If you’d like to know more about how this was achieved, click here to download the submission.

1. Keep it positive
Avoid the temptation to instruct your learners in what they must and must not do. Try to minimise the number of ‘horror stories’ about the dire consequences of breaking the law. Training that’s driven by fear, or by an organisation’s need to cover its back, is unlikely to really make a difference.

2. Make it relevant
When it comes to compliance, what you do is more important than what you know. So don’t focus on legislative detail; focus instead on what the law means in practice to each individual learner in their day to day work. This is a great step towards achieving enhanced awareness and competence as well as meeting regulatory requirements.

3. Keep it real
One way to achieve that relevance and engage your learners is to use scenarios: create recognisable, everyday situations and get learners to identify the issues and make recommendations. This clearly demonstrates to them what they need to know (and do) and why. It also means they’re more likely to apply this knowledge in the workplace.

4. Make it varied
If learners are engaged in and enjoy a course they’re more likely to learn from it. Use a variety of interactions and media to cater to different learning styles and keep them interested. For example, consider photo or video scenarios, handy downloadable tips, news reports or articles, real life case studies and easy to access dictionaries.

5. Keep it conversational
We’ve had user feedback confirming what we already believed: a plain English, conversational tone of voice contributes to keeping learners engaged and therefore to the effectiveness of the training. Something as simple as this is a change from the norm of compliance training and offers learners a breath of fresh air as well as delivering results.

Check back soon for a downloadable PDF of these tips, and click here or here to find out more about our approach to compliance training. We’ve also recently won an IT Training Award for a compliance training project!

3SDL’s existing training clients have become increasingly interested in online training solutions and in 2009 3SDL’s Training Services team engaged Saffron Interactive as an e-learning development partner. Saffron and 3SDL have since developed a number of modules together to teach technical military communications techniques.

Four modules were piloted at the annual International Data Links Symposium (IDLS), Vienna, Austria in December 2009. IDLS is attended by over 600 people from the tactical military communications community. They represent the interests of some 25 different countries including Australia, New Zealand, the USA, many European nations and South Africa. The pilot modules were very well received and several nations, including Sweden and the UK, are investigating a possible roll-out of Saffron/3SDL e-learning solutions

So I turned to John Simmons’ book in the hope it would not only help me become a better writer, more able to conquer various styles of writing, but also inspire me. Like John, I believe that creative writing in any business is relevant and essential for business and personal development, and I know that it’s only natural that my writing incorporates some of my own personality - as well as that of the company I’m writing the course for.

Something that John encourages really stuck a chord with me. One of his principles of writing is: ‘Transform the most unpromising materials. Not even lists can be boring.’ So I challenged myself to write a list which embodies my personality, and which conveys something about me to the reader. Here goes:

The contents of my handbag

Memories captured on paper, a flash of colour as I open my wallet,
photos reminding me of the places I have been.
A bundle of jingling keys, my trusty pen and notepad just in case a thought strikes.
Wild strawberry lip gloss to brighten up the day, Ibuprofen, mascara.
Excitement for the Friday night ahead as I find my camera. Mirror.
Pennies breeding in the bottomless pit, my eyes in liquid within a plastic case; my favourite scent in a bottle. A friend gave me the purse in which I find a camera battery and a business card. The iPod which keeps me sane on public transport. A Guatemalan worry doll, tucked away safely in the depths.

Hopefully that made you smile and warm to me as a writer because I expressed something individual, something that goes beyond providing straightforward information.

Can we do this at work? Of course we can. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do - it’s hard to think of a job that doesn’t require the use of words. As John points out: ‘The reality is that if we write at work on behalf of a company, organisation or brand, we are being asked to carry out a creative writing exercise.’

As for e-learning, if even a list of what’s in your bag can be engaging, why can’t compliance training be engaging? Shouldn’t businesses embrace the opportunity to convey their personality through their induction training? What do you think?

Microsoft describes Silverlight as a ‘browser plug-in that enables a new class of rich, secure and scalable cross-platform experiences.’ Anticipating growing demand for e-learning built for Silverlight, we’ve put together a dedicated team to explore how it can be used to enhance the online learning experience.

