High engagement in learning

Marek Hyla
Marek HylaSenior Learning Principal in Accenture CN; L&D Thought Leadership Co-Lead à Accenture

Thought leadership material providing insights related with engagement in the learning process. Prepared in the Talent Development and Learning Innovation Center of Accenture Capability Network by the team leaded by Sumana Dey.

Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Delivering High-Engagement Learning
Across Industries, Workforces, Assets, and Markets
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
01
GONE IN 60 SECONDS
Learner Engagement in the Age of YouTube
02
CRACKING THE MAGICIAN’S CODE
Three Fundamentals We Love to Forget
03
THERE’S MAGIC IN THE WEB OF IT
Two Universal Engagement Strategies
04
THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A JEDI’S TALE
A Journey of Engagement: Adopting the Learner’s Point of View
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
The typical workforce of any global organization today is diverse in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and
skills. This workforce diversity exists across all industries and functions. In addition, most employees,
regardless of age or educational profile, are exposed in some measure to consumer technologies. So,
instant, intuitive, connected, and personalized interactions through digital means form a part of an
employee’s typical experience as a consumer.
This has several implications for an organization’s learning practice. If engagement is the extent of
learners’ personal investment in their learning journey, today it is easier than ever to foster
disengagement in learners. Here are some typical complaints from today’s learning consumers:
• So many changes in tools, technologies, and processes, but the learning programs aren’t helping me
gain mastery as quickly as I should.
• I was forced to attend a 2-day classroom training, but what I really needed is a couple of hours of
coaching.
• I had to wade through 120 slides on a new application. Later, I could recall nothing. Why can’t I get
automatic prompts as I’m using the application?
Traditionally, certain broad considerations have helped learning practitioners identify the right combination
of delivery methods and learning modes for the particular needs of a client and a target group, for
example:
• Market, Industry, and Organization Profile: The client’s industry, the maturity of the market in which
the client operates, the corporate culture, and the hierarchical level of the learners
• Characteristics of the Transformation Program: The desired business outcomes, the projected
duration of the transformation journey, the technological readiness of the organization and the
learners, and the available budget and time for development
• Learning Proficiency Requirements: The subject areas of the learning solution, the desired
proficiency, the content types, the learner demography, and the preferred delivery channels
Today, however, in addition to these considerations, corporate learning strategies must also address a
broad spectrum of learner-driven needs:
• Universality, Customization, Personalization: The gender and cultural diversity and the presence of
Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials in the workforce, often in the same role, mean that
today’s learning content must strive to be either universal, that is, neutral in terms of age, gender, and
culture, or it should be customized—and even personalized—to respond to the gendered and culture-
specific interests of a group of learners and where possible, the personal preferences of each learner.
• Autonomy and Flexibility: With organizations’ increased appetite for cross-functional skill
development, learners now crave the freedom to craft their own—and infinite—talent development
journey, seeking recognition, both intrinsic and public, for skill-related achievements that increase their
employability or help them master multiple roles and competencies.
• Multiple Channels: Learners seek to consume the same content through multiple modes, so it is no
longer enough to produce competency-based learning designed for a single delivery channel, such as
a classroom or an online course. Rather, learning strategies should accommodate the entire spectrum
from formal, organizational-mandated learning and courseware to the informal, self-directed and
socially-rooted modes of learning that include organizational or industry wikis, communities of practice,
and social media platforms.
01
GONE IN 60 SECONDS
Learner Engagement in the Age of YouTube
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Given these learner preferences for
personalization, autonomy, and multi-channel
delivery, it is interesting that according to the
2015 Training Industry Report, U.S.
companies, on average, spent only 5% of their
training budget on learning tools and
technologies, which were the lowest priority for
resource allocation for most of the survey’s
respondents. While each learner, on an
average, received 53.8 hours of training in
2015, only 1.8% of training hours was
delivered through mobile devices and only 5%
of training hours comprised social learning.
Other user-oriented tools and features, such as mobile learning, web 2.0, audience response systems,
customer relationship management systems, and translation or localization, were lowest on the
respondents’ wish list of anticipated purchases in 2015.
However, the three highest priorities for the allocation of budgetary resources were: first, improving the
effectiveness of training programs; second, reducing costs or improving efficiency; and third, measuring
the impact of training.
Given these priorities, it seems evident that learning practitioners need to realign their budgetary and
strategic focus to accommodate at least some of the known preferences that today’s consumers have
for digital and social modes of learning, or risk causing learner disengagement. Yet, learner
engagement is an amorphous, shape-shifting concept that means many things to many people.
Essentially, learner engagement consists of feelings of excitement, meaningfulness, and empowerment
with regard to learning activities. Engaged learners have a greater capacity for productivity and
innovation, which ultimately contributes to higher profitability for the organization.
So how can learning practitioners combine traditional modes of learning with contemporary
preferences for the digital and social modes of interaction? How can they make learners feel
excited and proud to invest time and energy in organizational learning initiatives? How can they
help learners feel sustained happiness in the act of learning?
Figure 2: Comparison of U.S. training delivery methods in 2015
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Happiness is a warm…sense of accomplishment. To generate this elusive state of happiness in
learners, we need to design goal-oriented activities with a clear scheme of progression, provide
immediate feedback to help learners adjust their performance, and create a balance between the
learner’s existing skills and the challenges of the tasks the learner is expected to perform. According to
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of “Flow”, these are the preconditions to achieving flow, a mental state
in which one is fully immersed in, and energized by, one’s enjoyment in actively performing a task. To
create these preconditions for flow, learning practitioners need to evaluate how best to leverage the
current suite of digital technologies to supplement and enhance traditional e-learning and in-person
training methods. Digital tools and delivery mechanisms enable us to engage learners easily with just-in-
time information, course correcting prompts, instant feedback and recognition, and goal-based
progression through greater levels of difficulty. However, regardless of whether we choose to ride the
crest of the digital wave or not, here are three fundamental learner engagement strategies that we
should incorporate into our learning solutions.
