Competition is Key

We're often asked (and we often ask ourselves) what--exactly--makes game shows such effective training tools. They're undeniably and unarguably engaging and effective, but what makes them so compelling?

There are several components that go into a game show that make it an incredible training tool, such as:

• Interaction
• Utilizing questions
• It's a change of pace
• Capitalizing on multimedia
• Etc.

But one of the single largest components that make game shows more effective than, say, a traditional oral question-and-answer review or a poll, is competition. There's something in our DNA, in the heart of how we live and work that makes competition appealing. Perhaps it came from the caveman days when we competed for natural resources and now plays out in gentler, less primitive ways.

The act of competing makes our brains secrete adrenaline, and adrenaline works to fuse memory. Competition also generates emotion--another memory-making component. These elements combined allow game shows to pack a powerful punch and have great training impact where content retention is concerned.

Competition factors in multiple ways during a game show:

Team competition: When placed on a team in a game show, you're no longer just individually responsible for your performance, you're also collectivistically responsible for the success of your team. This peer pressure can be incredibly motivating and can also add a great teambuilding/networking dynamic in the training class.

Self-motivated competition: Even casually watching a game show on television, most people will find themselves playing along. It's not as if we get prizes for answering a question on Jeopardy! correctly, but we play along for the sake of our own self-knowledge and satisfaction. We compete with ourselves.

Competition against others: A game show is a vehicle for friendly competition. A participant competes against others to ring-in first, competes to give the most correct answer, and competes to get the most total points. This competition generates discussion, desire to play another game, and a focus on the content at hand. It's also an incredibly motivational way to interact within a training session.

While there isn't any one single element that makes game shows successful, it's pretty clear that competition is one of the more powerful elements in making them an incredibly effective training tool.

Business Solutions: Better Training Through Gaming

An article including LearningWare and Gameshow Pro from the Wall Street Journal:

THE JOURNAL REPORT: TECHNOLOGY

Business Solutions:

Better Training Through Gaming

By MICHAEL TOTTY

Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

April 25, 2005; Page R6

Note to managers: It's OK to let your employees play games at work.

We're not talking about all those hours fooling around at computer solitaire. Where games have their place -- and significant benefits -- is in livening up boring corporate training sessions.

Companies in the U.S. spend about $60 billion a year on training their employees, but there's a good chance much of that is wasted. The reason: Most training sessions are just too dull. (Web-based e-learning classes were supposed to fix that, but in reality they just allow employees to get bored at their own pace.) As a result, employees aren't coming away from the training with the knowledge or skills their employers are paying for.

"Forget learning," says Marcia Sitcoske, director of Cisco Systems Inc.'s Creative Learning Studio, whose mission is to make the company's online training tools more effective and appealing. "People aren't even completing these things, they're so boring."

Training experts insist it doesn't have to be this way. They argue that companies could make their employee-education programs more compelling, and more effective, if they made them more fun -- specifically, more like computer games.

Evidence suggests adults learn more and retain more in courses that incorporate such game elements as competitive scoring, increasingly difficult player levels and fantasy role-playing. But many managers remain skeptical. It's a rare boss who thrills at seeing workers playing games on the job, and adding games to a learning package tacks on extra expense.

War Games

The U.S. military is a lot further along in adopting game elements in training than are most businesses. In part, that's because learning on a computer is much cheaper and safer than in the field, and recruits come from a generation comfortable in the fast-paced gaming world. The best of the military's training games rival the complexity and richness of some of the best videogames. In fact, a version of Full Spectrum Warrior, a training game developed for the U.S. Army by the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California, has recently been released for the public game market.

Outside of a few custom-designed applications, such games remain a rarity in the corporate training world; don't look for Full Spectrum CEO anytime soon. Instead, a growing number of companies are turning to more modest courses that mix work and play.

In some cases, the lack of good commercial alternatives has prompted companies to take a do-it-yourself approach. Cisco Systems' Creative Learning Studio, formed in 2001, uses technology, high-quality video -- and entertainment -- to enliven its vast library of online training tools. It now has about 4,500 e-learning courses of varying lengths. One such course, for employees and outsiders seeking certification as authorized Cisco "networking professionals," uses a game to help teach fundamentals of building a high- speed network of shared storage devices. Called SAN Rover (for storage area network), the game requires students to race the clock to gather the pieces -- hard drives, switches and other components -- and correctly put together such a network while dodging crashing asteroids.

