May 14: Andrew Hughes Designing Digitally
May 15: John Rice Educational Games Research
May 16: Christy Tucker Experiencing E-Learning
May 17: Bob Becker The Blended Learner
May 18: Surprise Stop (stay tuned for more info)

Plus we have added a few new dates and stops (stay tuned) we are also having a webinar event with Dan Bliton who challenges attendees to the game “Are you smarter than Karl Kapp”. Dan will be hosting the game and conducting an interview with me on the 24th of May during BAH open webinar at 1:00 ET.


Recap of Week Four 

Week Four was an exciting week. We had many activities going on related to the tour. We had a very interesting stop with Mike Qaissaunee’s post Gamification of Learning and Instruction. Mike gave the perspective of a technology educator and someone who is not an instructional designer and explained how gamification impacts him and the difficulties associated with gamification when your teaching load is heavy. 

Koreen Olbrish’s The Shamification of Gamification  posting discussed how we should “focus on the challenge of educating the market, not vilifying a word.” She also commented on the chapter she contributed to the book.

Larry Hiner at drlarryhiner talked about the Intersection of games, learning, and organizational psychology providing an interesting and thought provoking perspective.

Catherine Lombardozzi at her Gamification Whistle Stop discussed what someone will learn when they read the book and what people mean when they talk about “gamification” and the factors that transform engaging learning into game play.

Zaid Ali Alsagoff created a post called Gamify to Amplify the Learning Experience. He talked about gamification to of personal learning and sharing and the gamification of teaching. As always, he provided great graphics and visual insights.

We also had two book reviews one by Connie Malamed at eLearn Magazine and another book review by Jennifer Neibert of Learning Solutions Magazine.

Allison Rossett mentioned Gamification in her interesting post titled My Commencement Address for the Workforce Learning Class of 2012.

And I somehow missed this before but Ruth Clark wrote a provocative piece called Why Games Don’t Teach which discusses one research article that found the game used for learning didn’t teach what it was supposed to teach. There are other studies, of course, that show that games do teach (many are cited in the book) and even serveral meta-analysis studies (studies of studies) that show games do teach.

So, right now I say it depends on the study and research design as well as game-design as to how effective the game is for achieving desired learning outcomes.

One thing that Ruth Clark did bring up that I think is important is that “we [need to] cultivate a more refined approach to categorize the features of games that best match various instructional goals.” I agree and have put such a hierarchy into chapter 8 of the book. That is where I identify types of games and which type is best for teaching which type of content. It’s a start. If you have a chance, read Ruth’s article. It is good to keep a balanced perspective when thinking about games for learning. They are not the answer to every instructional problem.

And if you missed a couple of recent stops, check out Mike Qaissaunee’s post Gamification of Learning and Instruction and Koreen Olbrish’s The Shamification of Gamification . And Larry Hiner at drlarryhiner as well as Catherine Lombardozzi at her Gamification Whistle Stop.

The Gamification of Learning and Instruction blog book tour has been a lot of fun, with interesting comments and exciting dialogues and some in-person stops. Here are the stops for week four and a recap of week three.

Week Four:

May 7: Mike Qaissaunee Frequently Asked Q
May 8: Larry Hiner drlarryhiner
May 9: Catherine Lombardozzi Learning Journal
May 10: Brent Schlenker Elearning Development
May 11: Zaid Ali Alsagoff Zaid Learn

Recap of Week Three

During the week, there was a review of the book published at Learning Solutions Magazine. You can read the review here.

Enid Crystal of the New York Chapter of ASTD started off the week by summarizing my in-person visit to the joint NYU Higher Ed and eLearning SIG joint meeting. The meeting was a lot of fun. We started the evening by playing a game to get everyone familiar with the various elements of games such as challenge, roles and feedback. We then discussed various examples of gamification. You can read the posting here.

Next, the tour stopped by the Word of Mouth Blog, sponsored by Articulate. The tour stop was titled Using Gamification To Transform Your Learners from Angry Birds into Learning Ninjas. The post had to be moved from its originally scheduled date because of the long awaited release of Articulate’s Storyline which was scheduled on the same day as the original blog tour stop on Word of Mouth. So we did a little switch. The posting is great with several clever examples of using game-elements to enhance instruction.

