I once attended this great school that had a mantra of “Learn by Doing.” Which I thought was pretty cool back in my college days, but as life has progressed I realize more and more each day just how important this mantra is (no matter what age you are). Each of one of us has gone through training that has been better than others, whether it was a driver’s training course when you turned sweet 16 or a training course for your job. Although you may sit through 8 hours of training it’s what you take away from it that counts, not that you were just a warm body filling a seat. It all boils down to Passive vs. Active Learning. So what’s that you might ask? Well the passive type of learning would be reading and hearing words (see graph below to see the low, low percentages of what is actually retained from passive learning). Whereas active learning involves doing the real thing or simulating an experience, just like what can be done when training through simulations. So I will let the graph below sell you more on the idea.

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Some of you may be familiar with CMT’s (that’s Country Music Television for those of you that don’t know) once popular show called “Trick my Truck” whereby an innocent semi-truck owner is surprised by a complete truck makeover: which got me thinking about tricking out training. While some may never think of this, or the makeover of training may only happen when a new decision maker joins the training efforts… what about doing it to deliver the best possible training to employees/ students and making your training material “sticky?” So you may be thinking “My training works…it may just be a little (or lot) outdated.” Or on the other hand, you may be seeing dollar signs because a lot of training types on the market today take a lot of money to get off the ground and even more money to update and keep everything current. Well one thing you may consider is the possibility of taking an existing training program and transforming it into a completely different training type. Oh yeah- Visual Purple can do that. View this short clip to see an e-learning training that we transformed into a private virtual world environment, complete with Non-Player Characters.

“- Link to”
YouTube Visual Purple Winning in Wireless Virtual World trailer

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All too often we tend to forget what we are really doing. Like many types of businesses where the end result is all about pleasing the customer… well we here at Visual Purple take it one step further than just pleasing the customer. We are building simulations for the LEARNER. That’s right…I said LEARNER! Meaning every training simulation produced is obviously centered around the customer’s content but it is produced around pleasing the learner and making sure that they actually learn what they are being taught throughout the simulation. So now we have a learner-centric high-engagement environment that the learner (otherwise known as the trainee) feels comfortable enough in to explore and the ease of use/ navigation is easily understandable. A learner (trainee) must be interested in what is being taught in order for engagement to be sustained. The focus of the training spotlight ultimately always circles back to the learner.

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With the ringing in of the New Year it is once again time to recap the Top 10 blog posts from 2010. Happy New Year to everyone!

Study Shows Video Games Really Do Train People!
In the article entitled “Video Games Can be Highly Effective Training Tools, Study Shows: Employees Learn More, Forget Less, Master More Skills” a study from the University of Colorado Denver Business School established that those trained by video games do their jobs better, have higher skills and retain information longer than that of workers learning in a less interactive environment.

Top 10 Training Mistakes Organizations Make
All too often organizations make the same age old mistakes when choosing and implementing a training program. Below is a list of 10 common training mistakes that organizations make time and time again.

Linden Lab and the Future of Virtual Worlds
With the recent announcement of Linden Labs (you know the company behind Second Life) to begin restructuring, one must wonder what the future has in store for our friends. Does this really translate to the end of all the hype surrounding virtual worlds?

So it’s not exactly decision-based or a virtual world, what the heck is it?
We are officially announcing a new capability of which we are very proud: ‘Hybrid Simulations’…where we lovingly bake in the best elements of Decision-Based Sims with the cost-effectiveness and flexibility of Virtual Worlds.

Training Today’s Military Forces
Military forces around the world rely on computer-based simulators to provide invaluable training for today’s warfighters. More and more military branches are turning to the simulation and virtual training market to increase retention and performance of our treasured warfighters, maximizing the benefits of this training technology.

Entertainment…Militainment
Militainment, huh? Just the name makes it sound so gamey and just plain wrong for training today’s techno savvy warfighters. The title itself belies the high standards of military training today. Take for example the official U.S. Army game called America’s Army, while it is a wildly popular gaming application and not to mention a great online recruiting tool, it’s still just a game.

Emulating Human Voice-overs with TTS Voices, Part Two
Since there was great interest in a blog entry last Fall called, ‘Emulating Human Voice-overs with TTS Voices’ I have elected to present those lessons as a Vlog, and so it makes sense that we give this newer presentation the same title, but suffixed with ‘Part Two’.

Serious Training Calls for Serious Games
Proven to be more effective than traditional training methods, Serious Gaming (SG) has many unique advantages. It’s not a new concept- it has been around for awhile dating as far back as 1977 when Clark Abt discussed the idea and used the term in his book, although it wasn’t directed to computers at that time.

E-Learning: Is It Really Worth It?
In a prior post I touched briefly on how e-learning tends to be, well, oversold. To follow up on this I wanted to review the relative costs associated with e-learning and compare to other technologies. With nearly one-third of training content being delivered electronically (according to ASTD’s 2008 State of the Industry Report) it’s no wonder it is such an easy go to.

Virtual Worlds & Training…Do They Mix With Social Media?
Social media seems to be all the rage right now. Is it really possible to infuse social media into a virtual world space? Would it be beneficial or detrimental?

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I recently came across some interesting statistics in spending on training from Tom Werner at Workplace Learning Today, which he had sourced from the Performance Improvement Quarterly.

• Total training spending (in 2008 dollars) increased just 1.5% from 1986 to 2008.

• Spending on training staff (in 2008 dollars) decreased 14% from 1986 to 2008.

• Overall spending on training products and services (in 2008 dollars) increased 232% from 1982 to 2008.

Notice that for the 26 year timeframe comparison of overall spending it increased 232 percent! Note that A Consumer Price Index of 158 indicates only 58% inflation since 1982, so there is 174 percent increase when not accounting for inflation.

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