02
CRACKING THE MAGICIAN’S CODE
Three Fundamentals We Love to Forget
We need to keep the learner at the heart of the learning solution. According to research conducted by
Gallup, there are 12 elements of engagement. These have a seeming correspondence with the three
categories of needs postulated in Clayton Alderfer’s E-R-G model—existence, relatedness, growth—
which, when fulfilled simultaneously, make individuals feel sustained happiness, excitement, and pride.
To get learners to their happy place—and to keep them there—we need to structure learning solutions to
consistently meet these 12 common needs.
#iMatter
By focusing on these 12 elements of engagement, we can also dislodge the common barriers to adult
learning, such as pride, habits, existing values and tastes, group behavior, and concerns about the
applicability of learning content. These 12 elements also relate to the fundamental considerations of
andragogy. It follows that in trying to meet the existence, relatedness, and growth needs of a learner,
learning practitioners would in fact have to check items off the Andragogy 101 list of best practices:
encouraging self direction, utilizing the learner’s existing experience, assessing the learner’s readiness to
learn, facilitating problem orientation through learning, and communicating the benefits of learning.
Learners’ Needs: Addressing Learners’ Needs: Some Examples
Existence: Help me focus. Modularized, goal-based learning
Existence: Relieve me of unnecessary stress. Just-in-time prompts or help, predictive guidance
Relatedness: Know me. Personalization of learning paths
Relatedness: Hear me. User feedback and comments
Relatedness: Care about me. Automated, timely, performance-based prompts
Relatedness: Help me build trust. Certifications and endorsements
Relatedness: Help me review my contribution. Knowledge management and collaboration forum
Relatedness: Help me feel proud. Leaderboards and certifications
Growth: Challenge me. Locked levels, problems mapped to skill level
Growth: Help me see my value. Promoting the business impact of learning achievements
Growth: Help me see my importance. Recognition from leadership for learning champions
Growth: Help me grow. Learning accomplishments mapped to promotion eligibility
Figure 3: Addressing the 12 engagement factors through learning strategies and solutions
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
By addressing the 12 elements of engagement, learning practitioners can simultaneously make learners
feel they matter and create compelling adult learning. In the same way, we can increase learner
engagement and create powerful learning solutions by implementing another fundamental theory of adult
learning—David Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. According to this model, learning is internalized only
when a learner goes through the four stages of learning across two continuums:
• The processing continuum (the left-right axis) describes how a learner approaches a task, from doing a
task (on the left of the axis) to watching a task being performed (on the right).
• The perception continuum (the top-bottom axis) describes the learner’s emotional responses, or how
the learner either thinks about a task (at the bottom end of the axis) or feels about a task (at the top of
the axis).
Here, the focus is on the learner, who goes through an experiential journey—of feeling, watching,
thinking, and doing—that increases her competence and confidence with regard to a task or concept.
Essentially, this journey increases the learner’s sense of importance and thus, engagement.
Yet, too often, learning initiatives generate disengagement because we fail to provide opportunities for a
learner to experience all four stages of this model. Budgetary or time constraints may compel us to design
learning strategies that take the learner only through one or two stages of this cycle, thus limiting the
retention of knowledge and deeper skill-building. As learning practitioners, we must plan for a range of
learning artefacts and instructional models to enable learners to experience each of the four stages of the
experiential learning cycle. We must strive to enable the learner to feel, watch, think, and do.
#FeelWatchThinkDo
Figure 4: A categorization of the common types of learning artefacts into each stage of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle
David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle
• Facilitated Role Plays
• Business Simulations
• Serious Learning Games
• Analogical Learning
Games
• Gamified Assessments
• Social Media Collaboration
• Workplace Projects
• 30-Day Challenge
• Learning Decathlons
• Mentoring
• Facilitated Learning (ILT)
• Case Studies
• Assessments
• In-Person / Digital
Coaching
• Knowledge Transfer
• Application Simulations
• Job Aids (Manual / Digital /
Mobile)
• Communities of Practice
• Blog
• Notifications (Emails &
Mobile Prompts)
• Graphic Stories/Posters
• Coaching Videos
• Scenario Based Videos
• Success Story Videos
• Cautionary Tale Videos
• Recorded Role Plays
• Leadership Messages
• Spectator Games
• Online Courses
• Mobile Learning
Courses
• Webinar
• Self Study Manuals
• Infographics
• Explanatory Videos
• Product Demonstration
Videos
• Talking Heads Videos
• Journey Maps
• Wikis
• Learning Boards
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Nothing catches an audience’s attention unless it is promoted, either through structured advertisement
and communications campaigns or through word-of-mouth publicity. Publicizing the learning campaign is
another fundamental learner engagement strategy that learning practitioners tend to ignore when
designing a learning solution. Leo Burnett’s dictum is spot on when it comes to advertising learning: we
need to tell learners not about the great learning content we have developed, but about how “good”—how
much more competent, confident, and happier—the learning initiative will make them.
Learning is essentially any process or activity that alters the capacity of a person, either consciously or
unconsciously, and makes the person more efficient. When creating a promotional campaign for a
learning initiative, it is useful to keep in mind educational psychologist Howard McClusky’s “Theory of
Margin”, which posits a relationship between “load”, “power”, and “margin”:
• Load refers to the demands of the self and of society (one’s inner aspirations and social
responsibilities).
