:

* Delivering effective just-in-time "job aids" that enable employees to resolve problems at the point of need (to increase productivity and cut costs).

* Increased awareness of a role within the wider organisation (improved communication and collaboration equals increased productivity).

* A deeper understanding of complex processes and systems such as complex sales, consultancy, and Six Sigma ( to gain a better return on capital investment).

Be realistic

Creating a commercially successful entertainment computer game is hard work. ILS implementations will not need to match the high end production values and technical wizardry of the latest entertainment computer games but they are, nonetheless, likely to require more investment, time and effort than your average "rapid e-learning" project. Failing to recognise this will cause potentially project-stopping problems. As a guide the majority of ILS projects typically fall into the £25k to £250k range and take between three and six months to complete. Do ensure that there is appropriate time to do the job well and include sufficient time for thorough design, development, integration and testing. Giving your ILS specialist six weeks to deliver a huge bespoke multiplayer simulation to train thousands of staff in the latest release of your enterprise-wide supply chain management system is really not a clever idea.

Remember the organisational objectives

It is very easy to get carried away with the "shiny new toys" and, if you have not previously implemented a game or simulation before, to fall back on what you know about those great PlayStation, Amiga or Atari games you played when you were younger. Those experiences can be useful to inform your decisions but do not forget that your primary motivation in adopting an ILS-based approach is not to entertain your audience but rather to solve your internal or external client's business/learning-related problems. Let the ILS specialist drive the design vision and development practicalities.

Partnering

Many an e-leaming company will, if they come across it in a tender invitation, greet the word "partnership" with an (often justified) deep sigh on the basis that what this probably means is something along the lines of "we expect it cheap". In the brave new world of ILS however, partnerships will become perhaps more prevalent than they have ever been before and for good reason. An ILS vendor is an expert in interactivity above all else and, because creating an effective ILS focuses on higherlevel skills development (deep learning) rather than simplistic information delivery (shallow learning), most ILS projects will require a Subject Matter Expert (SME). The business models of large-scale ILS projects may well dictate that "cost sharing" is necessary but in keeping with the adoption-related theme of this article, it is the nature of the learning design challenge that will often dictate that ILS projects need to be carried out in some form of formal partnership between three or more organisations.