As a project manager (these days I often wear my Instructional Design hat, too)  I’ve constantly challenged myself to explore ways to best foster collaboration on projects. Enspire is a flexible workplace so my colleagues work from locations that best meets their needs on a given day. I’ve found that the following three resources have been especially helpful in facilitating collaboration between team members that are a few feet away or continents apart: Google Docs is free and allows users to create and edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentations online while collaborating in real-time with other users. At Enspire, we also use enterprise Gmail, Google Sites, Google Hangouts, and a host of other tools in the Google Apps constellation. All these resources have been tremendous assets to our teams and help us to serve our busy clients better.  Lucidchart diagramming software is integrated with Google Drive and allows us to collaboratively organize thoughts with colleagues. The intuitive drag and drop functionality truly simplifies the experience of developing our client experience! Balsamiq wire framing software can be used to create representations of early-skeletal GUIs. The wireframes have an appearance of a pencil sketch and help in planning page layout. We also use Balsamiq as part of our proposal processes. Clients that see a pretty good mockup assembled for a proposal may assume that they’re looking at the real mccoy, while clients seeing Balsamiq’s deliberately "rough" renderings will see them as intended:  a representation of ideas and an invitation to collaborate. Speaking of which, Balsamiq’a integration with Google Drive allows for collaboration between team members. Collaboration tools have developed enormously over the past few years. What collaboration tools do you use in your workplace? The post Tools for the Flexible Workplace appeared first on Enspire.

Take Our Poll Susan Smith Nash, Ph.D. has put together 26 brief video introductions to some of the issues you are likely to encounter in your e-learning experience. She starts with the letter A and goes all the way to Z.Dr Nash has a background in interdisciplinary, she has been involved in eLearning and technology-enhanced training and education since the early 1990’s. She has published many books and has many online resources; these videos are only one resource she has. In these videos she covers everything from online courses to gaming. All videos can be downloaded to your iPod or PSP. You also have the option to listen to the podcast instead of watching the videos. This all can be viewed at http://mlearners.com/ Here is an example of the letter I. Dr Nash has chosen Institution for I. She talks about traditional classes vs. distance learning. I am sorry I wasn’t able to get a better picture but you can view this at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=498642980929266102&hl=en You can read more about Dr Nash by visiting: http://elearnqueen.blogspot.com/ -Lynn

