Milamber Blog

People learn more when they play.

They remember more when they do.

They engage more when they share.

So why is most learning so ineffective and boring?

Christmas is a time when our lives are filled with ‘Games’ and ‘Stories’. Our TV’s are packed with stories, both old and new. We gather together with our families and play games, like Charades. Asking such questions like is it a Book, Movie or TV program. Our DVD’s come now with software that un-package the movie so that is can be played on multiple devices such as iPad’s, iTouches, iPhones, or even on your Laptop. Books can be played on Kindles, iPad’s, and read the old fashioned way on stuff we call ‘paper’.

Whichever medium we experience these Stories there are ‘Seven Basic Plots’;

• Overcoming the Monster
• Rags to Riches
• The Quest
• Voyage and Return
• Comedy
• Tragedy
• Rebirth

One theme that resonated this Christmas was the Hero’s Quest or Hero’s Journey. A hero is faced with a challenge and has to overcome various obstacles to achieve some goal. The focus is the achievement of the goal or objective and this can be in this world or another.

Joseph Campbell’s used the term monomyth, when referring to the hero’s journey and this was described by Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949).

Campbell held that numerous myths from disparate times and regions share fundamental structures and stages, which he summarized in The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

‘A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.’

This can be broken down into various Acts and Stages as shown by the following diagram:

What was also evident this Christmas was the Quest theme was being used not only in movies, but also in games, as we see below:

Questing in Role-Playing Games: the basic PLOT……

The quest in a role-playing game may begin with setting the objective of finding a lost artefact, or treasure, or some form of knowledge. This artifact might be in several pieces, and to collect the various components results in overcoming one or more challenges by the hero.

By designing the quest around specific challenges, various skills may be taught, improved, honed to excellence etc. thus a carefully designed quest may allow the heroes to shine and show the qualities that make them heroic or just improve them. Basically certain traits can be built into the game structure so that the architect of the game can teach the player or hero to learn through participating in the role-play and thus attain certain skills or improve those skills.

A Few Examples:

The Hobbit, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones series, etc.

The basic quest story can be broken down into a series of stages:

1. The Call – the hero has a calling from someone or due to an event that must result in a long difficult journey to achieve some sort of goal or objective.

2. The Journey – the hero sets off (with or without companions) on a long tortuous journey encountering a series of trials, challenges, or ordeals. For example, battling monsters, dealing with temptations, travelling between two different kinds of opposites or worlds.

As part of the journey there must be capture or daring escape’s, hospitality or life threatening ordeals, helpful advice or cunning trickery, wisdom or guidance and other themes can be built into the storyline to enhance the skills that want to be transferred to the hero.

3. Arrival and Frustration – the hero sees the goal, can almost get there but then new barriers, or obstacles or challenges arise that block him or her from the goal. At this point the hero is often at a low ebb and must dig deep to summon the strength to overcome these last challenges to reach the goal.

4. The Final Ordeals – here the hero has to undergo a series of final tests or challenges, or tasks to prove that they are worthy of the prize, be that an artefact, treasure or knowledge. There may be a guard or monster to the artefact which requires a battle to overcome them to release the prize.

5. The Goal – the hero finally overcomes the last obstacle in a death defying feat and wins the prize, or secures the knowledge, and lives happily ever after…..

So this structure within the role playing game has the capability to be designed in a way to teach certain skills or hone certain characteristics and in a highly effective way:

Which is why we are leading with the following messaging in 2012:

Learning via games:
Engages our curiosity
Encourages active decision making
Taps into deep human needs for challenge and mastery
Connects human desire for novelty and reward
Breaks learning up in to bite sized chunks
Activates more of our brain than traditional learning methods.

This ‘youtube’ video gives a very pictorial representation of the Hero’s Journey from a Joseph Campbell (sort of) perspective using Star Wars, Harry Potter and clips from the Wizard of Oz to highlight key points – the author of this video accentuates 5 key themes:

This is a great advert from Kaplan University!

And one of the most inspiring videos I have seen on how the Digital Evolution will help talent learn anyplace, anywhere, at anytime.

Welcome to the ‘education’ revolution!

“Peter Frederick is a black belt in persuasive writing.” – Andy Hasoon, Entrepreneur and CEO of Milamber!

This is the quote that I wrote for the back of Pete’s book.  Well when a guy as talented as Pete writes a proposal (with no presentation) and just by using the power of the written word helps secure £750k in funding as a grant from the Technology Strategy Board you confirm that he is a master at persuasive writing.   

http://www.milamberblog.com/milamber-digital-gets-technology-strategy-board-funding-for-1-5m-project/

And this one is a win-win for Milamber as well as for Peter. We did the introduction to Pearson’s brand Prentice Hall Business which resulted in getting Peter’s first book published. The reality is that quality and talent always shine brightly.

I  have to say having worked with sales people and bid writers through-out my career this is one of those books that really is a ‘must have’ for anyone serious about winning proposals, but its more than that. Let us say you are a manager or director of a company and have to write something in order to help persuade someone or a group of people to come around to your way of thinking – this book nails on the head all sorts of ways of doing that practically and easily.

