Sealund’s Serious Games Blog

As in all project management, instructional systems projects have three levels of structure: an underlying methodology; processes for design, development, evaluation and implementation; and standards for outputs at each phase. This posting focuses on processes which will support the ability of team members to be creative and innovative within guidelines.

Processes for each project phase

The processes for each phase of instructional systems projects support the methodology with detailed procedures, usually captured in flow charts with related forms and checklists. (See, for example, City of Chandler, AZ, pp. 5-14) These elements ensure standardization and quality, and produces related artifacts in addition to those of the deliverables themselves.

The project initiation process produces a high-level project description and documents the project’s justification, safety and security issues, organizations involved, cost and resource estimates, timeline, and list of approvals necessary. (See, for example, U.S. Department of Commerce, Section 7.)

The planning process follows initiation approval, beginning with rigorous requirements engineering and analysis. On the basis of the requirements (including constraints), planning develops a number of artifacts: the project scope; project level indicators; project management tools such as a scorecard for use with the formal project plan and project level indicators to assess the project’s risk and complexity; plans for resources, staffing, purchases, and acquisitions; detailed plans for managing risk, security, testing, training, change control (including scope creep prevention), quality, documentation of lessons learned, and approval for deliverables. (See, for example, U.S. Department of Commerce, Section 7.2.)

 

 

Development processes include, broadly, steps for project team development, resource acquisition, security, quality assurance (building quality in with incremental testing rather than repairing deliverables after large deliverable testing), resource management, and communications. (See, for example, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 6.)

Monitoring and controlling processes strongly effect both development efficiency and final deliverable quality. They involve quality control, change control, independent verifications and validations as needed, performance reporting, risks and issues monitoring, implementing testing at the designated development and delivery points, final security review, implementing the training plan (if any), documenting lessons learned, and approvals required for deliverables. (See, for example, U.S. Department of Defense, Chapter 8.)

Project closing processes document verifies the customer’s acceptance of final deliverables, and may include a final budget accounting and final lessons learned. (See, for example, Virginia Tech University.)

Why detailed, documented processes are important

Processes support the standardization of many elements that ensure the highest quality deliverables. Documented processes establish clients’ expectations for performance at each phase of the project, and they ensure the company’s stability through the inevitable changes – from requirements and material resources to human resources. Processes for “building quality in” at all phases through frequent quality assurance reviews and/or tests and frequent lessons-learned sessions ensure continuous process, and hence product, improvement.

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RESOURCES – The following resources reflect the broadly accepted standards described above and may help you identify specific process elements that will help with your own process refinement.

City of Chandler, Arizona. Project Management Methodology Guidelines. http://www.chandleraz.gov/Content/PM000PMMethodologyGDE.pdf (Accessed 1/26/2013)

PMI (Project Management Institute). PMBOK Guide and Standards®. http://www.pmi.org/PMBOK-Guide-and-Standards.aspx (Accessed 1/26/2013)

Texas Tech University. IT Project Management Practices Guide. http://www.depts.ttu.edu/infotech/pmguide.pdf (Accessed 1/26/2013)

U.S. Department of Commerce. Scalable Project Management Methodology, (http://ocio.os.doc.gov/ITPolicyandPrograms/ Project_Management/PROD01_006871): “Project Management Process Groups,” http://ocio.os.doc.gov/ITPolicyandPrograms/ Project_Management/PROD01_006871#P456_30313, and “Project Planning Process Group,” http://ocio.os.doc.gov/ITPolicyandPrograms/ Project_Management/PROD01_006871#P489_35873 (Accessed 1/26/2013)

U.S. Department of Defense. Extension to: A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide), First Edition, Version 1.0, June 2003. Defense Acquisition University Press: Fort Belvoir, Virginia. http://www.dau.mil/pubs/gdbks/DoDExtPMBOK–June%2003.pdf (Accessed 1/26/2013)

Virginia Tech University. Project Management Process Guidelines. http://www.itplanning.org.vt.edu/pm/processtable.html (Accessed 1/26/2013)

As the official sponsor of the SALT Washington Interactive Learning Technologies Conference in Reston, Virginia, on August 15-17, Sealund we had the opportunity to co-present a session on learning games for sales professionals with our client, Carnival Cruise Lines.

