Bottom-Line Performance

Each week Brandon Penticuff, Bottom-Line Performance’s Director of Technology and admitted app-obsessed iOS user will share an app that he is using that week. Whether it is an app to make you more productive, teach you something, or simply entertain you, we hope that you’ll enjoy learning about them!

This week’s app is “Make My Own Puzzles“, a handy puzzle creation tool from Jeff Lowry. This very easy to use app will let you quickly build simple or complex word search or crossword style puzzles that feature content that you provide!

However, the puzzles that you create aren’t for playing in the app or even on your device. Instead the app provides you with the ability to export your puzzles as PDF, PNG, or JPG images that you can then print out or include as part of other material. You aren’t just restricted to exporting the puzzles either, the app also allows you to generate a version with hints or a full answer key as well. You can specify the grid-size of your puzzles and dictate the order of the content and the directions that your entries are displayed within the puzzle.

Our fantastic learning experts at Bottom-Line Performance have talked in depth about the fundamentals of gamification in learning, and one could argue that traditional puzzles like word search or crossword apply the some of these techniques in a fundamental way that has helped them stay relevant for over 100 years. Do you think your next training event would benefit from using an app like this one to create a customized puzzle with your content?

Care to try your hand at my technology-influenced crossword (hints provided!)? I will gift a copy of the app to the first person that provides the correct answers in the comments, think you can solve it??

Make My Own Puzzles – [.99 (Limited time)] (Universal App)

Follow Brandon on Twitter for more tips and tracks on all things App related. Got an app you want featured? Send him a tweet to have it considered!

Social Learning is not a “new” course or LMS feature…it’s something that happens naturally.

At best, a “social learning solution” is similar to carefully decorating and cleaning your house for a dinner party. The ultimate goal is for the guests to arrive and enjoy the environment as a group, sharing stories and laughing with one another. It’s the host’s job to create the conditions for this fun, not to be the sole conduit for the  entertainment. This requires a meaningful shift from traditional top-down, command and control training programs.

There is a difference between following the herd as it adopts a new technology…and approaching the tools and technologies as an artist to craft something truly unique and wonderful. A few examples:

• James Cameron’s “Avatar” was the first movie to use 3D, and the results were breathtaking. But movies that have used 3D since then have not had nearly the same effect on audiences. When it is only being implemented to follow the latest trend in moviemaking and maximize the profit that can be made in movie theaters, the final product will not be as enduring or entertaining.
• QR codes and social media links are being slapped on all sorts of advertisements. Some of them are highly effective and drive traffic to carefully considered experiences and knowledge sources…but most of them are merely an after-thought. The “everybody’s doing it” mentality is never a precursor of success.

So, L&D professional…as savvy as you are, are YOU currently working on an initiative that would add social media buttons and sharing features into a course or game just because you can? This might be a good move, but there are plenty of things to consider first.

We learned this through our launch of College Hoops Guru, the latest question pack we created for our Knowledge Guru game engine. It uses repetition and spaced learning to carefully guide learners towards mastery of a set of objectives. We like to sprinkle in a new batch of features and user interface improvements with each go-around, and this time we added Twitter functionality. While our staff had lots of fun tweeting our scores and interacting with the game during testing, we did not see much use of the social sharing features from the game players. No matter how smartly you place a button in a user interface, if it is not part of the authentic user experience, it will not be utilized. We only saw a few players take advantage of the ability to tweet their score.

So, what’s the secret ingredient you need to get social sharing features utilized in your learning solution? Proper set-up and the right audience. Make sure you clearly introduce and articulate how social media sharing can and should be used within your course or game. Show the benefit to the learner and make them believe they will gain value from using social as they learn. Make sure resources and learning materials are easily available and relevant within social media.

Most importantly, your users must be comfortable and familiar with social media if they are to use it within your learning experience. If you are planning on introducing your team to Twitter for the first time, make sure they have plenty of time to adapt to the tool and become comfortable with using it in their daily workflow. Teach them about Personal Knowledge Management and how social media can help them achieve this. Show them how Twitter will add real value to their careers, then let them explore. If your audience is already social online, all the better! But you still need to encourage them and show the benefit.