Peter sent me the early manuscript of the book and frankly I found that I learnt a huge amount about how to write more persuasively, and succinctly to get across key points to a potential buyer or audience. I found that I started using his tips and lessons in day to day written materials not just proposals but e-mails and letters to colleagues and staff, and I found that the message I wanted to deliver was getting to through to them more effectively.

This is a little gem and we have already decided to help Peter further – we have offered to build a whole series of virtual tools around this topic.  

For more information on Peter’s book please go to:

 http://www.persuasivewriting.co.uk/

One of my favourite TV Shows was the West Wing and in it are two characters acted by Rob Lowe and Richard Schiff – playing the parts of the President’s Speech Writers – for me they were the hero’s of the show. I remember watching the President played by Martin Sheen deliver the State of the Union speech and how the different audiences emotions and reactions are being measured real-time as he delivers this vital oratory masterpiece written by Richard and Rob’s characters.

Recently, when David Cameron delivered his speech without notes but from memory, the nation was almost shocked that someone had the skill to deliver a speech without notes or aide de memoires.

So from time to time as I am fascinated by what makes the art of communication truly effective I look around the internet to see the latest views on what makes great speeches successful and recently found this article:

JFK’s inaugural speech: Six secrets of his success
By Max Atkinson published 18th Jan 2011.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12215248

So having read it I look up who this Max Atkinson the Author of the article is as I am intrigued? And get a link to Max’s blog – I click on his blog…..
http://maxatkinson.blogspot.com/

and aside from being mesmerized by the musings and content on speeches within the blog, one of the things that hits me is that Max is literally down the road 10 miles from me in Wells, Somerset. Small World.

I now enter a world of insight into what makes great speeches, how to harness the power of words and to deliver exemplary oratory. Not only that by going to the blog I get to link to a host of other experts like Andrew Dlugan, Charles Crawford, Kethy Reiffenstien etc. Within a few minutes I have accessed a whole host of ideas, lists, tips, analysis, thesis, and examples on what makes great speeches.

The question that lingers as I digest this material is this………how to synthesize these musings into some useful, into something coherent, that is comprehensive and useable and can be applied on a day to day basis? That is something we are working on…….in the meantime I finish my tour of great oratory by listening to one of the most amazing speeches of the last century:

Cisco Sigma Training Animation:

As you know due to my background I am a big advocate of ‘Engagement in Learning’ techniques whether that be via Story Telling, using Video, Cartoons or Animation.

We all remember (for those that are old enough) Video Arts and their ‘Meetings Bloody Meetings” video starring John Cleese et al. This comedic approach to getting across learning messages on how not to conduct meetings was brilliant and at the time revolutionary.

What most people don’t know is that the ‘Scritps’ for those highly comedic Video Arts videos were mainly written by Sir Antony Jay who also wrote the iconic satirical British comedies ‘Yes Minister’ and ‘Yes Prime Minister’.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Jay

Although the script for this Cisco song is not in the same league as Sir Antony Jay’s work – it is an interesting way of getting across a message about e-Sigma training approches. This animation was released about 4 years ago. The question is will this animation be as timeless as Yes Prime Minsiter!

Helen Routledge is Head of Instructional Design at PIXELearning and has kindly written a synopsis of Robert Becker’s paper on Interactive Games for Business Training published on the 22nd Jan 2011.

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With 25 years experience in the design of games, simulations and other forms of e-learning for business, Bob Becker, provides readers with an introduction to the area of game based learning for business training.  He focuses mainly on rhetoric rather than taking an academic approach to his analysis; this may work to his advantage as the main objective of the paper it seems, is to convince the reader of the virtues of games for training. 

Becker begins with an anecdote uncovering an organizations resistance to welcome fun into their training regime. This is an all too often familiar reaction designers of serious games face. Even when commissioned some clients, just don’t want to push the boundaries too far. But that’s another blog!

Through further anecdotal evidence Becker summarises why using games and game based approaches to training are or should be a no brainier.

After reviewing games, play, and the current state of play Becker introduces his four pillars of game design for corporate e-learning; this basic taxonomy is his own invention rather than the product of scholarly research, but he argues, it aids the understanding of how business training games work:

Becker proposes the four pillars as;

1. Puzzle. Problem-solving play that spawns and develops competencies

2. Scenario. Stories in which players join and learn from others’ experience

3. Simulation. Exploration in which players learn from their own experience

4. Immersion. Play enriched with affective and cognitive aesthetics.

Becker explains how the four pillars noted above are linked to Business simulations and how they link to learning theory.

After laying the foundations for his view on the world of business training games, he further goes into detail regarding how these games come into being and reinforces the need for good Instructional Design, reinforcing in the readers mind that he is making a clear distinction between entertainment and training games; a valuable clarification for new comers to the field.

When it comes to evaluating games, and anyone familiar to the industry will be aware that there is not a great deal of empirical research out there to find, Becker argues that our current systems of measuring ROI and effectiveness of training are backwards looking and perhaps are missing the valuable aspects of games; mainly being the appeal of the genre and increased participation in learning. He also suggests that rather than looking at training games as a distinct genus, to other forms of training, that instead we should leverage the reams of research from good interactive e-learning, which uses similar approaches. 