Avatars on Board at the Sealund-Carnival Cruise Lines Presentation

At the SALT Conference, Sealund and Carnival teamed to present “The Carnival Cruise Lines Globally Deploys Avatar-Based Learning Games to Travel Agents.” Carnival Cruise Lines and Sealund collaborated to engage Travel Agents’ eagerness to learn in a fun way to learn while competing with others, complete with incentives to come back, play more games, and win again and again! A whole new way of learning the “tools of the trade” has increased sales for booking cruises, and ensures that guests are booked on the Carnival ship that will meet their individual needs and exceed their wildest dreams for a FUN cruise. That kind of learning experience equates to more bookings, more happy customers, and more sales! Sealund’s designers and developers created the learning games using instructional methodologies and games-based technologies to ensure high user involvement, greater retention of learning concepts, and motivation for repeated play. Click http://www.sealund.com/demos/carnival/adventures/, or the image above to experience Sealund’s Carnival Cruise Lines learning games demo.

Avatar-Based Learning Games Presentation

Lee Clark, Manager of Worldwide Training and Development for Carnival, and I showed participants how “games raise our level of expectation to the fantastic, and our biochemical reward system pays out when we build expectation towards a reward,” and how that process also increases retention because “during game-play, learners apply multiple learning modalities simultaneously – visual, auditory, kinesthetic.”

Our presentation was well attended, and the participants discovered the (not so secret) secrets of success for game-based learning at Carnival Cruise Lines University, where “gaming as an intrinsic element of corporate culture and procedures can improve employee productivity and product/service quality.” As you see, all the hands in the air kept us busy!

Based on these proven instructional principles, Carnival Cruise Lines is enjoying a greater return on investment (ROI) for its training dollars. The Cruise-Aders program has been developing highly motivated, well-educated agents who produce high quality products and deliver excellent customer service.

The course engages the agents in learning games such as Cruise Rookie Baseball, Speed Booking with real-life examples, and Cruising with simulations of ship-life activities including casino and miniature golf. Agents are motivated to replay to accrue more “leaderboard fun points” and passport stamps for achievements, and to win contests and giveaways.

Think about it! What motivates you to keep coming back for more activities – solving puzzles, winning prizes, competition, earning rewards? All of the above?

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As the official sponsor of the SALT Washington Interactive Learning Technologies Conference in Reston, Virginia, on August 15-17, Sealund we had the opportunity to co-present a session on real-time simulation courseware with our client, PaRR Inspections.

Real-time Simulations for PaRR Disaster Recovery Inspections

In a real-time simulation, the computer clock runs at the same rate as the actual physical system to replicate real-life activities, and that is crucial for property inspections after a disaster occurs. Think about it. What if it were your house that was damaged by a fire, earthquake, or hurricane? Wouldn’t you want a thoroughly trained and efficient inspector to give you a fast, accurate assessment of the damages so your insurance coverage could begin working for you? That’s what we’re helping PaRR Inspections provide.

If a real disaster looks like these…

the inspector will have trained with a 3D simulation that starts out looking like these …

so that he or she can accurately assess damages in all the simulated scenarios that reflect your property’s actual condition.

And the inspector will have practiced with the company’s actual online forms, like these:

… so that in the end, you’re as satisfied as this:

Along with the PaRR team who participated in developing this project, session audience members discovered the importance of these factors in creating a course that reduces both training costs and time to mastery:

• Including end users from the beginning of the project
• Stating the objectives you really want to achieve because nothing is impossible
• Setting deadlines and know when to say “no”
• Finding a good teaming partner

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Sealund was the Official Sponsor of the SALT Washington Interactive Learning Technologies Conference in Reston, Virginia, on August 15-17. The Sealund team had a great time interacting with conference attendees, and we’re pretty sure everybody learned while doing … after all, isn’t that what simulations and games for learning are all about?!