The game, which reinforces the skills students learn in classes and from their reading, has been played about 2,000 times since it was introduced last June. "More and more people are learning that gaming can be useful in training in the corporate environment," Cisco's Ms. Sitcoske says.

It's All About Competition

Companies also can turn to simple, off-the-shelf games for reviewing and testing. The games don't even have to be that sophisticated as long as they include an essential element: competition.

Borland Software Corp. wanted to give its sales staff an incentive to master details of its product line before an annual world-wide sales meeting earlier this year, and was looking for better results than with its previous PowerPoint-laden e- learning program. So it turned to QB International, a San Rafael, Calif., e-learning company, to develop online study guides that incorporated a series of games for testing students' knowledge of the material. The simple games, based on such diversions as tic-tac-toe and hangman, featured a series of timed questions. Each member of the sales staff had to get at least 80% of the answers correct on a series of nine tests interspersed with the lessons, and those who received perfect scores were entered into a drawing for five Apple iPods. Everyone also had to take a final comprehensive exam of 100 questions, and the one with the highest score and fastest time received a $3,000 prize.

Though the games weren't very sophisticated, they were enough to motivate the highly competitive salespeople. Scores in the preliminary exams were posted for all to see.

"All of sudden, people are instant messaging each other, 'You're on top today, but you're going down,' " says Wynn Johnson, director of field readiness for Borland, based in Scott City, Calif. "The competition is a motivator."

ERC Properties Inc., a Fort Smith, Ark., builder and manager of multifamily developments faced a crucial training challenge: teaching 355 property managers how to comply with Revenue Service regulations for affordable housing tax credits. Managers need to determine the eligibility of qualified tenants, and penalties for not following the law are huge.

Candace Armstrong, ERC's corporate training director, chose software from Minneapolis-based LearningWare Inc. The software, called Gameshow Pro, provides a series of game templates based on popular television shows. Using questions and answers based on her training materials, Armstrong divides each training class into two teams that compete in a tic-tac-toe variation of "Hollywood Squares."

To test the effectiveness of the games, she compared results from a group of employees who played the game with those of a different group that received the same questions in oral review. Managers need to score 80% on a subsequent certification exam; Ms. Armstrong revealed that 88% of the group that played the game passed the test on the first try, compared with 54% of the group that received the basic review.

"Most training is very boring, especially if it's government-required," Ms. Armstrong explained, "The difference was pretty obvious. People learn more when they laugh."

Write to Michael Totty at michael.totty@wsj.com

Raising the Energy Level by "1000%"

This last week, we received this customer feedback about Gameshow Pro in our inboxes. This comes from Dan S. at Workflow Studios (a collaborator with IBM), and it's too good not to share:

The student reaction exceeded my expectations. My first use of Gameshow Pro was the last presentation of the morning before lunch. The energy level rose 1000%. The students had a lot of fun with it and I hope that translated in to greater knowledge transfer. Unlike a standard lecture where only a few students ask questions or speak up, everyone participated in this exercise. It made them think and process the information. The word of mouth spread so fast in IBM that I had someone who wasn't a part of the class approach me during lunch to see if we'd be playing any games in the afternoon where he could see it in action. I tweeted twice about repurposing the content and the results. I had a former IBMer inquire about it.

One line sticks out to us: "The energy level rose 1000%." Any slight hyperbole aside, THIS is the power of game shows--and it's what we see all the time; in large events, in the training classroom, etc. When the game show starts, everyone is paying attention. It's like someone plugged in the room and electricity is now flowing.

It's also why we're so passionate about using game shows in the training session: they work. They're not just a game for game's sake, they're a tool to engage learners--to convey and review content. This review of Gameshow Pro isn't unique--we hear it from trainers all the time, in every subject area, in every classroom (online or in-person) of every size.

Webinar Experiences Survey: Full Results

The Webinar Experiences Survey Results
By: LearningWare, Inc.

November 12th, 2009, LearningWare sent out a survey to a large database of (mostly) trainers--asking them basic questions about their experiences within webinars. Some of the results we got were expected, others were unexpected in scope, while others completely surprised us.

Let’s take a look at some selected results:
It’s not surprising that webinars have replaced in-person meetings. Not only is webinar technology growing--and it will naturally gain new adopters--but it’s also an economical, efficient choice in an economy where budgets are tight and companies are becoming more globalized. This seems to support the reasons for using more webinars: attendees can be at their desks, saving money on travel, while bringing people together from around the world.

