5. October 2009 10:03
Posted by Johan Bisenius
I’ve always been a firm believer of immersion. Whether it's a game, a thrilling story, musical lyrics or a learning process, I want to be absorbed. I want to let loose the shackles of the ordinary world and fall free into the depths of other realities, other people's experiences and feelings. It's the ultimate storytelling - making the player/reader/listener/participant become one with the story.
For many of SamSari’s change programs, we try to create such an immersion. We use drama films to portrait certain roles within an organization, making people relate to the characters in the films. We create realistic scenario-based workshops where you are faced with problems as well as possible solutions and gain new understanding based on your current real-life role, but you do it in a context separate from your daily life. You do it in a world where you are allowed to make errors without costing the company money or without losing your job.
The e-learning part of our offer is no different. Here we work with metaphors, anecdotes, exercises and simulations, trying to wring you from your desk and push you into a world of our own. Then again, learning is just learning, right? Content is king and we’ve got all those standards and regulations to adhere to. We cannot simply create content however we like, with links and references back and forth. We need structure and we need independent objects that our customers can break apart from any program and use like jigsaw pieces to create new ones. We need all that flexibility and yet we would like to create something that binds it all together for just this program. Is that possible? Aren’t we doomed to use the uninspiring expandable menu trees of most learning management systems?
I say there is a way of keeping the participants immersed while still adhering to all the rules of the trade. It’s called graphical menus. Now that’s a concept with a sexy ring to it, right? No? Well, let me pull you a bit further into my world. Let’s say you are a new employee at a big company and it’s your first day. The company is successful, everybody works hard and there is little time for introductions. You’re guided to your desk with your laptop and are expected to start presenting results within the week. Problem is; you know almost nothing about the company or the different units. You’re not even one hundred percent sure of you own role. Your boss has provided you with a 300 page book about the company’s history, but that’s just not enough. Luckily, you have also received a login to an electronic onboarding program. This is the program all new employees must go through during their first week.
Upon clicking the link and signing in, you are met not with the skeleton-like tree structure of the LMS (Learning Management System), but with a graphical picture of a world, where all the company offices are marked. On this world, you can zoom in to different parts; see who works there, what that office in particular does and what market units there are. All is done with a simple and intuitive interface. You can focus on your own office, get a beginner’s guide to the coffee machine, learn about implicit and explicit company rules and by the end of the day, you know more about yourself and the company than before, without even looking at the 300 pager resting on your desk. The important part about this graphical menu is that you can learn your own way. There is no set “path” that you need to take. You don’t need to start with module 1, chapter 1 – Company history, if the information you’re really looking for is about the market units. A graphical menu adds freedom and pulls on the participant’s urge to explore, his or her innate curiosity and the rewards of satisfying it.
It doesn’t end there. We can add intelligence to the menu. We can make it so that the user’s progress through the program is tracked within the graphical menu. For instance, when you’ve read about the office in Japan, you get a tiny sumo wrestler souvenir and a Japanese flag sticker on your travel bag. You can view your travel bag and its contents at any time from the main menu. You can get percentage bars, stars when completing exercises, rumors or tips from different people you meet on your expeditions and many other things – it’s more or less up to the imagination of the program creators. You can even move things from one part of the training to another. Say, for instance, that the office in Japan is in desperate need of the new organization plan, recently released at HQ. Well, then just travel to HQ, pick up the plan and go to Japan to deliver it. The plan will now exist in the Japan office, every time you visit it. The delivery should of course trigger some kind of event, perhaps a plate of sushi could be a sufficient reward for your hard work, or maybe you get some information about that new product they are developing…
By using available standards, we can take the learning one step further by creating these interactive and graphical menus and letting the participants discover their own worlds, learning on demand. The whole program could become more like a game or the menu could act like a platform for keeping all other parts of the program within reach in a fun and inspiring way. You decide yourself how far you would like to take it!
