Experiential Learning Activities

In order to really improve business skills, employees must do. Without practice, a new skill will never truly be learned. Experiential learning activities can help bridge the gap between cursory informational training and training that actually sticks!

20
jul
0

Does Gamification Actually Work? Yes, and Here’s Why

Posted by Experiential Learning Activities, HR Training, Human Resource Training, Leadership Games, Team Building Exercises, Teamwork Games2 Comments

written by Sharon Boller

I’m a big Twitter fan; I use it to curate content and pay attention to people whose opinions I care about and the trends I’m interested in. I believe in hashtags (#GBL, #gamification, #UX, #ATD, #DevLearn) as they help me easily curate content and monitor those trends.

Last week, on the #ATD “back channel” (conversation that gets created when you diligently use hashtags to share info on a particular topic, person, or event), the topic of learning myths was hot and heavy, largely due to Clark Quinn’s newly-released (and excellent) book on the same topic.

Though gamification is not in Clark’s book, gamification came up on the #ATD back channel as part of a discussion on learning myths… and people were suddenly questioning whether it is a myth: “it doesn’t really work.”

Whoa.

As someone who has been immersed in the arena of learning games and the gamification of learning – and whose product and custom solutions have earned Brandon Hall awards because of the results they produce and who wrote a book on how to design effective learning games – I was understandably concerned by this line of conversation.

A Gamification Myth

In the instance of a recent Twitter conversation, truth emerged that some of the “myth” comments about gamification stemmed from a single study that one astute Twitterer, Shannon Tipton, called “full of holes as Swiss cheese.” The study authors did not provide any information about the two lessons being compared except for this: 1) the lessons were supposed to teach students how to divide fractions, and 2) one was called “basketball divide fractions” lesson and the other was simply called “divide fractions.”  The authors used their proprietary platform to conduct a controlled, randomized study to compare two lessons that teach students how to divide fractions.

The study suggests (but does not directly say) that one lesson was gamified in some fashion, but we aren’t told how. The other lesson was not gamified. The results overwhelmingly favored the non-gamified lesson. Kids learned faster and performed better on subsequent fractions tests that required them to divide fractions. The gamified approach resulted in lower test scores, even though kids spent longer in the lesson by choice. The authors indicate this increased amount of time spent on the lesson was 100% voluntary; the assumption they seem to want readers to have is that students had more fun doing one lesson than the other. From that single study that omits tons of relevant information, some folks conclude, “gamification of instruction doesn’t work.”

What’s Missing From this Study?

Let’s think about what we don’t know here:

  • The quality of the game/gamification design: How many game elements did they use? Were they used optimally? Was the gamified solution too complex so students’ expended too much brain power figuring out rules and too little learning fractions? Or was it motivating the wrong behavior? (e.g. Rewarding progress versus mastery. In scenarios that focus on rewarding progress, learners earn points simply by completing a problem. Getting the problem correct is not a criteria for earning a reward. Learners could also have been rewarded for speed, which could push them to guess the right solution rather than truly make an effort to solve for the right answer.)
  • The equivalency of the quality of the instructional design across the two solutions: Were both lessons, in fact, teaching identical principles and using some of the same techniques? Did they each have solid instructional design? (Example: did they both employ worked examples, which reduces cognitive load and increases learning efficiency?)

What the study illustrated was the basketball dividing fractions was less effective in helping students perform well on a fractions test than the lesson that did not include the gamified elements used in the basketball lesson. If I were a game designer on that lesson, I would want to go back to it and figure out what I’d done wrong in gamifying the lesson. I would not be ready to assume that gamification itself was the problem.

How to Effectively Use Games & Gamification

Bad gamification or game design is going to yield bad results just as bad instructional design is going to lead to poor results. That doesn’t mean gamification or games don’t work. So how do you use games and gamification effectively? Here are some principles that will help you maximize efficacy:

1. Keep game complexity simple, particularly when you are using a game to support relatively short lessons.
Do not over-complicate a learning game or gamified lesson with lots of game mechanics (aka rules) or game elements. Elements are things such as rewards, scoring, chance, strategy, resources, cooperation, competition, aesthetics, theme, and story. Doing so increases the cognitive load on your learner and makes it harder, not easier, to learn. (See this explanation of cognitive load theory, which was first identified by John Sweller in 1988.)

2. Reward players for performance, not completion.
If you are going to award points within the game, those points need to come from demonstrating knowledge or skill, not just progress. (See Karl Kapp’s book on the Gamification of Learning and Instruction. There’s an entire chapter on research studies and another on how to use rewards effectively – and what not to do.)

3. Be cautious with leaderboards.
Leaderboards can be fun, but be sure you focus on more than who is on top. Consider letting people see more about themselves rather than just what other players are doing. We are all very interested in ourselves so we like to see our rank relative to others, improvements we’ve made over time, personal bests, etc. We also like being part of a team. So consider team-based comparisons (e.g. by location, role, etc.) as opposed to just head-to-head individual comparisons.

