Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/295251
[ 37 ] APRIL 2014 | www.hrotoday.com in the field, Strainick says. For example, in early 2013 the company began developing small snippets of videos called Chalk Talks: YouTube-style training videos that help NCR's customer engineers diagnose and fix critical areas of equipment failure. NCR's sales representatives also receive Chalk Talk videos via their mobile devices, to assist them with such content as product demos. NCR will record a subject-matter expert to talk about the product and then publish these snippets for consumption. Currently, Strainick and his NCR team are working with Raytheon to develop a single mobile learning platform that combines existing mobile-ready content into a single site. "In today's world you are either doing mobile learning or you are being left behind," he says. "Our employees need to be able to access learning available at the point of need. You can't teach everything they need to know so the use of mobile performance support tools is critical." There are other challenges to mobile learning, Stone says. If a company has a bring your own device (BYOD) program in place, learning organizations may be challenged to build solutions on multiple operating platforms. Another challenge is ensuring that hourly employees are properly compensated for any "compensable time" used on learning solutions. "I think mobile learning is a fantastic idea, but I think by the time we develop learning solutions and give them to people in the field, the technology would be obsolete," Minthorn says. "I don't think we could ever do BYOD because our number one code of conduct is protecting our customers' information assets and security, and we couldn't control everything that people look at on their devices." Gamification is Here to Stay For gamification, an "in vogue" technique is scenario-based learning and simulation: putting people in scenarios where they can experience real-life situations and be permitted to make mistakes, see the consequences of their mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and get to do it again until they don't make mistakes, NIIT's Trolley says. True gamification should be linked to improving human performance in tasks that will deliver on business results, Stone says. This can be achieved in the building gamification into process redesign. "Understanding that gamification is not just a tool in the learning communities space, but a tool that can be used by process engineers, HR business partners, and business leaders is key," he says. Strainick says learning executives are also increasingly interested in deploying new technologies such as wearable technologies that augment reality in the field. For example, a tablet could recognize a particular ATM and automatically create a learning PDF around the functionalities of that ATM. "CLOs will need to think about how best to incorporate these new technologies into their learning platforms and what partners are out there to help them do it," he says. What's the driver behind all of these new trends and techniques? It's generational, Higgins says, particularly as more Millennials enter the workforce. "Employers need to give Millennials learning that's more interactive and engaging than the old platforms," he says. "It goes beyond expecting it—they require it." Learning If a company has a bring your own device (BYOD) program in place, learning organizations may be challenged to build solutions on multiple operating platforms. Another challenge is ensuring that hourly employees are properly compensated for any "compensable time" used on learning solutions.