If you ask my employees what one characteristic describes the essence of Eric Bort, they might tell you “He’s a complete genius and rules with an iron fist of Quality, Integrity, and Honesty”. Seriously, that’s what they’ll tell you. 

I’ve gone by gut instinct a lot in the past when quoting projects (alongside line itemed excel sheets); custom training is notoriously difficult to plan out, as everything is potentially up to artistic interpretation and there’s no way to guess how many rounds of revision or approval a project might take. When looking around into competitor’s pricing guidelines I get the feeling they feel the same way. 

So what am I getting at? I honestly feel that this year we are developing and delivering some of the highest quality work we’ve ever completed as a company, and yet our project prices always seem to stay in check. In talking with my employees during the quoting process there’s a bit of a struggle to find that spot where we make enough to survive and prosper, but not charge any more than we have to. Our skills and the love of what we do compels us to make quality projects, designs and solutions for each of our clients – but that doesn’t mean we need to jack up the price. I feel a lot of developers have it wrong – they seem to be charging an immense amount and delivering sub-quality work. I want to be known as the company that delivers a $40,000 course for $12,000 – while putting in detail and creativity that no one else can offer. As my one client put it: “You’re not cheap… you’re high value!” 

I seem to watch a lot of CNBC Bizography at night, and noticed at the end of the George Foreman special his dream in life was to be thought of as a nice guy. Here’s someone who makes millions, is everywhere in the public eye, and in the end his priorities are family and kindness. Doesn’t that tell you something?  I get an immense amount of joy working with the people I meet, and working on a wide variety of projects. It really is my honor to work with the clients we have here, and I hope it shows through that more than anything I strive to run an honest and open business where creativity and innovation are what counts. Staying on budget and meeting deadlines count too, they just don’t make for very inspirational blog posts. 

In the end it really is all about passion, drive to learn something new and knowing tomorrow is a new challenge. We are amazing; because you give is amazing opportunities to shine. Yes I’m on my 6th cup of coffee, but you should still have a tear rolling down your cheek right about now.

Edheads.org wins TechColumbus Innovation Award, Executive Director goes full time

On February 4^th, our partner company Edheads.org continued its streak of success by winning the TechColumbus award for Innovation in Non-Profit Service Delivery.  The award was a surprise to Gail Wheatley, Executive Director.  “TechColumbus is known as one of the top 10 innovation incubators in the country, so, while we were hopeful, we certainly didn’t think we had this one locked.  There was a lot of outstanding competition, including the number one science center in the country, COSI, and the number one library system in the country, the Columbus Metropolitan Library,” said Wheatley. 

 Edheads has previously won major national awards such as the Flash Forward Award for Best Educational Content, and the Communication Arts Interactive Design Competition.  Edheads also successfully competed against international competition to win the American Association of Museum’s Gold MUSE Award, in conjunction with COSI, for best science education project.

 Edheads develops online educational games and simulations to help K-12 students understand difficult concepts and explore careers.   Over 12 million people annually (and over 100 million total since 2000) use the free service to learn the role of surgeons, engineers, weather forecasters, or crash scene investigators.  In order to produce the activities, Edheads partners with many organizations, such as Cardinal Orthopedic and Mount Carmel East Hospital, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, the Ohio State University Medical Center and OSU College of Engineering. Partnering organizations help research and test the activities to insure their accuracy.

 In addition to winning the TechColumbus Award, Wheatley will soon be leaving her long-time position as Director of Electronic Education at COSI and will be assuming a full time position with Edheads. “This is the best of all possible worlds for me, says Wheatley.  “I get paid to learn about other people’s careers in ways most people only dream about.  I go into operating rooms and witness brain surgery up close, or I can explore an engineering lab at OSU and find how they create nanoparticles.  Then I get to share all that knowledge with students across the country, hopefully interesting them in science, math, engineering and technology along the way.  And I can’t express how grateful I am that the idea has really taken off and that now I get to do this full time!”

To experience Edheads’ free online games, visit http://www.edheads.org/ to be a surgeon, weather forecaster, crash scene investigator, engineer, and more.

There tends to be a mentality that doing your best is good enough (at least that’s what my mom told me when I got a C average in algebra), but what if your background was in finance, and someone asked you to develop a training course on accrual VS. Cash based accounting? Does it make sense that someone nearly-qualified to be a SME (Subject Matter Expert), is handling instructional design? And further still, does it make sense to give that same person access to a rapid-development platform to build out the actual course?