In addition to introducing new technologies at the Sealund booth, we made joint presentations with Carnival Cruise Lines and PaRR Inspections. You can click the logos below to find out more about the Carnival session on learning games for sales professionals and the PaRR session on real-time simulation training for disaster recovery inspectors.

What’s Happening at the Sealund Booth: Cruising to New Learning Destinations with NO Disasters to InspectOur booth attracted a lot of attention! Visitors explored our innovative avatar-based learning, serious games, virtual learning environments, and all the related instructional methods. A good time was had by all, even without daiquiris and mai tais and their cute little umbrellas (although this was a hot, sunny August in Virginia)!

Some booth visitors (left) enjoyed exploring avatar-based learning games and simulations, while others observed how our courseware is SCORM and Rule 508 compliant.

Below, our guests learned how real-time simulations are constructed and then operated by learners for the most true-to-life and time-sensitive simulations of their work environments.

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The Tampa Bay area has recently had an abundance of rain (overabundance, some may say) but avoided the devastation of a direct hit by Hurricane Isaac. For many children in the area, the nation, and around the world, though, life holds an abundance of nothing except (one hopes) love and considerable financial devastation. So I want to share with you the opportunity we all have to do some good through Feeding Children Everywhere

Feeding Children Everywhere is a social charity that empowers and mobilizes people to assemble healthy meals for hungry children. Each dollar donated provides four (yes, four!) healthy, delicious meals! You can click on the link above or the logo at left to visit the website, but first let me introduce you to some reasons why I personally support this charity.

First, although it has many corporate supporters with names you’d recognize, its volunteers are its heart and soul, and participating as a volunteer nourishes our own hearts and souls. Just look at these happy volunteers!

Find out what one person can do!Revered anthropologist Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I think she’s right! I’m seeing it happen every day.

So watch the What Can One Person Do? video here, and find out what you can do … what we can all join together and do!

When and where to do it…

Feeding Children Everywhere has exciting events in the area—some very soon and others in coming months—in which you can participate. Each event will feature great music, good fun and the chance to make a tangible difference in the life of a hungry child.

Click on any link or logo below to find out more.

Project 3 is going on right now, through August 30, with three shifts of volunteer packaging meals every day.

Pack the Park will package 1 million meals on September 29-30, in Festival Park in downtown Orlando. So take a day off from feeding “The House of Mouse” to feeding kids who may not even have a house. I bet you’ll find that this experience with reality is more fulfilling than any fantasy land.

On September 15th, Julie Knight is joining with Feeding Children Everywhere to sponsor a meal packaging event to feed hungry children in Hillsborough County, with a goal of 50,000 meals packaged at Primrose School of Tampa Palms, 5307 Primrose Lake Circle, Tampa, FL 33647.

On September 26, Ringling College of Art + Design students will be hand-packaging 10,000 healthy meals to be distributed to local public schools’ crisis food pantries.

And those are just some of the events in the next month! On this page, you can find 17 more events between now and early 2013. Some events need volunteers, but some organizations are providing all the volunteers and need only donations, many others need both volunteers and donations. We can’t all give, but we can certainly all do!

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I recently visited the Naval Air Warfare Center Training Services Division in Orlando, Florida to brief them on our training design and development capabilities. This Training Services Division provides complete training solutions, including requirements analysis, design, development and full life cycle support. NAWCTSD prides itself on providing continuous learning across a wide variety of applications (aviation, surface, undersea, etc.) integrating instructional/learning science with performance-based training and training effectiveness measurement. That sure sounds like a good fit for Sealund’s philosophy, methodology, and services!

The demonstrations included our:

• Avatar Animation Technology™ that brings training applications to life. We hope the Training Services Division can benefit from our rapid prototyping that significantly reduces both time to deployment and costs to deploy innovative training solutions, while increasing learning engagement and retention.
• Virtual Learning Environments, like this disaster recovery course or this law enforcement course, for live-action simulations that replicate reality for intense learner engagement.
• Serious Games for Learning, including Serious Games Engines, off-the-shelf products and customized Serious Games solutions. Serious games’ increased engagement and retention of important information makes them appropriate for the Training Services Division’s emphasis on performance-based training and training effectiveness measurement.

