'Quality is for everyone', 'break down the barriers', are particularly poignant for me. Today there is an even greater need than ever to recognise the importance of the average worker. The key to quality is to embrace the skills of workers and to make them part of a quality program.
There is great misunderstanding in industry about the fundamentals of quality. Quality has regressed. How can we improve quality in the workplace and help both "ordinary" workers and others, to improve quality, if not by sending them to ridiculously expensive courses?
Recently the media has been filled with photos of masses of starving refugees, boat people and illegal immigrants. Have a close look at photos of these folk. They all carry mobile phones! These ubiquitous devices are computers, that are around 100 times as powerful as the PC with which I started my business, or about 2,000 times as powerful as the computer that put man on the moon.
You know what I'm going to say don't you. You've heard it all before, haven't you. More than a decade ago "e-learning" was supposed to revolutionize training. It took a few years for people to realise they were being sold the old CBT (computer based training), in a new wrapper. The big problem was and is, that most of it was simply boring. A page of text with some clip art and a "continue" button is about as interesting as an ad for laundry detergent.
However, e-learning has always shown incredible promise. It is far less costly than classroom training. There are no travel and accommodation costs. Because students work at their own pace, training time, and hence off-the-job wages costs, are reduced. Mobile training allows students to train in their own time, anywhere. It allows convenient training of new staff. It allows managers to track training progress from the palm of their hand. Until now, the great failing of most e-learning has been that it is so boring, people don't want to use it ... and hence don't learn.
Have you been on public transport, anywhere in the world, and noticed what everyone is doing? Heads are buried in mobile devices. What if training in continuous improvement could be as engrossing as the most entertaining mobile app? What if it could be orientated to suit any user? It would be the ultimate in convenience, cost effectiveness, and consistent training for employees around the world!
Consideration of e-learning development tools gives much insight. To avoid the pitfalls of most e-learning, two decades ago, we needed a development tool that allowed the construction of highly interactive games and interactive exercises for quality training. Half a million happy users later proved we had made a good choice. A survey of 500 users, by a major telco client, showed: *
As a result of this course, do you have a better understanding of our Continuous Improvement program? 95% YES *
Has the training been of benefit to you? 86% YES *
Do you enjoy being able to do this training at your own pace? 96% YES *
Would you recommend the course to others? 95% YES
The tool we used was quite sophisticated but its full capabilities were rarely used by the majority of development companies. It required an order of magnitude more time and effort to develop really engrossing training. This tool was subsequently dropped from the market by its owners and replaced with a far simpler one. Simple tools now dominate the market. Many even boast the ability to convert (boring) Powerpoint slides into (boring) e-learning.
The emphasis with current learning development tools appears to be to have an ability to churn out as much boring material as possible, as quickly as possible. Speed before quality. There are at least 52 e-learning and m-learning (mobile learning) development tools now on the market. Most have their particular gimmicks, but e-learning has not kept pace with market needs and expectations.
25 years ago, the first 3D game engine appeared on the market. I remember being blown away by running through Wolfenstein 3D. 3D games have grown at a staggering pace. Within 24 hours of its release, one car racing game had generated $800,000,000 in revenue! Surprisingly, the second biggest audience group is people 55 to 64 years old. It's not just Gen Y. Everyone loves the excitement of 3D worlds. Such incredible technology ... if only it could be adapted to business ...
Two decades ago, it hit me how amazing it would be if we could make our quality training as entertaining as these games. 8 years ago, we started experimenting.
We embarked on a completely new and unique approach to quality training. We have been developing a world-first in training. We are creating interactive games and interactive exercises explaining the principles of Lean and Continuous Improvement, using a 3D, full screen, game engine. We have built 40 interactive 3D scenes of games and exercises, across 54 modules. Importantly, for quality professionals, it allows training on both PC and mobile devices. Building such training is an order of magnitude more complex and time consuming than even our previous approach, but the results are absolutely spectacular.
The 3D game engine gives incredible realism. Your next question is probably going to be that all this dazzling and entertaining 3D training might be fine for Gen Y, but how are older folk like me going to be able to operate it? No need to panic. Our design is very simple to operate and without needing the reflexes of a fighter pilot. Assistance and guidance is built in. This is especially important where a student may be doing some of the training on a mobile device on the way to work, then transferring to a PC in the work environment. Having a smooth and simple transition from mobile navigation to mouse movement is important.
Navigation in a 3D world on mobile devices poses an interesting challenge. Virtual control sticks may appeal to 15 year olds but are alien to adults. Tilt control using the built in accelerometers of almost all mobile devices, has proven best. Tilt control about a horizontal axis, as with a steering wheel, prevents light reflections which may obscure the scene. Guidance and provision for variations is essential. Tap and drag interactions, are similar to PCs.
Our design has proven as easy to operate by a 70 year old, as by my 7 year old son ... and both will have just as much fun. My son has also demonstrated that having fun gives a remarkable level of understanding of the quality improvement concepts being taught, at any age. It was so delightful to see the flowchart he'd drawn up of his own volition, on "how to be happy" after playing with the product.
A huge challenge has been to add lots of variation to maintain a student's interest. It is important to avoid examples being mundane. The examples should be QI - "quite interesting". Most important, is maintaining a theme of fun and edutainment throughout.
One example is training in histograms. Here, a real world story in process improvement is taken from maritime history and built into a training game using an interactive 3D ocean simulation. Seemingly real ships battling on a real ocean. By generating their own data in the game, students gain a far better understanding of the concepts being taught. It allows students to interpret the meaning in different histogram shapes generated and how they have come about. Learning is far more powerful when it involves activity rather than just information dumping. This continues onto the job. All too common in the real world, is ignoring the story the data is telling and blindly entering data into a computer program to normalise and spit out mean and standard deviation.
Managers should be aware that no form of electronic training in quality can be considered a panacea. Real experts in quality will always be needed to assist employees in application of the principles learned. Interactive 3D-learning may be considered a fun introduction that frees skilled quality professionals from the mundane task of repeating the same material over and over, to folk sentenced to a classroom.
The result of our interactive 3D training design efforts, is an entertaining, stimulating and engrossing approach to Lean and Continuous Improvement training. Instant edutainment in quality will be available at any time and any place for a single user, or thousands simultaneously. Imagine having employees just clamouring to get their hands on quality training!
This is the start of a new world in quality training ... and perhaps, in training generally.
Here's some video screen capture examples:
Control Chart Ship Game
Lean Simulation
Cause and Effect Car Game
Mastery Test - Snakes and Ladders
Introduction to Histograms
by Dr Tony Burns BE (Hon 1) PhD (Chem Eng)