• Power refers to the resources (the abilities, skills, and allies) a person uses to carry this load.
• Margin is the ratio between the load and the power in a person’s life. An individual builds margin in
childhood and early adulthood, but margin can be increased throughout one’s life by either reducing
load or by increasing power.
An effective learning solution will evidently increase a person’s “power”, and thus, the add to the “margin”
available to the learner. One way of measuring the effectiveness of a learning solution—while also
increasing learner engagement—is to evaluate and define the extent to which a particular solution will
increase the learner’s “power” and clearly communicate that to the learner. Learners will engage more
readily with a learning initiative that demonstrably increases their ability to carry their load more efficiently.
By using the power-margin as a guiding principle to evaluate the effectiveness of a learning solution,
learning practitioners can place the learner at the heart of their design. Such an orientation will implicitly
increase the capacity of a learning initiative to increase learner engagement. A corresponding
promotional campaign that overtly advertises the power-margin orientation—and promotes learning as a
tool designed to reduce the learner’s load, increase the learner’s power, augment the learner’s margin,
and ultimately, recharge the learner’s energy—is likely to have a greater pull.
These three fundamentals of learner engagement—personal motivation, experiential learning, and
the promotion of learning as a tool for learner empowerment—keep learners at the center of the
learning strategy. But who is the learner? Today, diversity is the norm in the workforce. From
Baby Boomers to Millennials, are there any universal learner preferences? To find a source of
inspiration for certain practices that could engage a diverse universe of learners, we turn to a
human invention—an art form—that has captivated billions of people across continents, cultures,
and millennia.
#PowerMargin
“Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.”—Leo Burnett, advertising pioneer
#FeelWatchThinkDo#iMatter #PowerMargin
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
From infancy through adulthood, we acquire vital knowledge and insights about the world—and our role in
it—by observing others playing roles, by analyzing their performances, by imitating their successful
moves, and by avoiding their failures. Perhaps for this reason theater has been integral to human
development and learning through millennia and across most cultures.
The process of experiential learning that David Kolb theorized is particularly evident in the theater. Here,
by watching, feeling, thinking, and doing—or not doing—as others do, the audience gains critical
knowledge and skills about how to negotiate the challenges of life. The power of immersive theater comes
from the way it makes the audience go through the four stages of the experiential cycle. All play-goers are
thus essentially learners experiencing the four stages of the learning cycle.
Theater—and its most popular progeny, cinema—remains one of the most universally engaging and
powerful modes of learning in human culture. Can learning practitioners borrow any practices from the
theater? Are there any theatrical engagement strategies that can be implemented in the corporate
learning environment?
Here, we discuss two powerful and universally successful engagement strategies inspired by the
art and the science of theater. By integrating some or all of these tactics and practices into our
learning solution and designs we can increase learner engagement.
#aLure
#Heroes
03
THERE’S MAGIC IN THE WEB OF IT
Two Universal Engagement Strategies
“The play’s the thing.”—Hamlet, William Shakespeare
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
#Heroes
Everyone loves a hero. Everyone (secretly)
wants to be a hero. All great stories are
ultimately about heroic transformations.
The stories that engage us most are centered on
a person, an Everyman or an ordinary Jo, who
goes on a journey, faces obstacles, gains new
friends and new powers, battles monsters, saves
the day, and becomes the Hero. All narrative
plots are essentially variations on this theme.
Organizations can engage learners by crafting
stories around—and within—the design of a
learning initiative or its individual components.
Such story-like structures send the individual
learner on a journey, one in which each learner
takes on the role of the hero and is transformed.
Creating a structured learning journey that
corresponds to a heroic transformation is also a
way of getting learners to their happy place.
Such learning journeys provide an emotional and
visual schema for progression. They give
learners a sense of purpose based on the
historical accomplishments of their own self or
their team. They also engage by hinting at the
potential for imminent achievements, more
monsters to be slain, more battles to be won.
Thus, a storied journey increases learner
engagement. We should design experiences that
allow the learner to adopt the role of a hero, and
use the story as an overarching framework for
the entire learning intervention. Alternatively, we
can embed story-like components into individual
learning objects, such as videos, online courses,
classroom training, or workplace projects.
The key questions to ask:
• Is the goal of this journey meaningful to the
hero-learner?
• Will the hero-learner feel accomplished at
different points during the journey?
• Will the hero-learner be challenged to
overcome a scarcity of resources?
• During the journey, will the hero-learner
discover or gain knowledge and skills that
increase his/her power?
• Will there be some elements of unpredictability
during the journey?
• Will the journey make the hero-learner’s social
influence and relationships grow?
• Will the hero-learner be rewarded for
successfully avoiding certain negatives?
• At the end of the journey, will the hero-learner
feel ownership for something of value?
But the journey continues for Hero Jo…
Ordinary Jo
goes on a
journey
Faces
obstacles
Battles
monsters
And becomes a hero.
Saves the day
And new powers
Gains new friends
…To become Jo the Jedi.
Autonomous and cooperative,
Hero Jo coaches and inspires others as a role model
and progresses towards greater mastery…
All plots are variations on this theme.
Heroes are not born. They become.
The Journey: From Hero to JediCopyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
#aLure
Learning practitioners can take inspiration from
various tactics—the lures and allure—that
theater uses to hook audiences and sustain their
engagement.
Brand
Through branding—a visual, intellectual, and
emotional alignment between the terminal goals
and the collaterals of a learning campaign—we
can distinguish it from the white noise of
mundane, mandatory learning programs. An
effectively branded learning program channels
the power-margin mystique and conveys its
value to learners.