Hope it’s smooth sailing ahead for our Navy trainees!

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Get the Flash Player to see this player.We know that we learn best from playing, and that serious games are highly effective learning tools. But no matter how engaging the training is, the training will not be as effective when the learners are exhausted. Today I want to share some thoughts on the bottom-line benefits of employee vacations. I just returned from a great vacation, feeling energized, sharp-minded, and at the top of my game, all my games – golf, tennis, and business!

Brains need a break for peak performance!

A 2011 CNN health report cited Adam Galinsky, professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University’s finding that detaching from a familiar environment can help people get new perspectives on everyday life. That’s true for their work-life, too. The same report noted that Ellen Langer, professor of psychology at Harvard University, described the benefits of vacationing as part of being mindful, a concept that involves being present and nonjudgmentally observant. Being mindful means noticing new things, Langer said. People’s automatic, mindless routines at work and home are broken only when they separate themselves from familiar surroundings – as on a vacation. Langer and other researchers have identified mindfulness’s benefits in health and wellbeing – and isn’t that the kind of employees we all want? Perceptive and healthy.

Also in 2011, the Los Angeles Times summarized several studies on stress in the workplace. The headline is: “Studies show that vacation time can go a long way in reducing stress and bringing our brains back to a more even keel.” We’ve probably all experienced the truth of that conclusion. The summary also noted that studies with rats have shown that stress can actually shrink parts of their brains, and a 2009 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that it probably shrinks ours, too.

A 2012 study reported in the Yale News reiterates that although “the effects of stress on brains of healthy individuals have been unclear … even the brains of subjects who had only recently experienced a stressful life event showed markedly lower gray matter in portions of the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that regulates not only emotions and self-control, but physiological functions such as blood pressure and glucose levels. Rajita Sinha, the Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, and professor in the Department of Neurobiology and the Yale Child Study Center, concluded that “The brain is dynamic and plastic and things can improve — but only if stress is dealt with in a healthy manner.”

Putting two and two together, we can apply those findings to learning and productivity at work, and realize that when employees take vacations, everybody benefits … even the bottom line!

I investigated a bit further the relationship between vacations (with resulting lower-stressed brains) and employee productivity, and found some interesting statistics.

The Devil’s in the data.

How do US employees measure against those of other comparably developed nations in vacation days and productivity? First, I was disappointed to realize that US worker productivity had fallen by nearly one percentage point in the first quarter of 2012, but saw that we were about on par with or ahead of most other comparable nations. Then I noticed that three other countries with five or more weeks of vacation days mandated by federal statute had higher productivity than the US, and a fourth was only 0.3 lower than the US. I was surprised! Then I wondered why that might be.

Developed Nation Employees	Vacation Days (Statutory)	GDP per hour worked, current prices (USD)
US	0 (10 working days + 8 national holidays is standard for FTEs at employer’s discretion)	60.9The US Dept. of Labor found that US worker productivity for 2011-2012 (output/work hour) fell by 0.9% - Details: Hours worked ↑ 3.3% Output ↑ 2.4% So we’re working more hours but producing less per hour. Output, not productivity, is up. We’re working longer, but the opposite of smarter.
Australia	0 (28 days is standard)	47.2
Netherlands	20	60.6
Germany	24 + 9-13 bank holidays	55.5
Japan	25	39.8
Sweden	25-32 (depending on age)	51.8
Norway	25	74.9
Luxembourg	25 + 14 bank holidays	77.1
Canada	26	46.6
UK	28	47.8
Switzerland	28	50.3
Ireland	29	66
Spain	30	48.5
Denmark	30	53.4
France	37	57.8
Italy	42	45.1

After all, even without federally required employee vacation days, US workers get an average of 18 vacation days. That’s less than Australian companies give their workers on average (also with no mandated days), and our GDP outperforms their by nearly 14 points. So why do workers in the Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, and Ireland perform as well as US workers or outperform them? Can those additional vacation days have something to do with it, or are there more significant cultural issues?