4. As much as possible, align the game element choices you use to the learner’s actual job context.
In other words, avoid competition in a game if the job requires cooperation/collaboration. If you want to incorporate “chance” into a game (and this is a handy game element for balancing out gameplay), make sure you use it appropriately. This means matching the types of chance a player encounters in the game with the way chance occurs in the real world.

For example, if you are teaching project management, a great use of chance is to have it come up as a factor that requires the player to consider alternate strategies. “One of your teammates just called in sick. Identify two other viable strategies for meeting today’s deadline.” “Your client just called to say she’s going to miss her deadline. She asks, ‘How can we still hit the ultimate milestone. I don’t want the project to slip overall.’ What do you do?” (Play to Learn, the book I co-authored with Karl Kapp, outlines how to combine learning design and game design together to maximize the impact and efficacy of games.)

5. Make the in-game goal align with the learning goal in a reasonable way that “makes sense” for the learners who will play your game or complete your gamified lesson.
Again, mirror job context. If the real-world scenario is to achieve certain quality ratings for a medical facility, for example, mirror that goal within the game. This reduces cognitive load on your learners as they don’t have to distinguish what’s true in the game from what’s true in their job context. This blog post on playtesting features a game where we worked hard (via multiple iterations) to get our game goal and rewards just right to maximize learning.

6. Stop thinking you have to make the game super “fun.”
Fun doesn’t really matter if the focus is on optimizing the learning outcomes. What matters is relevance and a game design that reinforces and enhances the instructional design. A game needs to be “fun enough” to keep your player/learner involved in that game. You also need to re-think what “fun” is. Kevin Werbach of the Wharton School of Business does a great job of breaking down what people actually find fun and it includes things such as strategizing, problem-solving, and collaborating – all skills required in many jobs.

Additional Resources
Want more guidelines on effectively using games or gamification in instruction? Check out these resources:

HRDQ-U and Sharon Boller are offering a FREE webinar August 8th at 2pm ET. Register now! 

17
feb
0

Three Strategies for Making Energizer Activities Effective in Adult Learning

Posted by Coaching Skills, Experiential Learning Activities, HR Training, Human Resource TrainingNo Comments

 

By Bob Lucas

Like any other successful portion of a training or educational event, you must design energizer activities effectively if they are going to effectively and accomplish your intended purpose when working with adult learners.

The following three tips can help make your next adult learning session more successful:

1.  Provide adequate room. Often trainers and adult educators fail to think through the activities that they will use with their learners. As part of the session planning, think about how many people you will have, how many groups will participate and how much space you will need to conduct each learning activity. Obviously, if the activity is an individual effort where learners work on  own and then report to the rest of the group, you will need  less floor space. However, if you plan to get training participants up and moving to stimulate their brain neurons through active learner engagement, you will need to plan additional space.  Always factor in time and extra space when having them move chairs, tables or other items.

2.  Allow plenty of time. When planning energizers and other types of activities, a big mistake that some trainers and educators make  is to underestimate the amount of time for set up, participation and debriefing of an activity. This is often very frustrating for adult learners, shows a lack of experience or professionalism on the part of the trainer or educator, and contributes to an ineffective learning experience. Once you explain an activity, provide materials and have learners start to accomplish the assigned task(s), step back, observe, offer appropriate guidance throughout, and let the activity run its course.

When you are creating a training agenda, it is better to plan too much time, than not enough. Learners should have time to experience the full impact of the learning objectives for the activity so that they can maximize learning outcomes.

3. Encourage risk taking. The final tip for making sure that your energizer activities are effective is to encourage adult learners to think outside the box and take risks in activities where problem solving, decision-making and other situations where they individually or jointly look for solutions related to the session learning objectives are involved. For example, having frontline employees self-disclose an aspect of their jobs would likely be a low-risk activity for them. However, you can bump up the level of risk and engagement by asking them to share something they like and dislike about their jobs and how they would fix the latter if they were in a leadership position. Just be careful to set up a scenario appropriately so that the activity does not turn into a gripe session or become derogatory towards their supervisor or organization. Always focus on positives.

You might use a risk-taking energizer for a variety to workplace-related topics or other pertinent situations on a session topic.

This article was written originally posted here. It was reprinted with permission from the author.

Bob and HRDQ-U are hosting a free webinar on March 2nd at 2pm ET. Register here! 