When opportunities come fast and furious, or, even worse, few and far between, it’s easy to freak out and depart controlled flight in your learning services business. Rough air or cash flow headaches are part and parcel of any enterprise. Keep your head when things get choppy. Make sure everyone’s on the right plane. Team members and clients love a business with direction. This obvious statement can challenge a services company, which at its broadest can be chartered to "just do great work".  If you envision a sunny destination or a great trip ("We’re good at sales training… let’s see if we can win some more") for your learning services business, chart a course and help your team follow you. Don’t change direction ("Now we’re going to Reykjavik!") every time things get bumpy. That can disorient and demoralize your team, and alarmed clients will all depress their steward call buttons simultaneously.  Avoid storms. Saying "no" won’t win the deal at hand, but it may win respect, or a better deal down the road, and it can preserve your good name. If a client approaches with an opportunity that’s not a good fit, say so. We’ve done it, probably less often than we should. Plunging into the cloud wall because you need or want the cash can wreak havoc with your reputation if the engagement goes poorly. At the same time, not every cloud harbors a storm. Warm up your business acumen radar to see if the shortest path to St. Maarten is over, under, or through the veil. Keep the cabin crew happy. Businesses without employees evaporate like morning dew. Your best folks, be they salespeople, project managers, artists, developers, or instructional designers are the ones clients talk to the most. However much clients might like you, unless you’re a great thought leader (I, myself, am not), clients realize that the people who will make their journey comfortable are the ones working for you. Work the comms. The only person inside your head is you. It echoes a lot in there, so you’re probably up to speed on your message and all the initiatives you’ve launched. Outside your skull visibility may be lower. It’s ok to repeat your business’ central thesis. Be lavish with praise, evenhanded in corrective feedback. Passionate employees want to know they’re doing a good job and want to know how to do a better one. Additionally, and here the aviation metaphor goes thin in our post 9/11 world, get off the flight deck now and again. Head back and talk to clients. Once you’re seated behind the yoke again, remember to make time to talk to your peers and mentors. Being in charge is varying parts exhilarating and emotionally taxing. Nobody’s supposed to say it (pilot code, and all) but a business leader who tells you he hasn’t lain awake at night or buried her head in a pillow is lying. Mind the gas tank. Business/airplane metaphors need cash flow to keep the engines turning. If it’s hard to devote time to the books, find someone who can - preferably a real accountant directed sternly to keep you in the know at weekly intervals. While cash flow dips are part of any services business story, fuel starvation often results from poor planning. Husband resources with good resource management. Multiple people can do multiple things, and "flexible workplace" can mean flexing to more hours or tasks on occasion. When all else fails, fly the plane Autopilots excel at smoothly correcting course, attitude, or altitude deviations from a setpoint in a flightpath. Competently managed, sound businesses with good people will generally stay airborne unless someone banks them into the ground or a building storm. No sane pilot would throw a plane around the sky just to see what happens. Don’t do it to your learning team. There are certainly better things you can be up to (see "Communicate"). That said, in moments of genuine crisis you need to grab the yoke and pull hard. Know the state of your business at all times, and know what control inputs can get back to controlled flight at any time without horribly overshooting your setpoint. If your setpoint keeps changing you have a strategy problem. Expect barfy team members and clients. How do you keep your learning business flying? The post Keep your Learning Business Flying appeared first on Enspire.

Everybody’s heard about Generation X and Generation Y. What do you know about Generation Z? As a learning designer, are you able to decrypt their motivations and how they consume information? By understanding Generation Z and how they think, we are better equipped to reach them. Gen Z includes kids born from 1995-2010. It’s possible that their parents had 3D ultrasounds, their arrival into the world was recorded on video, and their growth was tracked on social media sites. Gen Z has grown up with information that is "chunked" via micro blogging (text messages, IMs and tweets). They’re digital natives and carry the Internet in their pockets. They live for speed, expect instant gratification, like to express their "individual cool," and usually discover new things through friends. Caroline Greener is an Audience Engagement Specialist who for the past 8 years has supported a range of organizations in understanding, reaching, engaging and retaining audiences. In this article from 2013, she writes about the top three attitudinal and behavioral trends to consider when designing e-Learning products for Generation Z. The post Engage Generation Z appeared first on Enspire.