Communicate
We should publicize the learning program’s
goals, key messages, schedule, milestones,
user feedback, business impact, and individual
achievements. Like the best advertisements, we
should strive to keep learning and
communication objects bite-sized, striking a
balance between too much and too little.
Collaborate
Just as theater encourages audience
involvement, we need to provide opportunities to
expand and deepen learner networks,
encourage and disseminate user-generated
content, and encourage knowledge sharing to
make tacit expertise explicit.
Gamify
We can sweeten all the bitter pills of
organizational change (system adoption, process
change, and performance redesign) by
provoking competitiveness, challenging learners,
incentivizing performance, and using rules to
increase shock, surprise, urgency, and
uncertainty.
Stimulate
Just as theater does, we should increase
learners’ involvement with powerful real-life or
fictional scenarios that produce laughter,
suspense, or fear. We should allow people to
learn from the tragic and the comic by
acknowledging and celebrating failures as well
as successes within the learning environment.
We should design outstanding audio-visuals and
simple, intuitive interfaces.
Lures and Allure
Brand
Make it unique.
Make it memorable.
Make it tell the story.
Stimulate
Stir the emotions.
Learn from the tragic and comic.
Invigorate with outstanding audio-visuals.
Communicate
Tease. Converse.
Capture attention.
Bite-size learning.
Gamify
Make it fun.
Make it viral.
Make it addictive.
Make it immersive.
Collaborate
Get users talking.
Activate networks.
Lure verb Tempt to do something or go somewhere
Allure verb Powerfully attract or tempt
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
04
THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A JEDI’S TALE
A Journey of Engagement: Adopting the Learner’s Point of View
Ntakan Lengerded lives with her family in a village in Kenya. Here, villagers have limited access to
modern healthcare facilities and services such as hospitals and doctors. Maternal and child mortality rates
are high. The villagers largely depend on community health workers and their supervisors, community
health extension workers, to diagnose and treat diseases in a timely manner. However, there is a severe
shortage of such community health workers and many of them lack the knowledge and skills required to
adequately diagnose and treat the diseases they encounter.
A public-private partnership involving, among others, Amref Health Africa (a non-governmental health
development organization), the Kenya Ministry of Health, and Accenture, is addressing this challenge
through a program intended to enhance the ability of frontline health workers to deliver better results and
increase their reach. The program offers users a set of tools that support learning, supervision, and
advisory services. The program’s delivery approach is predominantly digital and social even though most
users are from a low income, low literacy segment, with access to only the most basic mobile technology.
Ntakan, who could not read or write, had been working as a community health worker for some time,
servicing the rural and nomadic communities around her village. She would occasionally meet her
supervisor, the local community health extension worker, to submit reports, discuss cases, and learn
about diagnostics, treatments, and current healthcare offers and schemes being provided by partners
such as Astra Zeneca, Sight Savers International, and Save the Children. These face-to-face discussions
and group training workshops were vital but infrequent, and when Ntakan was on the field, she had to rely
on her limited knowledge of aetiology to diagnose and recommend treatments.
This situation changed when the new program, the Health Enablement and Learning Platform (HELP),
was implemented in Ntakan’s area. Ntakan was informed she would now be able to learn on the job and
at any time using her basic mobile phone. Instead of waiting for a face-to-face meeting, Ntakan could now
contact her supervisor while she was in the field or seek advise from other experts on difficult cases.
Ntakan began receiving SMS and IVR notifications that directed her to access resources such as audio
roleplays, podcasts, and mini lectures. As she and her peers began using the HELP resources, Ntakan
realized that her inability to read and write was preventing her from making the most of the new
resources. So, Ntakan enrolled in adult education classes. With increasing literacy, Ntakan began using
the entire range of HELP enablement and learning tools, including group chats, case studies, job aids,
decision trees for diagnostics, and assessments.
As she moves from one household to the next, Ntakan now searches for content—the diagnostic and
treatment procedures—relevant to the case she is dealing with. She also benefits from more frequent
monitoring by her supervisor, who can now instantly review Ntakan’s work assignments and reports on
the mobile platform and have more in-depth discussions during the face-to-face meetings. Ntakan’s
mastery of healthcare skills is also increasing as the program’s learning managers recommend more
learning modules based on her training completion and evaluation records. Ntakan is now a top performer
in the HELP program. Using HELP, Ntakan and her peers are learning and sharing their knowledge,
raising awareness, and contributing more to their communities. The group chat feature helped them
persuade 200 mothers to bring their children for a nutritional assessment workshop, a 300% increase in
attendance compared to earlier drives. In the Isoge community, health workers prevented a large-scale
health safety issue by raising an alarm through HELP’s group chat about unsafe malaria drugs that had
been supplied.
As Ntakan progresses through the learning path customized for her on the basis of her
performance and needs, her community has begun to regard her as a “digital Samburu” or village
doctor. Ntakan takes this role seriously and encourages other health workers to complete their
learning curriculum and transform the lives of those they serve.