The answer seems to be, yes, both.

The stress issue seems to reach far beyond brain shrinkage, to overall health. The American Psychosomatic Society, which studies the connection between stress and physical well-being, announced research results with strong implications for employee management. A detailed sixteen-year project tracking 12,338 men aged 35 to 57 found that, with other factors (diet, exercise, smoking) controlled, the men who took annual vacations where they actually relaxed were 21% less likely to get sick and die during the study period than those who took no real vacations. The regular-vacationers’ chances of dying of heart disease in particular were 32% lower than those of people not taking vacations. Other studies suggest that, for women, the difference is even more dramatic: Female managers who take two or more vacations per year cut their heart attack risk in half, compared to women who take no time off.

According to a recent study by Harris Interactive, reported by CNN-Money, 57% of Americans ended 2011 with unused vacation time, failing to take, on average, 11 of their allotted days off — or 70% of what they’d rightfully earned. Other national surveys have calculated that as many as 66 percent of us keep working when we could be kicking back somewhere, leaving unused a total of 459 million vacation days.

So why aren’t American workers taking the vacation days they’ve earned? The CNN-Money report stated that “as companies cut back on staff during the recession, they learned how to get by with a leaner workforce and rely more on technology. Since then, employees who saw their workloads build up over those years feel they can’t afford to take time off.” But, as the stressed-brain studies and declining US worker productivity suggest, we can’t afford for employees to not take time off!

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How would you feel if, in the middle of a business day, you heard wind and rain, and looked down from your second-floor office window to see what I saw in the video at the right, here?

Tropical Storm Debby brought Tampa Bay severe weather for several days in June. Taking precautionary measures for predictable and unexpected disasters is imperative. Investment in business continuity planning and resources is a matter of good stewardship as well as bottom-line common sense. Both people and things must be protected, and business, like “the show,” must go on … or at least resume as promptly and robustly as possible.

Disaster Strikes whether we are prepared or not

In the photo at left, my husband is rescuing our kayak from going out to sea. Loss can be devastating both at home and business.

Virginia was slammed with thousands of homes and businesses losing power and unable to work on the job or at home!

What if your employees live in flooded neighborhoods, or neighborhoods ravaged by the flames of the Southwest’s fires in Colorado Springs?

Experts can help you plan for business continuity, but only you and your company’s team can make sure that employees have resources in such times and know how to access and use them! TRAINING in business continuity (disaster recovery) measures is essential to your business’s well-being and that of your employees. PricewaterhouseCoopers, however, reports the sad and astounding fact that, in 2012 only 39% of businesses report having held regular practice in implementing business continuity plans! That number was down from the only 50% that previously reported regularly testing their business continuity plans.

Avatar-based Simulation Training Can Ensure Business Continuity

Expert Patrick Dunn advises that “You can’t just have a plan. You have to test it, exercise it, so people know what to do in such a situation. You have to provide a real-life scenario.” For a plan requiring employees to take action, the best training model is probably at least annual live “drills” where they actually perform the required behaviors. But if that is cost-prohibitive or logistically impossible for all employees, especially new-hires, avatar-based simulation training will meet the need.

You never know what’s around the corner…

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Play + Relate + Create = LEARN!

Dolphins have brains very like ours and both eyes facing forward, and they’re mammals just as we are. Okay, we can’t find objects we mislay or hidden objects in games by echolocation as dolphins do (although some people have learned to do that, too), but we can certainly learn through play and relationships as dolphins do! Take a look at this video about dolphin learning processes.

Wouldn’t you love to learn the same way? Well, in fact, we do! (Just don’t try to take your Xbox underwater.)

Learning Games – Learn Like a Dolphins

Immersive Experience: Yes, the dolphins really do immerse themselves in the experience, but so do we.