Respondents ranked the following issues (each issue ranked individually) on a scale from 1-3. A “1” meant that the issue was a MAJOR issue--where a “3” was not an issue at all. All of the items were at least minor issues--with little to no interaction, technical problems and boring presentations ranking as the most major issues.

But not knowing what attendees are doing--a “minor” issue--might be more critical than previously thought:

Here’s where results got interesting. While fewer people played computer games or visited social networking sites than expected, a whopping 80% checked their email during a webinar (not unexpected, but unexpectedly high), 65% worked on other projects and 67% muted the call to have other conversations. But perhaps most shocking: 51% left their desks and 35% went to the bathroom! So participants in a webinar were not even there.

The next statistic, then, is not surprising at all:
55% believe that webinar training is not as effective as classroom training. And boy, did this question ever get people talking. We included a section for elaboration, and here is what some survey takers said:

It may be more efficient and the cost savings may result in additional training taking place over he span of a given year, but there is something lost in the interaction between facilitator and participant. Gauging participant interest and retention, along with maintaining their attention, is extremely difficult.

If used the right way. Interaction and design are key. Without interaction, you lose participants. Designing a webinar so participants stay engaged is challenging, but necessary.

So what could make webinars better?

With a whopping 82% of people responding that more interaction would make a webinar better--the call to action is clear. But are people currently using the sparse interaction tools available to them?

Only 11% are using interactive tools in every webinar--with a whopping near-30% NEVER using interactive tools.


Summary
While we suspected that accountability and attention were lacking in webinars, we were surprised at the extent that our suspicions were correct. It’s clear that webinars are here to stay--as companies continue to globalize and do more on a smaller budget. It’s also clear that action needs to be taken to keep webinars engaging and make them as effective as a face-to-face meeting (all while people are sitting in front of one of the biggest sources of distraction: their computers).

For full survey results, visit www.learningware.com/WebinarSurveyResults.html.

To Poll or to Play

To Poll or to Play

How AllPlay Web goes beyond polling to create interactive webinar experiences.

When LearningWare first saw the need for more engaging webinars, we did a lot of research into what was already out there. Our experiences with webinars thus far had left us flat. For the most part, they were just another presentation as usual; only there was no accountability, no interaction, and no effort made to re-focus attention.

We did find that there was a measure in place in some webinar technology (i.e. Webex, Gotomeeting, etc.) attempting to solve this problem: polling.

But polling has been around since the advent of webinars, and it hadn’t yet solved the problem of disengagement. Polling is a nice start, but it only goes a portion of the way in creating truly interactive webinars—whereas game-based technologies (like AllPlay Web) are a revolutionary tool in the webinar space.

Why is this such a radical shift from simple polling technology? Well, there are five major differences between polling and playing in a webinar:

1. Scoring

Yes, polling can show how many people answered a question a certain way—but to what end? The score in a game format is added question-by-question, keeping the attendees invested in the game. This cumulative score also allows a presenter to reward attendees based on their total answers throughout the webinar. (This reward may be as simple as prestige or praise, but it can also be something like a small gift certificate or promotional item.)

Concrete scoring can also allow presenters to track how much everyone is learning and retaining.

2. Competition

Competition engages webinar attendees like nothing else. There are now stakes involved in answering questions (whether the aforementioned reward is valuable or not). When attendees know that they’re going to be tested on the material—and that they’re going to be competing with peers—they have an incentive to pay close attention to the content at hand.

People are naturally competitive—whether playing by themselves or in teams—and a game format capitalizes on this friendly competition to wholly captivate a webinar audience.

3. Teams

Unlike polling—game formats like AllPlay Web allow people to play in teams. This is significant for a few reasons:

• The team structure makes attendees accountable to their peers. One doesn’t want to be “that guy” who lowers the team score—so they engage with the webinar content.

• When people are grouped together they are more invested in interaction. They’ll speak up, participate, and become active attendees.

• In a team, an attendee is no longer one person in a sea of dozens or hundreds. The team allows for a small-group experience—even in a large webinar.

• Teams build relationships and networking. Even if a group is scattered across the globe, being on a team will allow them to interact with their peers on a personal level that one usually doesn’t get in a webinar.