9cc0a9c732f349752456c775e8973354_headshot-blucas_100-200-cListed in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in the South & Southeast, Bob Lucas is an internationally-known author and learning and performance expert who specializes in workplace performance-based training and consulting services. He has four decades of experience in customer service, human resources development, and management in a variety of organizational environments. Bob was the 1995 and 2011 President of the Central Florida Chapter of the Association for Talent Development (ATD). Bob has lived, traveled and worked in 28 different countries and geographic areas. During the past 40 years, Bob has shared his knowledge with workplace professionals from hundreds of organizations, such as, Webster University, AAA, Orange County Clerk of Courts, Walt Disney World, SeaWorld, Martin Marietta, all U.S. military branches, and Wachovia Bank. In addition, Bob has provided consulting and training services to numerous major organizations on a variety of workplace learning topics. To contact Bob visit his website at www.robertwlucas.com or his blog www.thecreativetrainer.com.

29
jan
0

So what’s the Bottomline on ROI

Posted by Experiential Learning Activities, HR Training, Human Resource Training, Leadership Games, Leadership Style Assessment, Supervisory SkillsNo Comments

ROI, return on investment, is a metric fundamental to business and government alike. Executives and chief administrators recognize it and business and operations managers appreciate it. It is calculated consistently and recognized across sectors around the world by those stakeholders with fiduciary responsibility for investments in people, projects, and processes.

Unfortunately, misinformation and misuse cloud the value of this simple, yet powerful, metric. While its existence in performance improvement, learning and development, and human resources is not new, when reading much of the literature and comments made in conference sessions, one would think ROI is a new phenomenon, and one from which people should run.

ROI’s use in learning and HR began in the 1970s when my husband and business partner, Jack Phillips, conducted the first ROI study on a cooperative education program. It has been used for years in quality and productivity training. In more recent years, it has grown to be a standard metric for many leadership development and coaching programs as well as other ‘soft’ solutions. Yet the confusion around ROI remains.

The crux of the confusion lies in how and when to use ROI and how to report it so stakeholders recognize the complete success of a program or project.  Fear and angst around ROI exist because, like most investments, a negative ROI is inevitable for poorly implemented and misaligned programs. On the flip side, if the ROI is extraordinarily high, fear exists that the results will not be perceived as credible. This fear is unwarranted if you use a credible approach to develop it, follow fundamentally sound standards, and apply it consistently across all types of programs.

Yet, too many people would rather listen to the naysayers than figure it out for themselves. We have published over 40 books with ASTD and even more with publishers such as SHRM, Berrett-Koehler, McGraw Hill, and John Wiley. These books describe its use and importance in showing the contribution of programs and projects. These publications along with many conference presentations and workshops offer learning and development professionals opportunities to understand what ROI is, what it is not, and how to use it.  Yet, many professionals still don’t get the point—they miss the bottomline.

ROI is a metric fundamental to business and government alike. Reported alone, it describes the economic impact of programs, projects, and processes. Reported in the context of other measures, it contributes to the complete story of program success and informs decisions about resource allocation.

This article was reprinted with permission from the author.

Patti and HRDQ-U are hosting a five-day webinar series starting February 1st at 10am ET. Register here! 

Dr. Patti Phillips

headshotDr. Patti Phillips, co-founder, President and CEO of ROI Institute. Patti is an expert in measurement and evaluation and author of HRDQ’s book and workshop materials titled Bottomline on ROI. She has authored, co-authored, or edited over 40 books on the topic of measurement, evaluation, and ROI. She serves on the board of the Center for Talent Reporting, Principal Research Fellow for The Conference Board, and on the faculty of The University of Southern Mississippi’s PhD in Human Capital Development program.
 
6
nov
2

Breakthrough Creativity and Mission Statements

Posted by Corporate Team Building Games, Corporate Training Materials, Experiential Learning Activities, HR Training, Human Resource Training, Team Building ExercisesNo Comments

By Lynne Levesque

Recently, I facilitated a Breakthrough Creativity session for a department within a consumer products company.  The objectives of the session were several:  to introduce the participants to the Breakthrough Creativity concepts, to improve the functioning of the team, and to draft a mission statement for the department.  Prior to the session, participants completed the Breakthrough Creativity Profile, reviewed their results in the Breakthrough Creativity Participant Guide, read some material I had prepared on mission statements, and were asked to come up with at least one possible mission statement for the Department.

The first hour of the morning was spent reviewing the results of the Breakthrough Creativity Profile. Since the participants had all read the material in the Participant Guide beforehand, they were familiar with the talents and their own profiles.  In addition to going over all the talents so everyone was familiar with all eight- not just their own, we were also able to spend a few minutes integrating the results of the Profile with those of the Predictive Index which all of the participants had taken within the past several years.  In the second half of the morning, we discussed the results of their Team Profile which I had been able to generate prior to our session.

Over lunch we completed the final agenda item of the day: working on the department’s Mission Statement.  Much to everyone’s surprise we were able to come to agreement on a pretty final version.