Cammy Bean at Learning Visions was the next stop. Cammy, as always, gave an insightful look at the subject of Gamification in her stop called Karl Kapp Book Tour: The Gamification of Learning and Instruction

We then skipped a stop. Hey, it happens.

And moved right to Friday which was an in-person tour stop date.  I stopped by the UL Eduneering event known as the Knowledge Summit and spoke about busting e-learning myths as we played a game called “Fact or Fishy”. A link to my slides and resources from the presentation was posted on the UL Eduneering blog in a posting titled Busting Learning Myths: Fact or Fishy

Here are some images from my in-person book signing.

If you are interested in the book, you can purchase a copy at the ASTD Book Store.

The blog book tour has been a lot of fun, with interesting comments and exciting dialogues and some in-person stops.

Here are the stops for week three (with a few changes) and a recap of week two.
April 30: Enid Crystal ASTD New York Chapter Blog
May 1: Jeanette Brooks Word of Mouth blog.
May 2: Cammy Bean Learning Visions
May 3: Koreen Olbrich Learning in Tandem
May 4: I am appearing “live” at the Eduneering Knowledge Summit in Baltimore, MD. Complete with book signing. The blog for the day will be UL EduNeering Online Compliance Training Blog which will have slides and information from the session.

Recap of Week Two

Clark Quinn started the week off at Learnlets with a discussion of the word “gamification” (he would prefer a more meaningful term like “engagification” especially since “gamification” does seem to carry some negative connotations. He provided a balanced and well described critique of the book. You can read Clark’s post Kapp’s Gamification for Learning and Instruction.

Next Karl Grieb of the ASTD Philadelphia eLearning SIG provides a description of the content of the book. He describes the break down of the elements of games and points out the section describing ADDIE versus Scrum as a development process. He also highlights the writing about different types of motivation including John Keller’s ARCS model. Read the post here.

Then Debbie Richards from Take an e-Learning Break wrote about four themes from the book including “matching game results with game design. She also talked about the Cisco Binary game. I also did webinar for the Houston Chapter of ASTD arranged by Debbie. You can see the slides here.

The week ended on a fun note with Connie Malamed of The eLearning Coach creating a game/post called Are you a gamification wizard? Play the game. See how well you can do.

There were also some live appearances.

New York City

I traveled to New York City and presented at a joint ASTD Special Interest Group (SIG) meeting of the NYU Higher Ed SIG and the eLearning SIG. It was a great time and I met some wonderful folks. Here are a few pictures of our interactive session. I’d like to thank Amy Lui Abel and Enid Crystal for making that meeting happen. Here are some pictures from the event.

You can see the slides for the presentation here.

Lehigh Valley

As part of the tour, I severed on a panel about gamification for the Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Association of Information Technology Professionals. The title was “The Computer Game Industry: Not for Kids Any More.” We had a great panel discussion with lots of questions and engaging conversation.

The panel included myself, Jason Brozena of Caronet which is a hosting company that provides data center services to organizations, including numerous game companies. Having a data center’s perspective helped to broaden the attendees understanding of how games are being hosted and other back-end services/technologies. And Larry Wolfe of LiquidInt. Larry will introduce Liquid Mobility Bridge™. This tool was designed to work across various mobile platforms. Larry will also discussed the concept of gamification of business applications.

I’d like to thank Mary Rasley, Steve Steven Weitz and Thiep Pham for including me as a panel member.

This week promises to be an exciting second week of the Gamification Blog Book Tour. Here are the stops for this week.

April 23: Clark Quinn Learnlets

April 24: Karl Grieb ASTD Philadelphia Chapter

April 25: Webinar Presentation for Houston ASTD Chapter “What Research Tells Us about Games, Gamification and Learning” Join the webinar.

April 26: Debbie Richards Take an e-Learning Break And a live appearance by Karl at the NY ASTD Chapters combined SIG Meeting. If you are in NY, you may want to register and attend.

April 27: Connie Malamed The eLearning Coach.

