The szenaris Letter II/2011 brings you a wide range of news from the world of e-learning, training and simulation. Dive into a world that is becoming increasingly important, not only due to demographic change – the necessity of providing more and more realistic training without subjecting trainees to the dangers of reality is also causing a change in attitudes.

Best regards from the szenaris team.

Be it at computer workstations, on the shop floor or on the road – health and safety are extremely important for all employees. The law therefore requires employers to regularly train their staff in the most important rules of occupational health and safety in order to ensure that employees are optimally protected in the workplace. But how should this training ideally be provided?

Particularly bigger companies with large numbers of employees are faced with enormous time and cost expenditures for implementing the required courses. Several classroom events would be necessary in order to adequately train their entire staff. This is by no means economic, which is why more and more companies are trying to avoid this outlay and seeking out more affordable alternatives to ensure the health and safety of their employees.

This inspired szenaris to develop an online training course. The learning program series “Safety at work online” has been used by the Bundeswehr since 2009 and has already won two awards (Corporate Media Award, Comenius EduMedia Seal).

The most important requirement in developing a health and safety program in the form of a web-based training course was to integrate a large number of very different learning topics into a comprehensive solution. The result was a platform-independent learning program created in less than a year that currently covers 17 different occupational health and safety related topics in 19 modules: from alcohol and drug prevention through fire safety, handling working dogs, the correct movements for lifting and carrying, all the way to dealing with radioactivity and other hazardous materials. Each module can be worked through in approximately 30 minutes and combines different teaching forms such as text, audio, photographs, 2D and 3D graphics and animations into a comprehensive and at the same time entertaining learning experience. A final test, if correctly completed, permits the printing of a certificate which the employee can present to his or her manager as proof.

In all, our client Bundeswehr has reduced its previous expense for teaching health and safety guidelines by more than 50% while offering its employees maximum flexibility in working through the training units. With a small number of adjustments the program is also suitable for use in other institutions and businesses.

More information on this topic:

German Occupational Health and Safety Act: § 12 Training (only in German)
Success Story
Product information

Contact: Dr. Uwe Katzky

Older people learn in different ways than young people. This assumption prompts many companies to adapt their training measures to the learning habits of ageing staff – because demographic change is already underway. But is the premise even correct? szenaris has examined this issue together with its project partners in the Fit4Age research association. The results clearly indicate the way forward in designing learning programs.

While young people enjoy following tangled paths through learning content and exploring it on their own initiative, older people prefer straightforward routes. Research distinguishes here between explorative and linear learning behaviour. But is this actually the case in practice? To answer this question, szenaris carried out a survey at the Rhineland Palatinate State Police Academy in cooperation with Regensburg University.  The company had previously implemented the learning program “Crime Scene Investigation”, which permits various learning paths, for the Lower Saxony police force. Both older and younger learners participated in the survey, providing ideal research conditions. The hypothesis was examined by conducting interviews, recording learning paths, and by means of an eye-tracking process (recording eye movements of users working through the learning program). The results clearly confirmed the theory of different learning paths.

How does this finding affect the design of learning programs? szenaris Managing Director Uwe Katzky explains: “With all the new possibilities that e-learning offers, we must be careful to not lose sight of the learning habits of older people. The challenge consists in developing programs that meet the needs of both older and younger learners. We are therefore increasingly developing our learning programs according to constructivist principles.” The idea of constructivism is not new; what is new is its application in e-learning, where adjustments for individual (age-dependent) learning behaviour are made by providing both realistic tasks that are suitable for explorative learning and also permitting a linear learning path, thus covering the majority of different learning behaviours.

These and other research results from the Fit4Age project members are presented in detail in the association’s final report.

More information on this topic:

Press Release
Success Story
Fit4Age project website (only in German)
Project information: "Fit4Age" and "Crime Scene Investigation"

Contact: Dr. Uwe Katzky

In the second quarter of this year we again attended exhibitions and trade fairs to keep up to date on current topics and present our own developments. Our most important impressions and experiences at AFCEA in Bad Godesberg and ITEC in Cologne are summarised here.

This year’s AFCEA Expert Expo focused on systems integration. The information and communication technology event saw a record number of exhibitors and attracted a large number of experts from armed forces, industry, academia and politics. It was once again clearly apparent that networked training strategies which employ training solutions in virtual worlds and integrate real operating controls for complex devices are becoming increasingly important.

The next AFCEA Expo will take place on 9 and 10 May 2012 under the heading “Mobile computing in and for operations”.

Also in May, ITEC again brought together the interested training and simulation community from the military, civil, academic and corporate sectors. Over three eventful days, more than 110 exhibitors presented their solutions and new products in Cologne. In particular the high-profile conference program with an international specialist audience made ITEC well worth a visit. The most important topics this year included the following questions: How can previous experience be used to make future training solutions even more effective and efficient? What are our requirements for the next generation of serious games? What are the latest technological developments for creating realistic learning environments? If you would like to know more, contact us!

The next ITEC takes place from 22 to 24 May 2012 in London.

More information on this topic:

AFCEA: 2011 and 2012 (only in German)
ITEC

Contact: Heike Kissner

Do you still remember staring out of a schoolroom window during a particularly boring lesson and wishing you were on the playground? Today we know: the distinction between learning and playing is not only artificial, it also wastes enormous potential. In our two-part series on serious games we would therefore like to introduce you to the benefits of digital learning games.

The first part of the series examines the question of what actually makes a game serious.

While leisure games are mainly designed for fun, serious games focus rather less on the entertainment factor. That does not mean that serious games are joyless affairs, but they are primarily designed to convey content in order to achieve a serious learning objective. It is mainly professional topics that are considered serious: managers are trained in strategic thinking, insurance salespeople are brought up to speed on compliance, and members of intelligence services are made aware of data protection issues. But serious games are also used in political and environmental education. The motivating game aspect becomes a catalyst for successful learning.

Admittedly, the approach of conveying serious content in a playful manner is not new. The subject was extensively discussed in the media some time ago under the term “edutainment”. The real innovation is that adults are increasingly being addressed as a target group. Particularly young adults are of interest in this context – the “digital natives” who have grown up with computer games and are more open to this form of learning. But the generation of over-45s, who are often put off by the school-like nature of traditional seminars, can also be reached with serious games.

In the field of virtual reality, we at szenaris were among the earliest advocates of serious games. Embedded into a realistic scenario, our Virtual Team Trainer (VTT) teaches people how to control large vehicles in a coordinated manner. In contrast to leisure games, VTT represents driving behaviour so realistically that it becomes possible to transfer what has been learned into practice.

In the second part of our series on serious games we will investigate the human play instinct. If you too would like to know why playful learning is so successful and how it can be implemented in education and further training, you will look forward to our next szenaris Letter.

More information on this topic:

Simulations and Simulated Worlds: Learning in Immersive Learning Environments (only in German)
Game-based Learning: Learning by Playing? (only in German)
Playful Learning? A Survey on (Digital Game-based) Learning (only in German)
Horizon Report 2011: Game-Based Learning (p. 20 - 24)
Portal for games-based knowledge transfer (only in German)

Contact: Dr. Uwe Katzky

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