4. Structure

Unlike a poll—which doesn’t have a particular structure throughout the webinar—a game can frame a webinar presentation. Ask questions at the beginning to preview information, then pause the game and go into content. Use the game again to bring up and teach additional points. Then elaborate more on presentation content. Then, wrap up the webinar with a final, rousing game round—reviewing the content.

Not only does it keep attendees engaged (and attendees need to be reengaged every 5-7 minutes), but it’s continually reinforcing key points—boosting the learning potential in a webinar.

5. Visual Appeal

A webinar is a visual medium—hosts can put a lot of work into their PowerPoint presentations and graphics. Most existing polling functionality in a webinar is very rudimentary. The game format is visually captivating, and allows hosts to add graphics, sounds and a game feel that reengages attendees.

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Don’t get us wrong—we believe that polls have their time and place (which is why we’ve included a polling feature within the AllPlay Web software—that merges smoothly with the game questions). Sometimes you want to solicit opinions where there is no right-wrong answer. Sometimes you might just want to throw out a single, quick question. There’s no denying that polling software is useful and a step up from no interaction—it’s just not a fraction as engaging as a game format.

The Top 5 Ways to Increase Assessment Scores Using Game Shows.

Game shows are a fun addition to a training session. There’s no doubt that they increase trainee engagement, excitement and the energy level in any session. But let’s get down to brass tacks here—having fun for fun’s sake isn’t enough. Game shows have been proven to increase trainees’ assessment scores and content retention on job-critical evaluations. Here are some tips to ensure that you get real results from your game show.

1. Use Game Shows to Review Information.
To review your content, play a game show at the end of each content module. Let trainees know beforehand that they’ll be playing a game show, and highlight which pieces of information might show up in that game show later. Before an exam, create a game show with questions from all different content areas to both energize your trainees, and refresh their memories. Word the questions in your game show in the way they will be asked on a evaluation to prepare trainees for the exam format. Try Categories for quick fact-based reviews.

2. Add Additional Information and Multimedia.
Add multimedia to your game show to enhance and add information. Giving trainees a picture, sound or video clip to associate with a piece of information will help them recall facts when it comes to evaluation time. Trainees’ attention is at its peak directly after a question has been answered—they’re curious about the topic and ready to hear more. Make sure to use this time to add additional information, expand on your material, clarify a point, or clear up any misconceptions or misunderstandings.

3. Make a Game Show “Open Book”.
Use the game show to give your trainees a starting point for their own practice or home studying. Familiarize trainees with their manuals, books, catalogs and other training materials by allowing them to use them during the game show. This type of game show is less about knowing facts, and more about finding answers quickly and reinforcing the places in training materials where trainees should look to review content.

4. Focus on the Material.
Quick fact-based reviews are great right before an evaluation when trainees have done most of their own review. However, to reinforce and uncover knowledge gaps you’ll want to play a slower-paced game that allows trainees to discuss and focus on material for an extended period of time. Short-answer and role-play questions in a Tic-Tac-Toe or Knowledge Bowl allow you to foster discussions and brainstorming around a topic. Trainees will also gather an understanding of what they don’t know, or need to focus on in their own time.

5. Play in Teams.
Use the power of peer learning to help trainees gather information that they’re missing and share their own knowledge with their peers. Playing in teams instead of as individual contestants allows trainees to discuss answers and focus on content without feeling singled out. A game show is a great complement to work review groups as well—a few trainees can play a game show on their own instead of in a large group.

Bonus Tip: Ease text anxiety. Play a quick-fire review game immediately before taking an examination. This shows trainees how much of the content the actually DO know—relieving some fears--and brings the information to the front of their thinking. This is particularly beneficial in job-critical tests where high stakes can lead to high anxiety.

Additional Resources:
We have a great network of trainers that advise and give feedback on using game shows in their training. Here is an independent study sent in by Candace Armstrong—a Trainer and user of LearningWare’s Gameshow Pro:

Candace took several groups of trainees and divided them into two categories: Trainees who would review for a critical exam with Gameshow Pro, and those who would review without Gameshow Pro. Candace conducted a review for both groups. She used the same questions, worded in the same way—the variable factor was putting the questions into a Gameshow Pro game, or reading them orally.

The results? 63% more people passed the exam reviewing with Gameshow Pro, the passing scores in this group was also higher-as were the overall scores.
"Playing the game really makes a difference," says Candace, "I have had many students tell me after the exam that they would never have passed without playing the review game. They could even remember who answered what question and whether or not they answered it correctly."