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Key Achievements of HELP:
• Over 1,500 workers trained
• Over 60,000 households
covered
• 1.7 million unique user
SMS interactions
• 95% user completion rate
for IVR activities
• 97% user completion rate
for interactive SMS
activities
SupportforChange
Time
Ntakan’s Transformational Journey from Ordinary Jo to Jedi
Awareness Understanding CommitmentAcceptance
Faces obstacles:
Lacks literacy, healthcare
knowledge, performance support
and frequent supervision
#Heroes
Expert Support
Success Stories
Notifications
Facilitated Learning
Knowledge Transfers
Mobile Learning
Case Studies
Recorded Role Plays
Talking Heads
Social Collaboration
Job Aids
Digital Coaching
Workplace Projects
Assessments
A range of learning and performance enablers across the experiential learning cycle
Gains new friends:
Expands support network through
HELP, enrolls in adult education
classes
Gains new powers:
Literacy, on-demand
knowledge, diagnostic
skills and expert support
Becomes a hero:
Operates as her
community’s
“Digital Doctor”
Battles monsters:
Uses enablement
tools to save lives
Wins the day:
Achieves recognition as
a top performer and
HELP Champion
Becomes a Jedi:
Inspires others to
become “Digital
Doctors”
#PowerMargin
#FeelWatchThinkDo
#aLure
Supported by Engagement Strategies
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Conclusion
As Ntakan Lengerded’s journey of learning and transformation illustrates, to be effective, an learning
strategy has several key characteristics:
• First, it provides learners with the opportunity to explore formal courseware as well as informal, self-
directed and socially-rooted learning. In the case of Ntakan’s peer group, this included classroom
training, online and mobile learning as well as expertise sharing through social media and peer-to-peer
interactions in the real world.
• Second, it aims to empower learners with performance-oriented learning enablers at the point-of-need.
In the case of Ntakan’s community, the right mix of traditional and digital methods was deployed to
deliver these learning enablers, taking into consideration the constraints of the learners’ environment,
culture, experiential and technological readiness.
• Third, learners are offered some measure of autonomy in building their personal learning paths. For
Ntakan, this autonomy increased her desire and will to gain the necessary literacy skills that would
help her engage better with the learning content.
• Finally, as learners move with optimum autonomy along the spectrum of formal to informal learning, an
effective learning strategy will attempt to increase learner engagement by implementing a mix of
engagement strategies. These engagement strategies are learner-centered and are embedded in the
instructional methodologies of the learning products.
High-engagement learning immerses a learner in a narrative of consequence, empowerment, and heroic
transformation, taking the learner through the four stages of the experiential learning cycle, while using
tactics—including branding, communications, gamification, collaboration, and audio-visual stimulation—to
hook the learners’ attention and secure their commitment to the learning journey.
References
• 2015 Training Industry Report, Training Magazine, www.trainingmag.com, Published in 2015
• Digital Learning Technology: How Will Technology Transform Digital Learning In The Next Decades?, Kate Kalamara,
eLearning Industry, www.elearningindustry.com, Web Article, Published on 22 July 2015
#FeelWatchThinkDo#iMatter #PowerMargin
#Heroes #aLure
Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016 Accenture
All rights reserved.
Accenture, its logo, and High
Performance Delivered are
trademarks of Accenture.
The views and opinions in this article should not be viewed
as professional advice with respect to your business.
This document makes descriptive reference to trademarks
that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks
herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks
by Accenture and is not intended to represent or imply the
existence of an association between Accenture and the
lawful owners of such trademarks.
About the Accenture Capability Network TD&L | Innovation Center
The Capability Network is an Accenture Strategy Group that serves global clients.
CN TDL is a global consulting capability that specializes in envisioning, designing,
developing and deploying industry-specific talent development & learning solutions
using a distributed delivery model. We create tailored competency-based learning
solutions for process, function, behavioral, and industry-specific needs for mid- to
large market clients. With a 300+ team of deep-skilled learning practitioners, we have
executed over 300 projects with more than 100 clients, across geographies—North
America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific—and industries—Products,
Resources, Financial Services, Health and Public sectors.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing
company, with more than 249,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries.
Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries
and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful
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High engagement in learning

  • 1. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Delivering High-Engagement Learning Across Industries, Workforces, Assets, and Markets
  • 2. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. 01 GONE IN 60 SECONDS Learner Engagement in the Age of YouTube 02 CRACKING THE MAGICIAN’S CODE Three Fundamentals We Love to Forget 03 THERE’S MAGIC IN THE WEB OF IT Two Universal Engagement Strategies 04 THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A JEDI’S TALE A Journey of Engagement: Adopting the Learner’s Point of View TABLE OF CONTENTS
  • 3. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. The typical workforce of any global organization today is diverse in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and skills. This workforce diversity exists across all industries and functions. In addition, most employees, regardless of age or educational profile, are exposed in some measure to consumer technologies. So, instant, intuitive, connected, and personalized interactions through digital means form a part of an employee’s typical experience as a consumer. This has several implications for an organization’s learning practice. If engagement is the extent of learners’ personal investment in their learning journey, today it is easier than ever to foster disengagement in learners. Here are some typical complaints from today’s learning consumers: • So many changes in tools, technologies, and processes, but the learning programs aren’t helping me gain mastery as quickly as I should. • I was forced to attend a 2-day classroom training, but what I really needed is a couple of hours of coaching. • I had to wade through 120 slides on a new application. Later, I could recall nothing. Why can’t I get automatic prompts as I’m using the application? Traditionally, certain broad considerations have helped learning practitioners identify the right combination of delivery methods and learning modes for the particular needs of a client and a target group, for example: • Market, Industry, and Organization Profile: The client’s industry, the maturity of the market in which the client operates, the corporate culture, and the hierarchical level of the learners • Characteristics of the Transformation Program: The desired business outcomes, the projected duration of the transformation journey, the technological readiness of the