Becker continues to examine a wide range of topics such as the plethora of available platforms, the players perspective, the level of fidelity in the game, and with each area provides advice and guidance.

Overall this paper provides some good solid justifications for using games in business training, which could easily be applied to other training areas. If you’re looking for academic references and journals, this is not the paper for you. If you’re looking for good place to start with clean, crisp summaries, you can hear all of Becker’s anecdotes and read the whole paper here. 

http://it.coe.uga.edu/itforum/paper123/Interactive_Games_for_Business_Training.pdf

http://beckermultimedia.typepad.com/ 

For those in the UK that have not seen this advert by Kaplan – please do – a very powerful message about adapting learning for today’s digital world.

My daughter has been creating a book by using this very simple ‘picture book maker’ tool which she found at CLEO – Cumbria and Lancashire Education Online – believe it or not they are BAFTA winners! and have a great selection of videos and learning objects such as this simple tool just click on the link and have a go yourself:

www.artisancam.org.uk/flashapps/picturebookmaker/index.php

ArtisanCam provides an insight into the lives of contemporary artists. Using a mixture of video and interactive activities, they introduce children to the world of contemporary visual art before encouraging them to have a go themselves in fun and exciting ways.

Dispute Resolution

I recently helped a friend go through a dispute with his business partners and helped him  negotiate an exit from the business that he co-founded.

These things are awful for all the Parties involved and like any war results in collateral damage to third parties, such as employees, spouses and family’s of those involved. Also in my experience avoid like the plague getting lawyers involved until you have an agreement that just needs documenting otherwise the bickering between the Parties just wastes so much time which if lawyers are involved clocks up along side the arguments at £300-£500 per hour….. 

 Having been through a similar situation myself, and been mentored by one of the leading experts in this area I was able to draw on these experiences to help get a resolution in place between the parties quickly and effectively before too much damage had occurred. Here are some tips I thought I might share with you that helped me through the process.

Dispute Resolution

10 Tips On Dispute Resolution:

1) Step 1 – Listen – get each party to talk to you (by themselves) about the situation, the history, where they are today and if they had their own way how they would be prepared to get to a resolution with other party by doing X,Y,Z. Disputes are never black and white – they generally involve several issues and the emotion involved clouds getting clarity on the outstanding issues. 

2)  Step 2 – Having listened find the key points of agreement and list these out and confirm there is no disagreement around these issues among the parties. In this way you stop people coming back later to create or add in new points of contention.

3) Step 3 – Now list out the key points of disagreement and write each point down including how far apart each party is so you and they understand what each party’s view is on each of the outstanding issues.

e.g. Notice Period

Party 1 – 1 Month

Party 2 – 6 Months

e.g. Value of the company

Party 1 – £500k

Party 2 – £1m

e.g. Restrictive Covenant Clause

Party 1 – thinks there is

Party 2 – thinks there isn’t

4) Step 4 – Take a look at all the legal agreements that are in place and see if there are ways of settling any points of difference because the parties have already signed up to a formula or policy in a legal agreement e.g. shareholders agreement or employment agreement. If there are clear guidelines this can be used to resolve certain differences.

5) Whether you like it or not splitting up from a business partnership gets personal and to find a pragmatic resolution you need to stay professional. Disputes around issues can be subjective not objective and therefore, especially when emotions are running high and money is involved it is usually better to get a mediator to work on your behalf to help secure a resolution.

6) From a cynical point of view the perfect settlement is where each side is equally unhappy! This means both sides have had to give more than they are comfortable giving to get to a resolution – if you have found this ‘no mans land’ then on balance you have usually found a fair resolution to the situation for both parties.

7) The Mediators role is to depersonalise the situation – reduce the emotions – not get drawn in by who said what to who but focus the Parties on finding pragmatic and fair resolutions to issues. In most situations you find that the half way house is the right house.

Example: Party 1 says the amount outstanding is £100k Party 2 says £300k. We shall assume you have reviewed the legal’s and facts to make sure there are no objective reasons why this figure should be in either Party’s favour. So by getting people to move equally you can usually get people to accept the compromise as they can both see that they are giving in the same amount. In this case £200k.

8) When you have locked a point add it to the agreed points list and make sure you confirm with both parties that they both agree this point is now resolved – then move on to the next.

9) The Mediator must stay consistent – in situations like this the major underlying issue is that ‘Trust’ has broken down on both sides. Therefore, the Mediator has to bring back a degree of stability or consistency to the situation – and in doing so restore a degree of Trust. What happens is the Trust is still not apparent between the Parties but the Mediator has effectively projected their own Trust levels into the situation, to create a small amount of stabilising Trust. However, this stabilising Trust is volatile and is only maintained by what the Mediator says, as remaining consistent. Furthermore, the Mediator must deliver on what they have said they can deliver upon otherwise all Trust will be break down and we will be back to square one.

10) If the Mediator finds them selves getting emotional – take a deep breadth or take a break for a period of time until you are calm again then and only then restore mediation.