College Hoops Guru’s social sharing features are highly useful within a dedicated group of learners, particularly when encouraged to do so by a facilitator. If you want your learners to use social media within a course or game, you will need to actively encourage and support this behavior when introducing and managing the learning experience. Inviting them to the dinner party is not enough: you have to set the table.

Well, that was fun.

The last of the celebrities and East Coast football fans have left Indianapolis, and what a party it was! It was hard not to get caught up in the “Big Game” buzz last week. Football was on everyone’s brain, and we are so happy to have been able to share Gridiron Guru with you. This was part 1 of our m+s+g=l? learning lab experiment.

Our sign-ups were modest, but we had players from all over the world take part. The top score achieved topic mastery of all four paths AND amassed a Grab Bag score of 126,000,000. Talk about self-directed learning!

Part of social learning is that the “teacher” learns too. Unlike the bearded character in our game, we are NOT Gurus who have achieved mastery. We know what we are good at and love using our expertise, but there is always more to learn. And boy, did we learn a ton from putting this game together! Here are 5 take-aways for you to consider as you begin looking at ways to “gamify” your training and create opportunities for informal, non-traditional learning on mobile platforms.

1. Respond to results in real time. Social learning platforms enable facilitators to respond to the needs of learners in a more immediate, direct fashion. The admin side of the game engine we created for this (KnowledgeGuru)  has a robust set of reports that allow us to see what learning objectives and questions were the hardest. Here is a quick view at part of a learning objectives report:

Yes, we’re all hearing the buzz. The holy grail of learning is shifting to games/gamification, mobile, and social. Within my team at BLP, we actually are already believers of the value that blending these three things together can have on a learning experience….but we want proof, not just gut feelings about this. So – we invite you to join our newly-created “learning laboratory” at Bottom-Line Performance and be part of a little three-part experiment we’re going to do.

Part 1 coincides with the Professional Football Championship Not to Be Named for Copyright Purposes. Since it’s in Indianapolis this year and so are we, we felt it was a perfect fit. We’re creating a game called Gridiron Guru that targets the casual football fan. If you can already explain how teams score, but you’re clueless or unsure when you hear things like intentional grounding, pass interference, 4-3 defensive formation, nickel defense, etc., then this game should help you learn…while you also have fun and engage with other people who are doing the same thing as you.

We chose a fun theme and approach, but our goal is serious. How well does a social/mobile/gaming approach work in helping people learn…particularly when no one is pushing them to learn? You get to opt into our little experiment – and you only play as far as you want to play. Yeah, we are providing a small incentive (Top 3 scores entered into drawing for $25 App Store card), but there is only ONE winner and, hopefully, lots of learners/players. Let’s see how much learning happens with this format.

Our game begins Monday, January 30th. If you want to play (and we hope you do), start following @thekguru on Twitter. He’ll announce the game’s start and send out the game link on the 30th.  You will need to create an account to play – but you only provide a name and email…and we aren’t adding you to any contact list. This is just for the game. Ideally, you’ll play on your iPad. If you aren’t lucky enough to have an iPad yet, you can play on your desktop. Android is not an option for this little experiment of ours….yet.

Our game ends at kickoff time Sunday, February 5th. We’ll tweet out the winner (as well as posting on the Knowledge Guru game site). We’ll analyze our first round of data and send out the results.

For Part 2 of our experiment, you can expect a college basketball-themed game (in March, of course) that focuses on the game of basketball for the casual college b-ball lover. We’ll deliver Part 3 at the end of April or beginning of May, and focus on the far more serious topic of  effective learning design. We’ll use the Knowledge Guru game engine again for our March game – and then go 100% social at the end of April when we play our learning design game on Twitter.

So – come play with us and learn with us. We’ll share our results after each game – and then results overall. We’ll share what people seem to retain, like, dislike, etc. and how much people learn (our game engine has some wonderful reports we can share!!).