simulations Archives - Page 3 of 3

Nov 26

Why Simulations are Effective

By nmunro | call center, contact Center, Employee Rewards, simulations

Studies have shown that simulation-based training is the best way for learners to retain knowledge and decrease the time it takes for mastery of a new skill.

Why are simulations important to your organization?

Quicker return on your training $$ – by providing this level of active and immersive learning, your organization will see a greater return on the money you invest in recruiting, retention and customer satisfaction
Greater employee satisfaction – the faster an employee feels confident about their job, the higher their employee satisfaction. This has a direct impact on customer satisfaction but will also reduce the risk of poor moral or wasted time re-training employees who need more hand-holding
Removing the risk of practicing on real customers – I can’t tell you how many times I hear that call center employees transition from the classroom to the production floor with little or no practice time. This is a huge risk to your organization.
Reducing time to recognize a bad hire -using a simulator will allow your organization to road test an employee’s skills before putting them on the front line. This will also help you to determine if an employee is just not making the cut.

Aug 22

You’re Fired! What You Shouldn’t Use Bots and IM for

By nmunro | Employee Rewards, simulations

This was my presentation at the first Amazon Voice Summit

Aug 15

How Simulations Can Shorten the Path the Mastery

By nmunro | Adaptive Learning, AI, bots, call center, contact Center, simulations

Simulations for learning

Why do pilots user flight simulators vs. real airplanes? We all know that hands-on experience is one of the best ways to learn a new skill. But don’t take my word for it. In an article featured from Laurdal they state three reasons why simulations accelerate learning and retention:

Simulations increase engagement – By placing students into an immersive environment, they are ACTIVELY vs. passively engaged in the learning
Simulations maximize retention – One of my favorite reasons why simulations are important. How many times have you put people through a training program and the knowledge is lost within a short amount of time
Simulations ensure that learning is transferred to the job – This should really matter to the executive suite, when employees can accelerate their level of applying their skills directly into their work and shorten their path to mastery, this goes directly to the bottom line.

Think of it in this way, if I gave you a manual to learn how to conduct a step by step process, this is an explicit approach to learning something. It’s easily repeated and more commoditized but not as effective. On the other hand, if I gave you access to the equipment and/or placed you into a simulation which immersed you in learning this process. This is an implicit experience but much more valuable in giving you first-hand experience in learning this new task.

Finally, in a study conducted by Roger S. Taylor and Micheline T. H. Chi at the University of Pittsburgh, they conducted a study comparing students who studied using a textbook and those who used a computer simulation. This was the summary of their findings:

The Simulation condition acquired a significant amount of implicit domain information from pretest to posttest, whereas participants in the Text condition did not. These results suggest that educational computer simulations have the potential to significantly enhance the learning of implicit domain knowledge.”

But keep in mind, the simulations need to be tailored to a specific skill or task directly related to the job. It should include some form of immediate feedback and places the learner into a contextual setting, similar to what they will experience in real life. Anders Ericcson was noted as coming out with the study of “deliberate practice” Here is a video where Anders explains this concept.

Watch this video on YouTube

Jun 28

Auto-create Podcast with Amazon Polly

By nmunro | podcsting, simulations

As I am getting ready to create a presentation I am giving on Podcasting imagine my delight when I ran across this article on how to add Amazon’s Polly text to speech software into a WordPress blog post. This is exactly what I have been trying to communicate to my clients, how to creatively use speech to text and speech recognition tools for extended uses in business.

Voice-enabled technology continues to get better and better. If you are not familiar with Polly, it’s an online tool that allows you to type text onto a page and then it will create a voice file which you can download and embed an MP3 file into another program. Originally I was using this to create voices of characters in some of our training simulations, but now with the WordPress plugin – you can embed this functionality to read your blog posts — very cool!