Week One Recap

 The first week of the blog book tour has ended and it has been a fantastic week with informative blog posts, information  and opinions about gamification and even a bit of controversy.

 The week opened with a posting of the tour stops on the Learning Circuit’s Blog and the Kapp Notes blog and then introduced everyone to the Facebook page for the book and then the discussion really ramped up with Jane Bozarth talking about the how the book takes a common sense look at the subject. Next, New York Time’s bestselling author Kevin Kruse told us how articles appearing within the last year in notable publications such as BusinessWeek, Forbes, Fortune and even the Harvard Business review are talking about how gamification is impacting marketing, service and employee satisfaction (notice training seems to be absent.)

Then on Friday Judy Unrein discussed how the book can benefit instructional designers and Rich Mesch made us all hungry when he reminded us that just like Chocofication (adding chocolate to everything) is not a good idea, neither is gamification of all content a good idea. In some areas it doesn’t work or even make sense to add “Gamificaton”. We need to be careful how we apply “Gamification.” It is not a universal cure-all.

Issues with Gamification and It’s Implications

Another guest on the tour, although not a scheduled stop, has been Kathy Sierra who is a self-confessed gamification curmudgeon and author of a widely popular series of test preparation books to help people pass Java tests to become certified and not only does she prepare people to pass those tests, she has created certification exams that are used to certify programmers. Her test preparation books are some of the best selling on the topic.

 Kathy has brought the perspective that gamification is not good–at all. She doesn’t like the word “gamification” and she had her “heart broken” because so many people that she respects are involved in this tour talking about gamification. She is worried about my insistence on using the word “gamification” (including my urging of others to “take back the word”).” She states that “nearly every game scholar and professional game designer (real games, not just Zynga game-like things) is adamantly opposed to the word for many reasons including how misleading it is by including the word ‘game’”.

She was also “offended” that during the tour I offered a whitepaper for anyone who wanted to leave a comment on every blog entry. She felt that was a crass use of gamification and that I was clearly using an extrinsic reinforcer offering a reward in a feeble attempt to market the book. She felt that in an industry where knowledge is valued that withholding knowledge to shape behavior or action was wrong. Kathy felt that technique was “LEAVE a COMMENT for POSSIBLE WIN scheme” and that it appealed to the basest aspect of Gamification.

In Defense of the Term Gamification

Her concerns are not without merit but I think there is another perspective to consider, especially with her dislike of the term“Gamifiaction”  While “nearly” every game scholar and professional game designer is against gamification and some who initially were proponents of the term have backed off, these people are not controlling the discussion about gamification within businesses and corporations.

The CEOs, Vice Presidents, executives and managers are not tapped into the game developer industry; for the most part they don’t attend the Game Developer’s Conferences, they don’t read game developer magazines or blogs.  Instead, they read reports from Gartner that indicate 70 percent of Global 2000 organizations will have at least one gamified application over the next five years. And reports that say the overall market for gamification is predicted to grow to $1.6 billion in the next ten years. (we all know Gartner analysis are fabulously optimistic in their predictions but someone is reading those reports and paying for the analysis).

Additionally, as NY Times bestselling author Kevin Kruse told us, CEOs, VP’s, executives and managers read Forbes, the Harvard Business Review, BusinessWeek and Newsweek which all within the last year have carried articles about gamification. Like it or not the “Gamification” term is out of the bag and it’s not getting back in or disappearing or falling out of favor with executives. The gamification message is targeted toward the major decision makers within organizations and is not being lead by major scholars or figures within the game industry. It’s being lead by vendors, marketers and others who can, and are, getting the word out about gamification and its working.

Learning and development professionals must now react to requests for Gamification, we are not driving the discussion–we are forced to react. And many times we are not even in the discussion at all. In fact, many proponents of gamification feel learning and development professionals have nothing to contribution to the conversation about gamification at all. Actually we have the most to contribute. We understand human motivation and how people process information and how they learn and how to shape behavior so it lasts. We should be in the conversation or it will go in unhealthy directions and have negative consequences for us.

Two Choices

Now we have two choices, one is to “Just Say NO to Gamification.” We can ignore it, we can rally against it, we can talk about how no “serious” game developer believes in gamification but, at the end of the day, business leaders are bombarded by gamification messages in magazines they read religiously by organizations that have the funds to spread the gamification message.