One of the key benefits of Silverlight is that it enables designers and developers to work in parallel and therefore reduces overall development time. It also supports smooth and high quality 3D graphics and animation rendering, making it an competitive alternative to Flash for creating engaging e-learning.

Hanif Sazen, CEO of Saffron, says ‘we see Silverlight as being one of the key technologies of the future and, with a number of development projects for Microsoft under way, it only made sense for us to create a dedicated team.’

1. Define what success looks like
To measure the right thing, you need to first know what the learning aims to do. Is it about mitigating risk or improving productivity, for example? Are you trying to reduce the number of security breaches or are you attempting to improve performance relating to targets or sales metrics? What does success look like for your organisation?

2. Align the metrics to the business needs
When identifying ways to measure success, keep them simple but try to think beyond typical LMS measures such as completion and assessment data. Make sure you know what the business needs are, and how the training is intended to address those needs, and align the measures of success to this.

3. Set the baseline
Ensure you have robust baseline data at the start of the project so that you can assess the performance impact of the learning. Capture results over agreed time periods and against pre-determined success factors. Then turn this on its head and ask how the business would be performing without the training. What would happen if you didn’t do anything?

4. Look beyond average scores
Use a variety of qualitative and quantitative evaluation tools and techniques. Compare the performance of a group of training users against a control group who didn’t take the training. Complement this with happy sheets, feedback forms and gathering verbatim comment. And get line managers reporting on behavioural change on the ground.

5. Consider what’s appropriate
Proving ROI from social learning is our next challenge. There is no LMS to draw data from and you can’t test learners. Instead, have polls to determine the usefulness of information, rate and rank posts, and measure the learning outcome rather than the ROI because perhaps this should be more about the individual learning process than the organisation’s return. Our advice is to trust the learner!

Check back soon for a downloadable version of these tips.

This is the first collaboration between Saffron and Heathrow Express, the fastest rail link from London to Heathrow Airport, and represents an important development in Heathrow Express’ use of technology in learning

The sub surface fire awareness course is for Heathrow Express’ business partners and second tier suppliers who total approximately 700 people in a range of job roles including cleaners and engineers. The course will not only meet necessary requirements but will also increase learners’ awareness of the risks of fire and their ability to respond appropriately in the event of a fire. This invaluable training will also include a focus on track awareness and demonstrates Heathrow Express’ commitment to the safety of its passengers and staff.

A key part of the training will be to maintain learner engagement and make a clear link between the training and their work at the Heathrow Express site. To overcome this challenge, Saffron is working closely with the Heathrow Express team to develop an expert understanding of the content and to create bespoke graphics and animations. Furthermore, the course will include realistic and relevant dilemmas to enable the learner to recognise how their correctly raising the alarm in the event of a fire will save lives.

Heathrow Express’ Learning and Development Manager Chris Knapp says “This is an important training requirement for Heathrow Express, and one which must be highly engaging to ensure learning transfer is effective to the target audience. I’m sure our learners will be delighted at the convenience of being able to learn when and where they want, using technology which will really enhance their learning experience. “We currently run approximately 46 sub surface fire awareness courses a year, on average each attended by 20 delegates.  The new e-learning course will deliver the training in one hour with no travel required, bringing a direct business benefit of 2760 hours per year. Over the projected five year lifespan of the course, that’s a total saving of over 13,800 hours from delegates alone.”

“TVs have lacked two things to date… eyes and ears” because “they haven’t had cameras and they haven’t had microphones.”

This led me to wonder… does e-learning also lack eyes and ears?

In fact, I think that many e-learning courses already possess ‘eyes and ears’ thanks to new technologies. Take mobile learning for example, where the learner progresses through the course and answers questions by speaking. Or how about social learning? Forums and help desks are evidence of an e-learning strategy’s ‘ears’ while the use of social networking points not only towards ‘eyes’ but also towards an age of collaborative learning that Skype and social networking sites’ popularity makes possible. And what about the advances being made in PC-based e-learning where we can now use techniques like 3D graphics, which allow the learner to pan around images and really become immersed in the learning? Surely highly interactive learning such as these examples could be counted as the ‘eyes and ears’ Kim is referring to?