The session proved to be a smashing success!  The department’s HR rep also attended the workshop as an observer.  At the end of our time together, she commented on how well the session had gone and how much everyone had participated (which had not been necessarily expected, given some of the personalities in the room).  When my client, the head of the department, commented on how pleased she was with the mission statement draft, the HR rep remarked that she didn’t think it would have been such a successful day without the morning session on the Breakthrough Creativity framework.

We talked about why she thought that was so and came up with the following answers:

  1. The Breakthrough Creativity Profile work helped build more self-awareness.
  2. The Department Head was very open with sharing her results and thus set the stage for the rest of the participants to feel comfortable sharing.
  3. The Team Profile really opened up the conversation.  We not only discussed the actual results but also diverged into other relevant topics.   The open and honest discussion that ensued addressed some issues that were critical to the team’s performance.
  4. There was a lot of laughter during the conversations in the morning which probably added to the success of the session.  The hormones released through laughter loosened everyone up and allowed for even more creative thinking.
  5. Although not everyone had been willing or eager to contribute in the first couple of hours of the session, by the time we got to lunch everyone was pretty relaxed and fully engaged.
  6. The Breakthrough Creativity framework, the talents, and the team profile all seemed to oil the hinges and allow ideas to flow, camaraderie to be heightened, and creative juices to run!

What has been your experience with mission statement exercises?  Have they been as successful as this one was?

headshot-llevesque_200Dr. Lynne Levesque is a leadership and creativity consultant based in Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to launching her consulting and training practice, she was a vice president at Bank of America.  She is the author of Breakthrough Creativity: Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents and the Breakthrough Creativity Profile, as well as several cases and articles. Lynne holds a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, an M.B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and an Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Lynne will be hosting a free webinar for HRDQ-U on November 11th at 2PM ET. Register here to reserve your spot today.

13
oct
0

5 Tips for Influencing Others In the Workplace

Posted by Coaching Skills, Communication Styles, Corporate Team Building Games, Experiential Learning Activities, HR Training, Human Resource Training, Leadership Games, Leadership Style Assessment, Supervisory Skills, Team Building Exercises, Teamwork GamesNo Comments

As Kenneth Blanchard has said, the key to successful leadership is influence, not authority.

This is especially true in the absence of clear authority, which is often the case within a matrix structure or a team that crosses organizational boundaries.

So how can you convince others to buy into your ideas and collaborate for the good of the team when you don’t have that authority?

Certain influencing tactics are more effective than others, but it’s not enough to simply know what they are. The best leaders know when and how to use them well.

In a recent webinar, I talked about which four influencing tactics are most powerful and how to make the most of them. 

We also discussed eight tips for influencing others that will help you achieve results.

Here are five of them.

Demonstrate Your Credibility and Track Record

In the absence of authority, people tend to listen to the most credible person in the room. Although expertise is part of credibility, the most important aspect is the extent to which people believe you speak the truth. Do you provide a balanced argument, and are you willing to admit what you don’t know? 

Find Champions For Your Cause

Who are the people you’re counting on most to accomplish objectives within your team? Start by identifying those whose cooperation you need to support implementation, and get to know them. What do they need to succeed? What do they care about most? Once you understand what motivates them, you can begin to work toward getting their buy-in so they can help you convince others.

Don’t Overly Rely on Reasoning

Reasoning is the most commonly used influencing tactic, but it doesn’t work in every situation, particularly if goals are not aligned or you lack credibility in a particular area. Be prepared to use a variety of approaches to ensure you use the best combination of influence behaviors in each situation.

Translate Facts and Figures Into Benefits

Before you pull up another graph of projected revenue from your latest initiative, ask yourself why it matters to the team. Will this new effort translate into bonuses if successful? Will it prove your team is capable of successfully taking on a competitor?

People aren’t motivated to act based on facts alone; they need to understand what’s in it for them.

Open Up a Dialogue

No one wants to feel like they’re being pitched. The best form of influence is subtle and occurs as the result of an ongoing conversation. While talking with your team, be sure to ask questions and hear their concerns. Show empathy by actively listening, nodding and paraphrasing what they’ve shared.

Influence is an art form every successful leader must master. It’s a skill that must be learned and honed over time. As a leading organizational consulting firm, we offer assessments and training to help leaders become more effective influencers and teams work together more effectively.

This article was written originally posted here. It was reprinted with permission from the author.

headshot-rlepsinger_100Rick Lepsinger

A virtual team expert with more than 30 years experience and a proven track record as a human resource consultant and executive, Rick Lepsinger is the president of OnPoint Consulting. He is the co-author of several books on leadership and organizational effectiveness, including Closing the Execution Gap: How Great Leaders and Their Companies Get Results and Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance. Rick currently sits on the faculty of GE’s Management Development Course (MDC) and leads the program, Making GE’s Global Matrix Work.

Rick and HRDQ-U are hosting a free webinar on October 21st at 2PM. Sign up for it now!

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