The “anti-gamification” tribe has little funding, organizational structure or reach into CEOs and VPs. So waging a war against the term “gamification” will, ultimately, not be productive. We will just be ignored or bypassed when “serious” gamification issues need to be discussed–you know the kind mentioned in the Harvard Business Review. We may not like it but it’s already happening.

In fact, if we learning and development professionals turn our back on gamification, refuse to take part in this narrowly defined if/then extrinsically motivated movement, then the CEOs, the business managers and executives will go somewhere else. My fear is that a CEO will walk into a training department after having read an article in the Harvard Business Review about Gamificaiton and demand that the training department create a gamification program to train sales reps. Then the training department either doesn’t know anything about gamification (because learning and develop professionals refuse to use the term and its not talked about by the major voices in the field) or they say “no” we don’t do gamification under any circumstances.

The CEO shakes her head and then goes to the marketing department and says, “Can you create a sales training program around gamification?” and they say “Of course!”

Now non-learning and development professionals are using gamification, perhaps at its most extrinsic level to create training. And, if it works or even appears to work, the learning and development professionals lose credibility and relevance. We will be out of the loop and away from business discussions.

We can’t sit with the C-Suite people or in meetings uninformed about this thing called “Gamification.” Sure, we can decide to name it something else like “Gamefullness” or “Activityification” but then learning and development professionals will be speaking a different language than executives. We already have this problem by the ton. We can’t decide to make it worse by creating a substitute word for “gamification.”
 Learning and development professionals should have learned by now that we have to use the language of business to work with the leaders of business to obtain credibility to have influence.

Inventing another term or refusing to discuss that low-brow “gamification” concept doesn’t help the profession one bit because we  appear out of touch or not in sync with the business units.

The other choice, the one I have chosen, is to educate ourselves about this thing called Gamification and to expand and broaden the definition—not so that the definition or term is meaningless—but so that when the CEO comes to us and says “can you do gamification of a sales training program”, we can say “yes.” And then we intelligently add story elements, challenges and the main tenants of Self-Determination Theory autonomy, competence and relatedness to the training.. The elements of games that actually make a difference, that actually add intrinsic value instead of a crass use of points, rewards or badges. And we can still call it gamification.

We have then met the needs of the CEO and created a meaningful learning experience. Additionally with this approach, we are not left out of the loop. We can shape the gamification discussion about the sales training to be more instructionally sound than if we were not involved or left out. By learning about gamification we become part of the conversation and are not isolated on the sidelines.

 Why Respected Individuals are Talking About Gamification

The reason I enlisted so many respectable people in the learning and development field and the reason I think they agreed to participate is because we can’t hope the term gamification goes away. We need a general discussion within the field of the term, its positive and negative aspects. The term won’t go away no matter how much some of us hate it.

We must talk about Gamification and examine it and see how it can fit into what we are doing. We must be participants in the conversation about gamification and try, in some way, to shape the term. If we don’t, the entire concept and application it will go into a direction that, from an instructional standpoint, is untenable.

We have the ability to influence the application of gamification in the field of learning and instruction right now. If we wait or hesitate we will loose our opportunity. It’s not too late as some would have us believe.

Gamification Resources for L&D Professionals 

In fact, before “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction” was released, the learning and development field had no book about gamification that focused on the learning theories behind gamification or a listing of what gamification is or is not from a learning perspective.  The purpose of the book is not to “glorify” gamification or to get people to be “quotable for having said useful, positive things about gamification.” The purpose is to have a measured, civil discussion about gamification and how it applies or doesn’t apply to learning situations.

The goal is to create competence within the learning and development community to be able to speak intelligently about gamification and decide when it is appropriate and when it is being used to manipulate people and, at times, the distinction can be tricky.

For example, Kathy Sierra rightly pointed out that I was using an extrinsic motivator in terms of proposing a reward (a whitepaper) in exchange for an activity (leaving a comment). I agree that creating that type of arrangement was a crass use of extrinsic motivation. I admit my error and will make the whitepaper available freely to anyone (of course I have to write it first—it will be available end of May).

