In today’s highly competitive market, companies are required to adapt and respond nimbly to change in order to survive and grow. Constant introduction of new technologies, international competition, new and emerging markets, changing customer behaviour and a highly fluid workforce mean that successful companies are constantly learning and transferring this learning to leverage them across diverse geographies and businesses.
The two essential classes of ‘learning’ that enterprises need to transfer are ‘knowledge’ and ‘practice’. While existing platforms can be equipped to transfer enterprise knowledge they are not equipped to handle the transfer of practice.
Common criticisms of standard e-learning as a platform for acquisition of skills and practice are the abstraction of content and concepts, lack of contextual and applied understanding, limitations of choice and dryness of material. These create conditions of inefficient and insufficient practice transfer which in turn lead to accidents, mistakes and loss of profitability.
Familiar tools such as Instructor-led-training, or On-the-job-training, often, either don’t fully support transfer of Practice of skills (soft and/or hard skills) or are too cumbersome, expensive and may even carry elements of risk.
A well deployed practices transfer program can help a company accomplish strategic objectives such as drive step-change improvements in performance and also accelerate its development into a learning organization. It helps in identifying superior capabilities; transferring them across business units and then provides tools for the systematic monitoring and realizing of results.
By focusing on not only sharing knowledge but also applying it, practice transfer allows enterprises to tap the power locked in by its current structures, process and systems. Opportunities to leverage the transfer of good practices span the value chain and exist in all organizations across every industry.
At the heart of an effective transfer of practice program are the following methodologies:
• Guided experience
• Simulation
• Guided experimentation
• Narrative transfer
• Scenario Based Practice
Game-Based-learning is an effective vehicle for all these methodologies and more (such as teamwork, problem based learning). Through extensive research, led by early adoption and experimentation in Military and Healthcare sectors (symbolizing both ready-for-anything and life-long learning), Game Based Learning is fast gaining adherents in mainstream education and corporate learning.
Game-Based-learning supports desirable practice by translating an idea or concept into an action or choice; "a hard theory to put into practice". By a process of repeated performance and systematic exercise it helps its user in acquiring proficiency. From navigating complex decision processes to internalizing established best practices and procedures it motivates its users to think and reflect on their actions and understanding.
Today companies are successfully using Game-Based-learning for transfer of practice in the following ways:
• To help staff apply their learning more effectively
• To provide staff with rich feedback in the learning experience and create a more authentic context
• To reduce the time to competency
• To reduce risk in the workplace
• To encourage team work and competitiveness
Built on top of the cutting edge technology, 3DHive is a cloud based, social, m-learning platform that allows enterprises to embrace ‘Smarter-Transfer-of-Enterprise-Practices’ on-the-go through the use of Games-Based Learning.
Developed by Playware Studios Asia Pte Ltd in a four-year collaboration with the Infocomm Development Authority and National Research Foundation of Singapore, it has everything an enterprise needs to create and manage training and up skilling of its workforce. It even has in-built tools for assessment of the users’ performance and progress over time. It is cloud-hosted which means “anytime” availability without any setup or overhead costs. It has built-in tools for collaboration, management and assessment.
Some of the distinctive advantages offered to enterprises on 3DHive include:
• Mobile Learning
• Better Transfer of skills and practices
• Content Management by enterprise
• Consolidated Assessments
• Self-Directed Learning
• Natural Language Interface
• Camera Based Interaction
The platform has been utilized by several organizations such as Jurong Health Services, Health Promotion Board and Civil Service college, Ministry of Education etc. and the results are compelling.