organization and the learners, and the available budget and time for development • Learning Proficiency Requirements: The subject areas of the learning solution, the desired proficiency, the content types, the learner demography, and the preferred delivery channels Today, however, in addition to these considerations, corporate learning strategies must also address a broad spectrum of learner-driven needs: • Universality, Customization, Personalization: The gender and cultural diversity and the presence of Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials in the workforce, often in the same role, mean that today’s learning content must strive to be either universal, that is, neutral in terms of age, gender, and culture, or it should be customized—and even personalized—to respond to the gendered and culture- specific interests of a group of learners and where possible, the personal preferences of each learner. • Autonomy and Flexibility: With organizations’ increased appetite for cross-functional skill development, learners now crave the freedom to craft their own—and infinite—talent development journey, seeking recognition, both intrinsic and public, for skill-related achievements that increase their employability or help them master multiple roles and competencies. • Multiple Channels: Learners seek to consume the same content through multiple modes, so it is no longer enough to produce competency-based learning designed for a single delivery channel, such as a classroom or an online course. Rather, learning strategies should accommodate the entire spectrum from formal, organizational-mandated learning and courseware to the informal, self-directed and socially-rooted modes of learning that include organizational or industry wikis, communities of practice, and social media platforms. 01 GONE IN 60 SECONDS Learner Engagement in the Age of YouTube
  • 4. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Given these learner preferences for personalization, autonomy, and multi-channel delivery, it is interesting that according to the 2015 Training Industry Report, U.S. companies, on average, spent only 5% of their training budget on learning tools and technologies, which were the lowest priority for resource allocation for most of the survey’s respondents. While each learner, on an average, received 53.8 hours of training in 2015, only 1.8% of training hours was delivered through mobile devices and only 5% of training hours comprised social learning. Other user-oriented tools and features, such as mobile learning, web 2.0, audience response systems, customer relationship management systems, and translation or localization, were lowest on the respondents’ wish list of anticipated purchases in 2015. However, the three highest priorities for the allocation of budgetary resources were: first, improving the effectiveness of training programs; second, reducing costs or improving efficiency; and third, measuring the impact of training. Given these priorities, it seems evident that learning practitioners need to realign their budgetary and strategic focus to accommodate at least some of the known preferences that today’s consumers have for digital and social modes of learning, or risk causing learner disengagement. Yet, learner engagement is an amorphous, shape-shifting concept that means many things to many people. Essentially, learner engagement consists of feelings of excitement, meaningfulness, and empowerment with regard to learning activities. Engaged learners have a greater capacity for productivity and innovation, which ultimately contributes to higher profitability for the organization. So how can learning practitioners combine traditional modes of learning with contemporary preferences for the digital and social modes of interaction? How can they make learners feel excited and proud to invest time and energy in organizational learning initiatives? How can they help learners feel sustained happiness in the act of learning? Figure 2: Comparison of U.S. training delivery methods in 2015
  • 5. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Happiness is a warm…sense of accomplishment. To generate this elusive state of happiness in learners, we need to design goal-oriented activities with a clear scheme of progression, provide immediate feedback to help learners adjust their performance, and create a balance between the learner’s existing skills and the challenges of the tasks the learner is expected to perform. According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theory of “Flow”, these are the preconditions to achieving flow, a mental state in which one is fully immersed in, and energized by, one’s enjoyment in actively performing a task. To create these preconditions for flow, learning practitioners need to evaluate how best to leverage the current suite of digital technologies to supplement and enhance traditional e-learning and in-person training methods. Digital tools and delivery mechanisms enable us to engage learners easily with just-in- time information, course correcting prompts, instant feedback and recognition, and goal-based progression through greater levels of difficulty. However, regardless of whether we choose to ride the crest of the digital wave or not, here are three fundamental learner engagement strategies that we should incorporate into our learning solutions. 02 CRACKING THE MAGICIAN’S CODE Three Fundamentals We Love to Forget We need to keep the learner at the heart of the learning solution. According to research conducted by Gallup, there are 12 elements of engagement. These have a seeming correspondence with the three categories of needs postulated in Clayton Alderfer’s E-R-G model—existence, relatedness, growth— which, when fulfilled simultaneously, make individuals feel sustained happiness, excitement, and pride. To get learners to their happy place—and to keep them there—we need to structure learning solutions to consistently meet these 12 common needs. #iMatter By focusing on these 12 elements of engagement, we can also dislodge the common barriers to adult learning, such as pride, habits, existing values and tastes, group behavior, and concerns about the applicability of learning content. These 12 elements also relate to the fundamental considerations of andragogy. It follows that in trying to meet the existence, relatedness, and growth needs of a learner, learning practitioners would in fact have to check items off the Andragogy 101 list of best practices: encouraging self direction, utilizing the learner’s existing experience, assessing the learner’s readiness to learn, facilitating problem orientation through learning, and communicating the benefits of learning. Learners’ Needs: Addressing Learners’ Needs: Some Examples Existence: Help me focus. Modularized, goal-based learning Existence: Relieve me of unnecessary stress. Just-in-time prompts or help, predictive guidance Relatedness: Know me. Personalization of learning paths Relatedness: Hear me. User feedback and comments Relatedness: Care about me. Automated, timely, performance-based prompts Relatedness: Help me build trust. Certifications and endorsements Relatedness: Help me review my contribution. Knowledge management and collaboration forum Relatedness: Help me feel proud. Leaderboards and certifications Growth: Challenge me. Locked levels, problems mapped to skill level Growth: Help me see my value. Promoting the business impact of learning achievements Growth: Help me see my importance. Recognition from leadership for learning champions Growth: Help me grow. Learning accomplishments mapped to promotion eligibility Figure 3: Addressing the 12 engagement factors through learning strategies and solutions