Helping me to see and correct my use of extrinsic motivation is the point of having open, civil conversations  about things like external motivators. Sometimes we need others to point out how we might unwittingly use external motivators to influence behavior and we might not even be aware of it.



Certification Exams as External Motivators

Even the most intelligent people can unwittingly fall into the “trap” of relying on extrinsic motivation to spur learning results. For example, I wonder how consciously aware Kathy is of her use of  strong external reinforcers in her creation of certification exams and in her creation and marketing of test prep materials that support those exams.

When people study for these extrinsically motivating events known as certification tests (or in gamification parlance “badges”) do these people perceive that that they’ve been manipulated into preparing to pass these tests? Do they realize their intrinsic motivation to learn a programming language is being systematically and methodically undermined because, as Kathy has suggested, the result of rewarding someone for something they would have done anyway is ultimately de-motivating. In fact many believe the original intrinsically motivated behavior will disappear after the extrinsic reward is removed.

To paraphrase a wise and informed person on the topic of extrinsic motivation: while the programmers Kathy urges and encourage to read her books to earn the badge/certification are all smart, savvy, brain aware people it makes no difference because that knowledge does not protect them from the damaging effects of putting such weight and value on the EXTRINSIC reward of certification. The negative, undermining effects all happen at a level of conscious processing for which Kathy’s poor readers lack the “security clearance” to access let alone override.

This If/then proposition inherent in Kathy’s test prep books is the exact same offense Kathy correctly and accurately accused me of committing with my whitepaper. Kathy is extrinsically motivating people to buy her books so they obtain the reward of certification. She isn’t marketing these test prep books as a way to learn programming or as a way to develop a love of programming or as a way to build competence in programming; she is marketing them as a way to obtain an external reward–to pass a test.

So I urge Kathy to do the same thing I have done. I divorced the reward from the action; I am offering the whitepaper freely on the web for no cost. Kathy, please seriously consider offering anyone who wants certification a free copy of your book. Or consider dropping the certification. Or, only write books which tap into intrinsic motivation. I urge you to become the model for which you want others to follow—don’t use external rewards as a motivational tool. Show learning and development professionals how to use only intrinsic motivational techniques so that your readers develop a competence level in programming that is so high, no certification is needed.

Abandon your test prep books and write more books fostering the love of programming through intrinsic devices like autonomy, competence and relatedness. Stand up and no longer present the proposition to your readers that if they buy your book, they will ace the certification exam and receive the extrinsic reward of certification. Be the change you hope to see in others.

Summary

This week has certainly been a great first week for the tour and next week is a great line up as well. I have learned a great deal and hope you have too. The interest in the tour is growing and next week we’ll be announcing new tour stops, webinars and other events that have joined the tour.

This upcoming week, we have Clark Quinn who I purposefully asked to be one the stops because he doesn’t like the word “Gamfication” and I wanted everyone to know of his concerns and perspective. And, in light of this discussion it will be interesting to read what he thinks. We have the Philadelphia Chapter of ASTD with Karl Grieb making an appearance as well as Debbie Richards of Texas with her blog Take an e-learning break.

I am doing a live appearance in New York at at Special Interest Group meeting and my friend Connie Malamed of The eLearning Coach will discuss her view of the subject of gamification.

I look forward to their postings and hope that you too decide to post as well. Now that the LEAVE a COMMENT for POSSIBLE WIN scheme  has been removed (and I do apologize if that offended anyone), I urge you to freely post your ideas and thoughts.

Let the community know what you think,  Should we ignore the term “gamification”?  Should we denounce the term as crass if/then behavioral reinforcement? Should we attempt to shape the term and concept or should we find another term?

See you on the tour and if you want to learn more, pick up the book at the ASTD Book store or check out the Pinterest page for Gamification Happenings.

We have just started an exciting blog book tour as ASTD and I venture on a 25 stop blog book tour for the ASTD co-published book The Gamification of Learning and Instruction: Game-based Methods and Strategies for Training and Education. The book is available at the ASTD Book Store.

