Greetings and a pleasant Friday to everyone,

Here in the US, we are about to start the holiday season.  Since next week is our yearly celebration of a bountiful harvest, this week’s list of reflections is a similar smorgasbord - weighted towards fun-and-games.

ReFlect #1:  Immersive 3D Simulation and Serious Games
I presented a webinar recently with the folks at Caspian Learning, makers of Thinking Worlds – a rapid 3D simulation and serious game development tool.  I’ve talked about Caspian in this blog before.   Simulations and serious games have long been recognized as valuable teaching tools for corporate learning organizations. They enable learners to enter virtual environments that can mimic an impressive array of instructive on-the-job scenarios and challenges that are impractical or impossible to offer on-demand in the real world.
But even very large organizations have reserved this sort of learning solution for programs expected to have long shelf lives; the investment necessary for development has been too great to put into short-term projects. And for most organizations, the tool has required too much time and money to consider at all.
That is changing. Providers such as Caspian are finding ways to streamline the custom development of simulations.  For companies that already create or use such games, the latest products in this space come with costs and infrastructure requirements that are low enough and turnaround times that are short enough to enable greater use.  For those that have seen simulation as beyond their reach, things that have been obstacles in the past will no longer be such a deterrent.
Question:  If you could do simulations with just your existing instructional design staff, in about the same amount of time and at a similar cost as it takes to do a major self-paced e-learning project, does that change your thinking?  How and where would use these approaches?

On a somewhat related note…

ReFlect#2: “Gamification”
Now there is a word that I suspect will be new for most readers of this blog.  Mark Oehlert of the Defense Acquisition University and the e-Clippings blog provids a good jumping-off post on this topic.

What is ‘gamification’ you might ask?

Well, as defined by gamification.org, it is “the use of game mechanics, feedback loops, and rewards to drive deeper engagement in non-game properties.”  In other words, everyone from marketers, retailers, social networking sites, and – yes – even your local training departments are trying to get you to be more engaged by making just about everything into a game.
At the risk of oversimplifying things, there are serious disagreements as to whether or not this trend is a good thing.  And one of the groups that seems most unhappy is, actually, the traditional game design crowd.

Question: What do you think?  Are there some thing for which a game is not an appropriate or preferred source of motivation?  Related: How can you / are you using game mechanics to drive engagement or change in behavior in your learning audiences?

While we are on the topic of games…

ReFlect #3: The Navy Wants to Grow Your Brain – With an App
You remember that Brain Age game that was so popular a couple of years ago, well the US Navy is interested in seeing it’s sailors’ (and potential sailors’) brains improve.  They are looking for someone to propose how to measurably improve brain function with an portable app.  Interested?  Wired Magazine has an article summarizing the Navy’s project and requirements.  Reactions?

Finally, a completely different topic…

ReFlect #4: High Impact Learning Organizations™ and Learning Shared Services
How would you describe the organization model for learning in your organization?  Completely centralized?  Completely decentralized – with the business units handling their own needs?  Or some sort of federated model, where the central group and business units share a mix of responsibilities?  If you answered option 3, you are not alone.  That’s how we find that most companies work.
We are just kicking off the research gathering for our next iteration of our High Impact Learning Organization™ study.  As part of that effort, I’ve started to reach out to organizations to get a sense of what’s on the minds of learning leaders today with regards to questions like this one.  Interestingly enough, I’m already noticing a trend.  At the risk of biasing the conversation too much right at the start, how are those learning shared services treating you?  All that you imagined they would be?  Is that shared content development/instructional design team driving the benefits you imagined?  The general undercurrent so far is not promising.  Please let us know your experiences.   For that matter, if you or your company would like to be involved with this research project this time, please contact us to that effect as well.

Questions/comments encouraged.

Happy Thanksgiving!
-David