enteRETAINment

Show, Don't Tell!

We all know that "a picture paints a thousand words." In movies, the dialogue supports the image. Images are more meaningful when easily recognized, allowing the audience to use their imagination and  recall a common experience. Used appropriately in learning, it can ratchet up the engagement factor.

From comic book legend Stan Lee (chairman emeritus of Marvel Enterprises and chief creative officer of POW! Entertainment) . . . "When I was in the Army I wrote training films and I wrote training manuals. One of my jobs was to take subjects that the troops were having trouble learning and rewrite the manuals so they could absorb that knowledge faster. And what I did was I used more illustrations. I came as close to the comic strip format as I could. I also added a bit of humor, which helps tremendously. And we were able to speed up the training processes in a lot of areas."

Fear of Telling True Stories

I just read a good article in the April issue of Fast Company titled Polarize Me. The subtitle is "If you want people to like you, first decide who needs to hate you."  The authors Dan & Chip Heath talk about how in marketing too many companies have a "Fear of saying to much. Fear of saying something clever  that someone might think is stupid. Fear of saying something revealing that might turn someone off."  They try not to exclude anyone and in the process bore everyone. Marketing guru Seth Godin said the same thing in his great book Purple Cow and in the Fast Company article he wrote, In Praise of the Purple Cow. According to Godin in Purple Cow, "criticism comes to those who stand out, if no one hates your brand then no one is a big fan either." Many companies want everyone to like them and are thus not differentiating themselves enough to make an impact, to stand out, to make people passionate about them.

In Polarize Me, the Heaths comment on how "fear of being disliked afflicts marketers" who fear making bold statements that may alienate customers as well as their boss other senior management. This marketing fear is also found in corporate communications and e-learning. Companies are afraid to tell powerful stories that make an impact for fear of alienating someone, whether customer or employee. So most corporate stories e-learning courses are vanilla-ized. Many times either myself or colleagues have presented ideas for story-based e-learning concepts that are a bit edgy, or identify an issue the company is having. These concepts tell it like it really is rather than candy coating things and the client comes back with "That's a great idea, but we don't want to highlight that event because it was a failure" or "we are very conservative and don't communicate that way" or "lets tone that down" (all are other ways of saying vanilla-ize it). What they want is to simply present information. What is being missed is that emotional impact captures people's attention, creates passion, and helps them retain information. It's not a timid brand communication like "timeless flavor of classic, authentic iced tea", its a message that says "if 'high-fructose corn syrup' on the label doesn't make you cringe, we don't want you." And its not a real learning story when we tell how employee John Doe appropriately processes a customer request. A real story is how John Doe botched up an order request, angered the customer, then figured out to to correct the situation and make the customer happy again. Thats real life learning. 

e-learning, Socrates and the Internet

How would Socrates use the Internet and intranets to teach? The same way he taught over 2000 years ago – share bits of important information, ask the students questions, propose problems, let them explore, guide and mentor them through the learning experience. In the book A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink mentions that “With facts so widely available and instantly accessible, each one becomes less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact.”

With so much information available on the Internet and corporate intranets it’s a great time and opportunity to incorporate some techniques used by Socrates and cut out extraneous content in e-learning. Instead of expecting the audience to remember everything, leverage the Internet and corporate intranets (loaded with information and job aids) and the ease of searching with tools like Google. Make the learning experience brief and powerful by giving the audience small bits of important information that reinforces key content elements. Use enterRETAINment to present the content in an entertaining/engaging fashion so it can be more easily retained. Point to resources, let the learner explore for more detail, allow them to ask questions and then mentor them through the learning experience.

Learning Applets

There are many opportunities throughout a typical work day for brief learning engagements (30 seconds-5 minutes) to reinforce key concepts. Smaller learning-applet style e-lessons that use rich media enterRETAINment elements allow us to make e-learning brief, more engaging and in some cases deliverable at the point it is most critically needed. It allows for more learning opportunities without pulling employees from their jobs for a half hour, hour or 2 hour e-learning course. Focusing on a few key points or concepts and making the experience more engaging means more information is retained.

A few years ago I worked for a cool little company in Honolulu called Referentia. At the time, they developed EPSS that plugged into software such as AutoCAD and JBuilder. The e-learning tutorials could be launched while in the application (such as AutoCAD). The really neat part of the tutorials were these brief 30 second to 1 minute long animated "Concepts" that you could launch that would quickly teach the user very high level information about the topic they were seeking help with. These "Concepts" with audio and animation were extremely engaging and  easily retained.

Attention Deficit

People are blasted with an enormous amount of information and messages daily. Because of this barrage, our attention span becomes more and more narrow. Life in our attention deficit society means sharing information quickly and in an engaging fashion. Media industry research has determined that 30 seconds is the attention span of the average viewer. Wrapping information into groups of 30 second segments is how televison newscasts disperse information and keep viewer attention.

An Inconvenient Truth

I went to see the global warming movie An Inconvenient Truth a couple of nights ago. Great movie and an interesting example of combining learning with story/entertainment. Though too long to really be considered enterRETAINment in the true sense, the movie does present some incredible facts and scientific information and weaves it all  together with a great story with fantastic pace. While you don't retain a lot of the many facts that are presented you do walk away with many important bits of information retained . . . the incredible speed that glaciers world wide are melting, the off the charts levels of CO2 being produced, the extreme weather conditions currently playing out all over the world, the fact that most scientist agree that we are causing global warming and that things are moving faster than they thought, and that we as individuals can still make a positive impact to help correct things. it's an important movie and engaging enterRETAINment piece. I strongly recommend that you and your family see it. Visit the website climatecrisis.org. Read the book An Inconvenient Truth.

Stories and the Human Brain

The human brain naturally organizes experience and knowledge in the form of stories. Humans have always communicated with each other through stories. According to author Dan Pink in his fantastic book A Whole New Mind . . . "With facts so widely available and instantly accessible, they become less valuable. What begins to matter more is the ability to place these facts in context and to deliver them with emotional impact."

e-Learning is most effective when . . .

• it is used just-in-time
• is about doing rather than knowing - lets the audience pratcitce or participate rather than being told something
• If you must tell, use stories or scenarios - real life stories, stories told by a recognized person (colleague, expert) and stories that the audience can identify with are most effective
• is engaging and entertaining
• is truly interactive, immersing the audience
• teaches/tells the story in a graphical way