We learn through all kinds of experience, of course, but games—especially learning games—provide a structure in which we learn. Diana Oblinger’s 2006 paper titled “Simulations, Games, and Learning“¹ reminds us that “It is important to emphasize that games and play may be effective learning environments, not because they are ‘fun’² but because they are immersive, require the player to make frequent, important decisions, have clear goals, adapt to each player individually, and involve a social network.”³

Teamwork:

Who hasn’t experienced greater effectiveness in some process through teamwork? Just like the dolphins, we work well in teams. In 2007, Science Daily reported that “A two-year study of college students at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU) shows that students learn better and develop higher-level skills by participating in cooperative (team) activities, compared to traditional classroom teaching methods.” Whether it’s a job task with our work team, a household chore with the family, or a team learning challenge, the mere act of communicating with others stimulates our learning. We watch each other’s expressions, talk, encourage, call time-out, succeed, fail, regroup, rethink … and learn. That same study’s author, Dr. Elsa Sanchez, noted that “lectures are far less conducive to facilitating higher levels of thinking, such as application of concepts and analysis and synthesis of information” and that “Using cooperative activities also allows students to practice skills that will enhance their future careers, including communication, conflict resolution, creativity and time management.”

Creativity: Then there’s the creative aspect of learning. Whether the games are on the ground or online, all games stimulate our creativity. There are usually many paths to the ultimate “win” – just as in real life. Everyone doesn’t have to learn the necessary facts or tactics in the same sequence as everybody else, although, as a team, we eventually coordinate what we know and how we perform the skills we’ve learned. As Mike Shumake observed in his 2012 article, “Game-Based Learning: A Paradigm Shifting Opportunity for Innovation,” a single game can teach several topics: “A creative role-playing game that addresses areas of each [curriculum] might start with five students on a gaming team with the teacher as the architect, a player who is in charge of enforcing the rules and defining how the world reacts to the characters’ actions.” As learning game producers know, the more skillful learners become at the game’s techniques, the more the learners take control over their game environment and activities; we build that flexibility into the games to encourage the learners’ ownership and creativity in the learning experience. That, to circle back to Oblinger’s observation, is what makes the games immersive and the learning so effective.

Whichever way you learn, may it always make you jump for joy!

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Footnotes:

1. Diana Oblinger (2006). “Simulations, Games, and Learning.” Accessed at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI3004.pdf on 06/11/2012.
2. Rafe Kotter defines fun as “the act of mastering a problem mentally” in A Theory of Fun for Game Design; see http://www.theoryoffun.com/.
3. 3. Richard Van Eck, “Digital Game-Based Learning,” op. cit.

These are exciting times at Sealund and Associates! We’re marking our 27^th anniversary with a move to bigger, higher-tech office space.

Another Year of Serving the Best Clients in the World

This year Sealund hits another milestone, our 27^th anniversary of providing Innovative Custom Training Solutions to our clients. We are privileged and honored to work with the most amazing Global Corporations, Military Operations, and the U.S. Government. As a small, woman-owned business, we have been recognized as a leader and award winner for developing Innovative Training Solutions since 1985.

New Office Space for Innovative Development

On March 23, we march over to our inspiring new offices! With our rapid growth in designing and developing serious games, avatar-based virtual learning environments, and mobile applications, we need a larger facility to serve the needs of our growing client community. We now have an even higher technology environment in a secured facility, including a Cisco Temperature-controlled server room with the highest security and the highest quality video conferencing capability.

When you first arrive, we will meet you and greet you in style …

and offer you a lovely view!

Then we can gather in comfort for an inspiring brainstorming session, with video conferencing capability for your remote teammates … and there’s that view again!

Our design team can meet separately to design the best solutions for your projects …

where the important views are inside their heads and on the wide screen, with video conferencing capability for including remote subject matter and technical experts.

And then return to their inspiring work spaces to develop those solutions for you

We’ll be at 970 Lake Carillon Drive, St. Petersburg, in the prestigious Echelon Pointe Building in the Carillon Complex. Please stop by for a visit or join us for an Open House next month … watch this space for details. Hope to see you soon!

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