Many people are great at what they do, but if I’ve learned one thing as a small business owner, it’s when to call it quits. I don’t repair my own car, I hire a mechanic… I don’t clean the office bathroom (oh wait.. yes I do.. bad example)… I don’t do my own taxes, I pay my CPA. Knowing your limitations as a large corporation can be tough. Bureaucracy plays a roll, as does boredom. Sometimes jobs are spread too thin over multiple employees, which is when it’s deemed a good idea to take on the roll as eLearning developer for the day. And of course if your manager/superior orders you to do something, you pretty much have to do it whether you’re qualified or not. The biggest reason I’ve seen that large corporations try and handle eLearning development in house is to save money.

If a contractor cost $2,000 to write a script in three days, which resulted in 85% knowledge retention, focused goals and a memorable experience, how would that equate to an employee costing $178 in hours to develop the same script? Does that employee have the right expertise to laser-target the right action items? Are they more likely to bend under the pressure of upper management to “put that 40 page flow diagram back into the course… now!” Is having 40% knowledge retention worth the time it took to train those employees?

I personally love being on the outside. Although there’s the chance we piss someone off, our honesty is generally accepted and appreciated. We’re more likely to stand up for the integrity of the course content and quality development as our job/employment isn’t at risk (don’t get me wrong, losing a client would suck, but if your goal is to help them succeed, this generally doesn’t happen.)

When a large corporation hires a specialist to handle their training development, they get the immediate benefit of an outsider looking in. I know it’s a lot easier for me to pick out someone else’s flaws than it is to recognize my own, and this directly applies to in-house development VS. hiring a specialized contactor. We can quickly assess the need, propose a plan of action and immediately begin research and development. When you need us, we’re there, when you don’t need us, we go away. No need to become a training business with a five person staff on payroll when your company focus is on parts distribution. Do what you do best, and when you recognize your limitations, hiring out can become a great opportunity for both cost savings and business growth.

All joking aside, we’ve spent some time redoing our entire portfolio of eLearning, training and educational game samples to show a bigger variety of our work in a more enticing format.

Great creativity and design sells itself, and we excited to show off a set of clear categories, larger visuals to ogle, and many more projects to view.

Be sure to check out the new character design, 3D and illustration sections as well! Although not commonly found services within an eLearning development company, these services are a great addition to any simulation or game and help smack your users in the face with entertaining visuals!

Over the last 11.5 years of developing eLearning for the full range of humans (1st grade on up to corporate and elderly) I’ve gotten to experience a wide variety of situations, scripts, content and end results.

The thing that struck me as odd along the way was how the larger the corporation is, the more project managers they have on board debating the content of a course, the easier things get for the end user. For some reason plot points disappear (too hard to follow), humor is erased and sterilized (you’re going to offend that one person out of 20,000 – so everyone else will have to be bored and disengaged as opposed to entertained with a memorable learning experience) and complexity is added back in (well, if they’re not going to be entertained, we should at least cram in all 75 pages worth of content into that single slide and lock the next button so they don’t have a choice but to read).

I was talking to Matt my developer yesterday, and we agreed that if the user really hates what they’re going through, they’ll find a way to ignore the content, skip the slides and in the end they always have the option of clicking the little X/close button on the browser window. To think that we, as educators, don’t also need to entertain and make it a priority always amazez me. 

When peter Jackson made lord of the rings, his point wasn’t forcing plot retention and memorization of the books, but to slim them down, prioritize entertaining and action packed moments, bring out the true essence and emotion of a broad and lengthy concept – in other words – make it accessible to the general public without them feeling the writer/director was  treating them as brain dead, unable to grasp complex ideas.

I’ve always though an analogy, whether visual or spoken (as a story) goes a long way towards helping the average person understand complex ideas. We use this over and over in our Edheads.org projects – take hard to teach concepts and make the accessible to the average user. We open doors by using a set of hand drawn animated characters, in bright non-intimidating fun environments. Once users feel welcome, they open their minds to the activity and really begin to learn. We ask them questions, suggest open discussions and let them take it from there.