  • 6. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. By addressing the 12 elements of engagement, learning practitioners can simultaneously make learners feel they matter and create compelling adult learning. In the same way, we can increase learner engagement and create powerful learning solutions by implementing another fundamental theory of adult learning—David Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. According to this model, learning is internalized only when a learner goes through the four stages of learning across two continuums: • The processing continuum (the left-right axis) describes how a learner approaches a task, from doing a task (on the left of the axis) to watching a task being performed (on the right). • The perception continuum (the top-bottom axis) describes the learner’s emotional responses, or how the learner either thinks about a task (at the bottom end of the axis) or feels about a task (at the top of the axis). Here, the focus is on the learner, who goes through an experiential journey—of feeling, watching, thinking, and doing—that increases her competence and confidence with regard to a task or concept. Essentially, this journey increases the learner’s sense of importance and thus, engagement. Yet, too often, learning initiatives generate disengagement because we fail to provide opportunities for a learner to experience all four stages of this model. Budgetary or time constraints may compel us to design learning strategies that take the learner only through one or two stages of this cycle, thus limiting the retention of knowledge and deeper skill-building. As learning practitioners, we must plan for a range of learning artefacts and instructional models to enable learners to experience each of the four stages of the experiential learning cycle. We must strive to enable the learner to feel, watch, think, and do. #FeelWatchThinkDo Figure 4: A categorization of the common types of learning artefacts into each stage of Kolb’s experiential learning cycle David Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle • Facilitated Role Plays • Business Simulations • Serious Learning Games • Analogical Learning Games • Gamified Assessments • Social Media Collaboration • Workplace Projects • 30-Day Challenge • Learning Decathlons • Mentoring • Facilitated Learning (ILT) • Case Studies • Assessments • In-Person / Digital Coaching • Knowledge Transfer • Application Simulations • Job Aids (Manual / Digital / Mobile) • Communities of Practice • Blog • Notifications (Emails & Mobile Prompts) • Graphic Stories/Posters • Coaching Videos • Scenario Based Videos • Success Story Videos • Cautionary Tale Videos • Recorded Role Plays • Leadership Messages • Spectator Games • Online Courses • Mobile Learning Courses • Webinar • Self Study Manuals • Infographics • Explanatory Videos • Product Demonstration Videos • Talking Heads Videos • Journey Maps • Wikis • Learning Boards
  • 7. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Nothing catches an audience’s attention unless it is promoted, either through structured advertisement and communications campaigns or through word-of-mouth publicity. Publicizing the learning campaign is another fundamental learner engagement strategy that learning practitioners tend to ignore when designing a learning solution. Leo Burnett’s dictum is spot on when it comes to advertising learning: we need to tell learners not about the great learning content we have developed, but about how “good”—how much more competent, confident, and happier—the learning initiative will make them. Learning is essentially any process or activity that alters the capacity of a person, either consciously or unconsciously, and makes the person more efficient. When creating a promotional campaign for a learning initiative, it is useful to keep in mind educational psychologist Howard McClusky’s “Theory of Margin”, which posits a relationship between “load”, “power”, and “margin”: • Load refers to the demands of the self and of society (one’s inner aspirations and social responsibilities). • Power refers to the resources (the abilities, skills, and allies) a person uses to carry this load. • Margin is the ratio between the load and the power in a person’s life. An individual builds margin in childhood and early adulthood, but margin can be increased throughout one’s life by either reducing load or by increasing power. An effective learning solution will evidently increase a person’s “power”, and thus, the add to the “margin” available to the learner. One way of measuring the effectiveness of a learning solution—while also increasing learner engagement—is to evaluate and define the extent to which a particular solution will increase the learner’s “power” and clearly communicate that to the learner. Learners will engage more readily with a learning initiative that demonstrably increases their ability to carry their load more efficiently. By using the power-margin as a guiding principle to evaluate the effectiveness of a learning solution, learning practitioners can place the learner at the heart of their design. Such an orientation will implicitly increase the capacity of a learning initiative to increase learner engagement. A corresponding promotional campaign that overtly advertises the power-margin orientation—and promotes learning as a tool designed to reduce the learner’s load, increase the learner’s power, augment the learner’s margin, and ultimately, recharge the learner’s energy—is likely to have a greater pull. These three fundamentals of learner engagement—personal motivation, experiential learning, and the promotion of learning as a tool for learner empowerment—keep learners at the center of the learning strategy. But who is the learner? Today, diversity is the norm in the workforce. From Baby Boomers to Millennials, are there any universal learner preferences? To find a source of inspiration for certain practices that could engage a diverse universe of learners, we turn to a human invention—an art form—that has captivated billions of people across continents, cultures, and millennia. #PowerMargin “Don’t tell me how good you make it; tell me how good it makes me when I use it.”—Leo Burnett, advertising pioneer #FeelWatchThinkDo#iMatter #PowerMargin
  • 8. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. From infancy through adulthood, we acquire vital knowledge and insights about the world—and our role in it—by observing others playing roles, by analyzing their performances, by imitating their successful moves, and by avoiding their failures. Perhaps for this reason theater has been integral to human development and learning through millennia and across most cultures. The process of experiential learning that David Kolb theorized is particularly evident in the theater. Here, by watching, feeling, thinking, and doing—or not doing—as others do, the audience gains critical knowledge and skills about how to negotiate the challenges of life. The power of immersive theater comes from the way it makes the audience go through the four stages of the experiential cycle. All play-goers are thus essentially learners experiencing the four stages of the learning cycle. Theater—and its most popular progeny, cinema—remains one of the most universally engaging and powerful modes of learning in human culture. Can learning practitioners borrow any practices from the theater? Are there any theatrical engagement strategies that can be implemented in the corporate learning environment? Here, we discuss two powerful and universally successful engagement strategies inspired by the art and the science of theater. By integrating some or all of these tactics and practices into our learning solution and designs we can increase learner engagement. #aLure #Heroes 03 THERE’S MAGIC IN THE WEB OF IT Two Universal Engagement Strategies “The play’s the thing.”—Hamlet, William Shakespeare Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
