I was in the midst of an internal meeting discussing a proposal prepared by me for a particular client, when one of my colleague – who was on the marketing side – started the argument. He said we need multiple solution approaches (one of which should be gamification).*
Let me give a little background to the point I am trying to share here. The client wanted to convert all the training into a video which would run around 15 – 18 minutes. The target audience were a group of sales guys who needed to know the organizational and local government rules and regulations pertaining to the industry and around the sales process. The content as usual for this kind of regulatory training was about rules and regulations, processes, and best practices that one must follow while dealing with various stakeholders involved in the deal.
Going back to our starting point of this discussion, that suggestion about multiple approaches including gamification was made by my colleague without any analysis of the content but on a very preliminary discussion (the first meeting to share the client need) where he had asked a few questions to understand the need. In reply, the client stated that we need to have an automated (read asynchronous) training intervention to make the sales guys aware of the kind of regulatory framework.
If we take understanding of the client that training is the solution here, what should be the kind of training intervention that would yield the best result?
- Can a gamified regulatory course fulfill the objective?
- Is it the best possible solution considering all the usual factors including cost, time (production hours lost), and post training knowledge transfer to work?
- What about any other form of web based training, or, maybe short video nuggets?
- What if we had a WebEx recording from a subject matter expert on government rules and regulations pertaining to this content?
- Can we just have the content visually treated to enrich the aesthetic points and present it in the form of a PowerPoint, or, PDF? Maybe a flip-book type of output?
There are many other thoughts that come to my mind as possible solution. Obviously, not all of them will pass the feasibility test and only a few of those feasible options will actually be fit for consideration as a training intervention. Moreover, we have to select only one as the final recommended training intervention.
My choice here is a web based training with built-in scenarios and knowledge check questions in the scenario format to help the learner associate and apply the learning to specific situations. This will help to strengthen the neural associations for long term retention. The training can also include very short video(s) explaining the various rules from a usability point of view. In the end, we can have a summative assessment in a gamified format (maybe a patterned word puzzle which gets solved as the learner progresses through the questions graded as per levels of difficulty).
Well that is what I feel at this point and this view can change with time. In future, I may come up with a new solution (or may be not)!
What is your take on the solution? What would you do if you were in my place?
* The scenario discussed above is purely imaginary, used only to illustrate a view point, and does not relate to any real life scenario faced by me. Any similarity to a real life situation is purely coincidental.