In comparison, corporate level projects tend to use visuals of multi-raced adults standing on white backgrounds, or someone in a cubicle hard at work.. it’s almost too realistic and definitely not a fun and engaging visual to entice your employees. Setting an analogy outdoors, telling a story through a mythical character, using light humor that can’t possibly offend will only make people pay more attention. Once you have their attention, you can begin to layer on the challenges.

When a learner is disengaged, the chances of them wanting to solve a problem are slim.. they might poke around at it but in the end they really don’t care. Entice that same learner into story with mildly dramatic plot points.. you’re saving the company form disaster.. you’re helping people overcome a problem, you’re negotiating a sale with a virtual customer… suddenly there’s another aspect, usually character driven that looks back at the user and spurs them on to conquer the challenge. This is something that no number of multiple choice tests will accomplish.. I can tell you i barely passed my SATs.. got a D- on my algebra exams, and thought overall a C average was great. Now as an adult I use algebra on a daily basis when programming, use problem solving skills and a whole lot of real world experience when building my companies and completing jobs.

In the end, there’s a reason people cringe when they have to sit down in a sound proof room with a camera over their shoulder when taking some eLearning certification test.. it’s not fun and brings back haunting memories of high school. We have the potential to truly teach people these days, sure it might take a little longer to develop and cost a bit more.. but would you rather spend $5,000 on a course that people forget, retaining no information what-so-ever, or spend $12,000 on a course where people spread the word on how fun it was to learn a concept, actually got buzzed about the learning experience and looked forward to the next course. Suddenly you have an engaged employee, open to learning, happy and excited about solving the next challenge that comes their way. Motivation is a powerful tool, it’s just a shame how often the opportunities to motivate are passed up, and in return we can expect some mediocre results.

All I can say is it’s worth it.. the effort, the time, the cost. Look at Brain surgery on Edheads.. One month went by with no marketing, no one forcing anyone to use it, and we’ve had over 1,000,000 unique users, word of mouth and a great response overall. It is possible to create this in the corporate world, it just takes some additional effort.

I’ve had plenty of discussions about Instructional Designers, some of which make them sound like eLearning myth (think Sasquatch), and some with people who thought Instructional Design was one of those terms you throw out to impress clients  (“I thought it just meant someone who could type in Word 97 and use spell check!”).

Over the last two years I’ve had the opportunity to work with three great Instructional designers, and I thought I’d do my part to explain a little more in depth about what they do.

Imagine a client placing a 300 slide printout of a PowerPoint on your desk, topic unknown, turnaround time: 1 week or less, and it all needs to be compressed into a 15 minute eLearning course with a maximum of 5 goals or objectives. This is a great example of what makes a great ID special.

Not only do they have to digest and research the material, they have to fill in the gaps, invent simulations, games and situations that will educate and entertain the user. It’s a high bar to set, so trust me, when you find a good ID you want to keep them forever. 

Like any field, flexibility above all else is very important. If you hire an ID who is set in their ways (and surely they may know what’s best 100% of the time), and they’re unwilling to budge to meet a smaller set of standards (for instance a budget constraint might limit the number of custom interactions in a course), you may have a problem with scope creep. Like with most jobs, knowing the limitations of a project help you set yourself up for success when writing the final storyboard.

With that said, I’d like to shamelessly plug the fact that we handle all sorts of Instructional Design here at Clearly Trained, from sales training, ethics & compliance, to virtual simulations and educational games. We understand there’s a setting for every tone of voice, but insist on adding some humor when possible to our projects (Adults are people, too – and deserve to be entertained!).

We’ve made the leap! From obscurity with Living Children to our bright new clarified future as Clearly Trained. It was a long time coming, but as you can imagine, when you have 10 years invested in a name hower bad or good, it’s a daunting task to change everything over, not to mention search rankings on the old site, business cards, new email addresses, etc. In the end I can honestly say I’m happy it happened.

Spurred on by business copywriter Dan Furman, who stated something along the lines of “Your name doesn’t make any sense”, we started our transitional efforts to launch this new brand and site in early 2009.

It’s our intention that the new branding help us focus in our current and potential client base to what we do best: corporate eLearning and Flash development.

If you have any questions on this transition please let me know, and fyi it will in no way cause any issues with current and past contracts, invoices or SOWs, as the parent company name is still Living Children, LLC.

So go! Explore! Check out the new site and I dare you to imagine the possibilities (it might just make your head explode!).