The tour includes stops at several ASTD chapter web sites including Philadelphia, New York and Houston, Texas as well as some great colleagues.

You are welcome to join the tour, no…you are urged and encouraged to join the tour.

The tour currently includes some well known bloggers and some bloggers you really need to know but we want to expand it with your input, ideas and concepts related to Gamification.

Here are all the tour stop dates.

The blog book tour is a virtual tour so you can just follow along stop by stop. If you don’t have the book yet, stop by the ASTD book store a pick up a copy.

The Twitter hashtag for the tour is #gamiLI

There is a Pinterest page for the tour.

And a Facebook page for the tour, stop by and give it a LIKE:)

Here are the tour stops, the day of the stop and a link to the stop are indicated below. You can follow along by going blog to blog and leaving a comment. If you stop at every stop and leave a comment, you will receive a free whitepaper “The First Five Steps to Gamification of Content, Curriculum and Courses.”

Also, on April 26th, Join Karl at the Houston ASTD Chapter’s Webinar for a live chat and presentation by the author.

Week One:

Oops, already had a change in venue as my scheduling abilities appear to have been less than stellar, please see below for today’s stop.

April 16: Learning Circuits Blog.
April 17: Gamification Facebook Page
April 18: Jane Bozarth’s Bozarthzone
April 19: Kevin Kruse, Keven Kruse Blog. He is NY Times bestselling author of We: How to Increase Performance and Profits through Full Engagement
April 20: Rich Mesch Performance Punctuated and Judy Unrein OneHundred Forty Words

Week Two:

April 23: Clark Quinn Learnlets
April 24: Karl Grieb ASTD Philadelphia Chapter
April 25: Webinar Presentation for Houston ASTD Chapter “What Research Tells Us about Games, Gamification and Learning” Join the webinar.
April 26: Debbie Richards Take an e-Learning Break And a live appearance by Karl at the NY ASTD Chapters combined SIG Meeting. If you are in NY, you may want to register and attend.
April 27L Connie Malamed The eLearning Coach.

Week Three:

April 30: Amy Lui Abel New York ASTD Chapter Blog.
May 1: Cammy Bean Learning Visions
May 2: Tom Kuhlmann Word of Mouth
May 3: Koreen Olbrich Learning in Tandem
May 4: “Surprise Blog Appearance”

Week Four:

May 7: Mike Qaissaunee Frequently Asked Q
May 8: Larry Hiner drlarryhiner
May 9: Catherine Lombardozzi Learning Journal
May 10: Brent Schlenker Elearning Development
May 11: Zaid Ali Alsagoff Zaid Learn

Week Five:

May 14: Andrew Hughes Designing Digitally
May 15: John Rice Educational Games Research
May 16: Christy Tucker Experiencing E-Learning
May 17: Justin Brusino ASTD Learning Circuits Blog (we come full circle to discuss the tour and the gamification concept)
May 18: Karl Kapp Kapp Notes. The author provides reflections and lessons learned from the tour.

So join us for this exciting tour and social media event to discuss the pros and cons of Gamification and what it means to learning and development professionals. And follow us on Twitter at #gamiLI.

Gamification of Learning and Instruction

Promote Your Page Too

Here is the press release.

UL Broadens Regulatory and Compliance Solution for Life and Health Sciences Sector with Acquisition of EduNeering

Award-winning solution enables compliance, risk mitigation, workflow automation and improved business performance for FDA-regulated organizations.

NORTHBROOK, Ill. / PRINCETON, NJ. – April 9, 2012 – UL, a world leader in advancing safety, has acquired EduNeering, the leading provider of compliance and training solutions for the life and health sciences sector, from Kaplan Inc., a leading international provider of educational and career services.

The addition of EduNeering significantly enhances the online training and software offerings of UL’s Knowledge Services business unit with a solution focused on pharmaceuticals, medical devices, clinical research education and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspection and enforcement.

EduNeering features governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) operational software and online training that are relied upon by more than 400 companies across 50 countries. It serves as the online compliance learning partner for the FDA, the Advanced Medical Technology Association (AdvaMed), Duke Clinical Research Institute and the Drug Information Association, among others. In addition to life and health sciences solutions, EduNeering’s courseware addresses compliance and regulatory issues in the energy, manufacturing, construction, engineering, health plan and food processing sectors.