I spent this past New Year’s Eve revisiting the classic mystery board game, Clue. A few weeks later, I was reading this fascinating article that a friend sent me about an alternate reality game that leads its players into the darkest recesses of the Internet. And, for quite some time, I’ve been thinking about the problem of content in game-based learning — namely, how do you make a game in which the primary goal is simply to uncover content while, at the same time, respecting the integrity of game play? Can you decode a common theme here? It has to do with puzzles, which are all about decoding. In fact, what defines a puzzle and sets it apart from most other varieties of games is that it has a single correct answer or set of answers, facts to be solved for. This is what Clue and the alternate reality game described in the article have in common. Clue, for one, is a game with a variable set of three facts at its center — the perpetrator of the crime, the weapon used, and the location in which the crime was committed. These facts are drawn from three blind decks and placed in an envelope before the game starts. The remainder of the cards are dealt to the players. None of the players know which cards are in the envelope, but they know there are a finite set of possibilities. By questioning other players about the cards that they hold, a player can eventually deduce the three cards in the envelope and win the game. What I love about Clue is that it is essentially a puzzle, but it is structured in such a way as to overcome one of the biggest issues with puzzles — the problem of failure. In contrast with puzzles, most games support the player when they fail by allowing them to replay and providing multiple paths to victory. The player is rewarded with mastery over time and his or her frustration is limited. On the other hand, if you hit an impassable wall while decoding a sudoku or crossword puzzle, for instance, you must simply stop working on it, unless you can uncover some hints that allow you to break through. This can be terribly frustrating, and it can turn some players off. Of course, for a game like the internet alternate reality game, this merciless feature of puzzles is put to deliberate use, serving a sort of winnowing function which ensures that only the cleverest and most dogged of players advance. In Clue, however, one player will almost invariably arrive at the answer. This is because players have multiple rounds in which to ask questions and receive hints until one of them figures out the mystery. In fact, this process of questioning and hint-giving constitutes almost the entirety of game play. In this way, the creator of Clue baked the hints to its variable puzzle directly into the design of the game. Other puzzle-based games, such as alternate reality games and adventure games, also typically build in hints and workarounds in order to ensure that they are accessible to players. So what does this mean for us? Well, it seems we can make more deliberate use of puzzles and puzzle-based games in game-based learning and gamification. I see at least couple of opportunities: When content is king in the training or education program that you’re gamifying, you have a prime opportunity to create some puzzles and/or a puzzle-based game. Unlike most other types of games, puzzles hold facts that are directly discernible to the player. If, for instance, one central purpose of an onboarding experience is to impart to the player the names and functions of the various departments within the organization, then it seems to me that a puzzle-based game is best suited to this purpose. Whenever reasoning is a central part of the learning experience, you can design puzzles that align to the reasoning skills you want to instill. In some ways, in fact, puzzles are more about reasoning than they are about the facts at the center of them. After a game of Clue, for example, the exact set of cards in the envelope is far less memorable to me than my reasoning strategy and the breakthrough moment in which the mystery was solved. When it comes to gamification, I can think of few better modes for challenging your learners’ reasoning abilities. The post A Bit Puzzled appeared first on Enspire.

Frequently we blog about stuff we’re thinking. This week we blog about doing. We’re busy! Busy, of course, is good. To ring in the weekend we’re pleased to share new learning demos, as well as some treats from our experience design and media arm, Houndstooth. See new Enspire Learning case studies for Wells Fargo, The University of Texas, EverFi, MasterCard, and more. In this mix: mobile, 508, WCAG, and LTI tools. Lots of juicy trailers, too. See Houndstooth’s 2014 reel. See Houndstooth’s Dell Children’s Hospital Gala recap. (We posted a cell-phone video teaser a couple of weeks back. This is the full monty.) Next week check back for an article on Enspire photo and video shoots. See behind the scenes pictures from one of our recent giant medical shoots, and get some tips for your own shoot! The post Spotlight > New demos, reels, and more! appeared first on Enspire.

Gaming in Education, Education in Gaming. See Enspire’s Director of Games and Simulations Robert Bell, in distinguished company w. Gary Hoover and others. Free! 5-6 PM, Sunday, March 15th at Hyatt Regency Austin, Zilker Ballroom 4. More info, here: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP44415   ‪#‎sxsw‬ ‪#‎GamingEd‬ The post #SXSW Learning Games appeared first on Enspire.

Congratulations to @enspire ‘s experience design and media arm, @_houndstooth, on ‪#‎sxsw‬ Experience Wave Wall’s mention in Architectural Digest! Houndstooth’s sculpture was designed and fabricated for the SXSW Eco Light Garden in Austin’s Republic Square Park. Read about it and other sculptures, here. The post HT #SXSW in Architectural Digest appeared first on Enspire.

Thanks to everyone that joined us at SHRM 2012 at booth 3809 for a chance to win one of 204 Amazon Kindle Fires. If you didn't win one you can pick up a Full Color 7" Multi-touch Kindle Fire from Amazon.

Tywana wins an Amazon Kindle Fire and celebrates with everyone around including Deb Lund, our head of P.R. at FranklinCovey.