This led me on to thinking that even if we do have ‘eyes and ears’ in our learning courses, does this actually enhance the learning in any way? For me, the following benefits come to mind:

• A positive first impression
• Learner engagement and motivation
• More realistic scenarios and environments where the learner can safely practise making decisions
• The ability to tailor the learning for different preferences, learning styles and capabilities

So far we’ve been focusing on how technology can give learning its ‘eyes and ears’ but I believe that this can also be created through instructional design. For instance, a scenario can be made more realistic by using well researched case studies written in a conversational tone. Or the learner can choose how they want to progress through a course by selecting to experience a certain scenario from a different point of view, for example, an interviewer versus an interviewee.

Kim’s thoughts about the evolution of TV are interesting, but I don’t think we can expect to see e-learning strategies reliant on cameras and microphones anytime soon. Instead, we should continue to vary the approaches we take and to be creative, rather than focusing only on the technology involved. After all, the most innovative graphics, interactions and technology will fail to engage the learner if the instructional design falls short.

(See Cat’s top L&D tip here.)

In this particular case I think one of the main differences was the client subject matter expert (SME). She was very enthusiastic and engaged with the project right from the outset, ensuring that she was able to meet every review deadline, booking in key stakeholders’ review times well in advance and continually managing stakeholders’ expectations. Furthermore, she seemed to have a strong understanding of what’s required to create an engaging and effective e-learning course and summed this up, saying,

“The general expectation is that creating an e-learning course is easier and quicker than creating classroom training, but this isn’t necessarily the case. With classroom training you can paper over the cracks in content and keep the learners engaged by having a knowledgeable and entertaining trainer. You don’t have this luxury with e-learning. Making sure the content is sound and that the course is engaging requires focused time and effort throughout the whole creation process and is crucial to the course’s success.”

Client SMEs don’t always have this level of insight into e-learning and on top of that they’re not always able to manage their stakeholders’ time, expectations or schedules successfully. What’s more, SMEs are often working on the project in addition to their day job and might not have the time to be proactive, or might not think this is part of their remit. Simply explaining this to them at the beginning of the project doesn’t always have the required effect. It almost seems like we need to create an e-learning course for client SMEs to complete before they begin working on e-learning projects. Perhaps a course entitled, ‘How to be an e-learning project SME’ or something similar could be a useful e-learning course for us to create?!

What do you think? Have you worked with any excellent SMEs recently? Or, have you had any experiences where you’ve been able to coach your SMEs to work with you successfully? Let us know your thoughts!

The instructional designer category was new for the 2010 awards, which were announced at a gala dinner held at The Dorchester in London on Thursday 4 February. Chief executive of the Institute of IT Training, Colin Steed, described the event as an ‘annual celebration of outstanding achievement, best practice, and excellence in IT training.’

The Instructional Designer of the Year award is presented to an individual who has developed a learning intervention that demonstrates exceptional instructional design, is innovative and high quality, and has delivered demonstrable performance improvement for learners.

Stephanie’s submission was concerned with a major compliance training project for BT and the judges were particularly impressed that she demonstrated that she fully understood that instructional design was at the heart of making this project a success. She worked creatively, using a number of innovative instructional design techniques and educated and influenced the client along the way. The outstanding end product and client feedback, from an audience very used to e-learning, speak for themselves.

After receiving the award, Stephanie said ‘It’s an honour to be named Instructional Designer of the Year and I’m delighted that the judges felt that my work on this project - which I am very proud of - was deserving of this award.’

Hanif Sazen, Saffron’s CEO, says ‘We are immensely proud of Stephanie’s achievements, both in terms of this award and the projects that she has worked on for our clients.’

Saffron’s director of operations, Vanessa Hill, says ‘We are very proud of Stephanie’s achievement. She is one of the key driving forces at Saffron and has worked tirelessly to ensure that the e-learning courses we produce are of the highest possible standard. Winning this award is nothing short of a tremendous achievement for Stephanie and she is an inspiration to everyone at Saffron, her clients and the industry.’

For more information about the IT Training Awards, visit http://www.ittrainingawards.com/.