Since 1999, EduNeering has maintained a unique partnership with the FDA, under which it develops and maintains the agency’s online training, documentation and validation technology system for ORA-U, the agency’s virtual university. ComplianceWire®, EduNeering’s learning management technology, has been used by the FDA to train and certify more than 35,000 federal, state, local and global investigators. More than 150 pharmaceutical, medical device and biologic companies also depend on ComplianceWire® to organize, distribute and monitor all training and qualification activities.

“Adding EduNeering extends our commitment to product safety and helps people and the companies they work for to be smarter, safer, healthier, more efficient and more effective,” said Patrick Boyle, president of UL Knowledge Services. “We are adding a high-caliber staff, a highly scalable learning management platform and an extraordinary course library that extends our world-class training software and solutions to the health sciences community.”

Knowledge Services, UL’s fast-growing training, advisory and software solutions business unit, will integrate EduNeering’s team of 85 employees, its technology platform and the course library of 700 online training modules, which also cover energy operations, manufacturing, ethics, environmental health and safety, engineering and construction, and food safety. EduNeering is the second acquisition to join Knowledge Services in six months, following the December purchase of Occupational Health and Safety software solutions leader PureSafety.

“We’re thrilled to be joining the world’s most recognized safety organization, and dedicating our people, technology and services to the advancement of UL’s global mission,” said Lisa Clune, president of EduNeering. “UL affords us an extraordinary growth platform of global resources, reputation and social mission that will bear fruit for our team and customers alike.”

Ms. Clune will continue to manage EduNeering, which will remain headquartered in Princeton, NJ, and will continue to help guide the business, which will be branded under UL. She will report to William Grana, vice president of Knowledge Services and head of its software capabilities.

About EduNeering

EduNeering (www.kaplaneduneering.com) develops technology-enabled knowledge solutions for assuring regulatory compliance and improving business performance. EduNeering is headquartered in Princeton, NJ, and has offices in Houston, TX, Bloomsburg, PA, and London, UK. EduNeering was acquired by Kaplan, Inc. in early 2007.

About UL

UL is a premier global safety science company with more than 100 years of proven history. Employing nearly 9,000 professionals in 46 countries, UL is evolving the future of safety with five distinct business units – Product Safety, Environment, Life & Health, Verification and Knowledge Services – to meet the expanding needs of customers and the global public. For more information on UL’s family of companies and network of 95 laboratory, testing and certification facilities, go to UL.com.

Managing Team Members Across the World

SAP—an inter-enterprise software development and implementation company—needed to provide their project managers with a learning experience to address a specific challenge—managing teams whose members were scattered across the globe. With team members in Germany, Japan, America, and India, a SAP project manager must contend with issues such as cultural differences, time zones, disparate expectations, communication styles, and other issues a local team may not encounter.

SAP partnered with an e-learning design company, Enspire Learning, located in Austin, Texas to craft six, hour-long modules tackling six major difficulties with distributed, or “virtual,” teams the training including a 20-minute capstone simulation for each of the six modules.

The capstone simulation allows the learners to experience virtual team management as a team leader. The learner makes key strategic decisions about a simulated project and assigns work packets to three distributed segments of the team, based on their skills, cultural differences, and the work in question. After making strategic decisions, the project is executed and the learner experiences the effects of their actions, mitigating any issues that arise.

Enspire and SAP recognized the significant design challenge of meaningfully discussing cultural differences while remaining sensitive to the cultures of learners world-wide. This challenge was addressed by using a trick from the gamer’s Massively Multiplayer Online Role Play (MMORPG) games. The team created a fictional world called Orth with its own fictional cultures. The team from the Orthian region of Sampo considered timeliness as paramount, while the culture from Shananees viewed time very loosely. Understanding and deciphering these differences influence how the learner makes decisions.

So how does the learner measure progress? To coincide with SAP’s standard processes, the simulation fixes the timeline and resources, leaving three measures of a successful project: Quality, Feature set, and Morale of your team—your “QFM” score. Choices the learner makes directly or indirectly affect her ability to deliver a finished project of high quality, with a maximal feature set, and high team morale.

As with many problems faced by actual executives and managers in a business setting, there is no one way to win the virtual team management simulation. You simply develop the most appropriate balance. Each course of action comes with different costs and benefits, in terms of QFM scores and the time available on the timeline. If you choose to hold an in-person meeting for all three teams, you may increase team morale, but you lose one week of production time. Canceling in-person meetings provides more production time, but may result in miscommunications between the teams later in the project.

The simulation also tackles the common problem of resource allocation. The learner must allocate work packages that makeup the project. However, just as in real life, there are restrictions. Certain work packages require certain skills to complete. Others must be addressed sequentially. Experiencing the difficulty of complex work allocation puts pressure on learner’s other decision points, such as whether to give a team time off to celebrate a local holiday, and helps drive home the points of the simulation.
The simulation provides the learner feedback throughout the execution stage.

A team lead may complain of being assigned work his team finds boring, or he may thank you for providing them with new communication technologies. At the close of the module, the learner’s virtual mentor, Linda, provides the final QFM score, general feedback on performance and feedback on specific learner decisions that significantly impacted the learner’s scores.

While the learners operate in a fictional world with fictional teams, the issues they face are the same issues they face with actual teams and actual work flow processes. The use of a fictional world, to avoid offending any specific culture, may seem abstract from reality but the carefully crafted, fictional world is based on the patterns of the real world so the learning transfers. The simulation in this case has more in common with how our brain visualizes patterns and relationships than it does with the details of reality such as having a real project or using real cultures. But the rules learned in the simulation—the underlying relationships and patterns —get processed exactly the same way as we process real things like “working on a holiday causes low morale” and “allocating resources requires trade-offs.” The lessons of the simulation are learned even though the events take place in a fictionalized world.

In fact, the simulation won an award.

Want to read more interesting stories about simulations, gadget, games and gizmos for learning? Check out the book!

New Online, International Directory for Serious Games Industry Offers

Offers Free Listings for Titles, Tech, Services, Textbooks, Schools

The Serious Games Association announced a new, international resource for developers, providers, analysts, educators and consultants, the Serious Games Directory.  All listings and access will be available free in 2012.

The Serious Games Directory will cover commercially available

o   Games and sims

o   Developers interested in contract work

o   Technology and tools

o   Consultants

o   Industry analyst firms covering the market

o   Academic institutions offering serious game courses

o   Textbooks and other resources

Games and sims will be organized by market:

• Education
• Corporate
• Military/Government
• Health Care
• Games for Good

Screens, photos and video can be added plus a link to a site for more information. The directory will be searchable by market, platform, developer, audience, topic and other terms.

Technology providers are invited to list engines and tools; design consultants, marketing analysts and text book authors can provide background on their services and a link to their own site for more information. 

Academic institutions can offer information on courses and degrees offered. 

The full directory of titles and services will be available online later this year.  A general description of all titles will be available free. Members of the Serious Games Association will have access to in depth information on titles and services.

To create a free listing, go to www.seriousgamesdirectory.com

About the Serious Games Association:

 The Serious Games Association (SGA) supports all professionals in the serious games community.  Services include research, educational conferences, special interest groups (SIGs) and committees studying how to move the industry ahead.  Individual membership is $35, annually.

For more information, www.seriousgamesassociation.com.

A study, “Video Games in the 21st Century: The 2010 Report,” detailed the impact that computer and video game companies have on America’s economy. The report stated:

• From 2005 to 2010, the entertainment software industry’s revenue more than doubled. Over the same period, the entire U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only grew by about 16%.
  
• The entertainment software industry added nearly $5 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2009.
  The U.S. entertainment software industry also continues to function as a vital source of employment. Currently, video game companies directly and indirectly employ more than 120,000 people in 34 states.
  
• The average compensation for direct employees is $90,000, resulting in total national compensation of $2.9 billion

Taking another perspective, here is what Jane McGonigal says gaming and how it can make a better world.

Here is a rather large graphic of how video games are impacting schools.

Via: Online Colleges Guide