  • 9. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. #Heroes Everyone loves a hero. Everyone (secretly) wants to be a hero. All great stories are ultimately about heroic transformations. The stories that engage us most are centered on a person, an Everyman or an ordinary Jo, who goes on a journey, faces obstacles, gains new friends and new powers, battles monsters, saves the day, and becomes the Hero. All narrative plots are essentially variations on this theme. Organizations can engage learners by crafting stories around—and within—the design of a learning initiative or its individual components. Such story-like structures send the individual learner on a journey, one in which each learner takes on the role of the hero and is transformed. Creating a structured learning journey that corresponds to a heroic transformation is also a way of getting learners to their happy place. Such learning journeys provide an emotional and visual schema for progression. They give learners a sense of purpose based on the historical accomplishments of their own self or their team. They also engage by hinting at the potential for imminent achievements, more monsters to be slain, more battles to be won. Thus, a storied journey increases learner engagement. We should design experiences that allow the learner to adopt the role of a hero, and use the story as an overarching framework for the entire learning intervention. Alternatively, we can embed story-like components into individual learning objects, such as videos, online courses, classroom training, or workplace projects. The key questions to ask: • Is the goal of this journey meaningful to the hero-learner? • Will the hero-learner feel accomplished at different points during the journey? • Will the hero-learner be challenged to overcome a scarcity of resources? • During the journey, will the hero-learner discover or gain knowledge and skills that increase his/her power? • Will there be some elements of unpredictability during the journey? • Will the journey make the hero-learner’s social influence and relationships grow? • Will the hero-learner be rewarded for successfully avoiding certain negatives? • At the end of the journey, will the hero-learner feel ownership for something of value? But the journey continues for Hero Jo… Ordinary Jo goes on a journey Faces obstacles Battles monsters And becomes a hero. Saves the day And new powers Gains new friends …To become Jo the Jedi. Autonomous and cooperative, Hero Jo coaches and inspires others as a role model and progresses towards greater mastery… All plots are variations on this theme. Heroes are not born. They become. The Journey: From Hero to JediCopyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved.
  • 10. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. #aLure Learning practitioners can take inspiration from various tactics—the lures and allure—that theater uses to hook audiences and sustain their engagement. Brand Through branding—a visual, intellectual, and emotional alignment between the terminal goals and the collaterals of a learning campaign—we can distinguish it from the white noise of mundane, mandatory learning programs. An effectively branded learning program channels the power-margin mystique and conveys its value to learners. Communicate We should publicize the learning program’s goals, key messages, schedule, milestones, user feedback, business impact, and individual achievements. Like the best advertisements, we should strive to keep learning and communication objects bite-sized, striking a balance between too much and too little. Collaborate Just as theater encourages audience involvement, we need to provide opportunities to expand and deepen learner networks, encourage and disseminate user-generated content, and encourage knowledge sharing to make tacit expertise explicit. Gamify We can sweeten all the bitter pills of organizational change (system adoption, process change, and performance redesign) by provoking competitiveness, challenging learners, incentivizing performance, and using rules to increase shock, surprise, urgency, and uncertainty. Stimulate Just as theater does, we should increase learners’ involvement with powerful real-life or fictional scenarios that produce laughter, suspense, or fear. We should allow people to learn from the tragic and the comic by acknowledging and celebrating failures as well as successes within the learning environment. We should design outstanding audio-visuals and simple, intuitive interfaces. Lures and Allure Brand Make it unique. Make it memorable. Make it tell the story. Stimulate Stir the emotions. Learn from the tragic and comic. Invigorate with outstanding audio-visuals. Communicate Tease. Converse. Capture attention. Bite-size learning. Gamify Make it fun. Make it viral. Make it addictive. Make it immersive. Collaborate Get users talking. Activate networks. Lure verb Tempt to do something or go somewhere Allure verb Powerfully attract or tempt
  • 11. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. 04 THERE AND BACK AGAIN: A JEDI’S TALE A Journey of Engagement: Adopting the Learner’s Point of View Ntakan Lengerded lives with her family in a village in Kenya. Here, villagers have limited access to modern healthcare facilities and services such as hospitals and doctors. Maternal and child mortality rates are high. The villagers largely depend on community health workers and their supervisors, community health extension workers, to diagnose and treat diseases in a timely manner. However, there is a severe shortage of such community health workers and many of them lack the knowledge and skills required to adequately diagnose and treat the diseases they encounter. A public-private partnership involving, among others, Amref Health Africa (a non-governmental health development organization), the Kenya Ministry of Health, and Accenture, is addressing this challenge through a program intended to enhance the ability of frontline health workers to deliver better results and increase their reach. The program offers users a set of tools that support learning, supervision, and advisory services. The program’s delivery approach is predominantly digital and social even though most users are from a low income, low literacy segment, with access to only the most basic mobile technology. Ntakan, who could not read or write, had been working as a community health worker for some time, servicing the rural and nomadic communities around her village. She would occasionally meet her supervisor, the local community health extension worker, to submit reports, discuss cases, and learn about diagnostics, treatments, and current healthcare offers and schemes being provided by partners such as Astra Zeneca, Sight Savers International, and Save the Children. These face-to-face discussions and group training workshops were vital but infrequent, and when Ntakan was on the field, she had to rely on her limited knowledge of aetiology to diagnose and recommend treatments. This situation changed when the new program, the Health Enablement and Learning Platform (HELP), was implemented in Ntakan’s area. Ntakan was informed she would now be able to learn on the job and at any time using her basic mobile phone. Instead of waiting for a face-to-face meeting, Ntakan could now contact her supervisor while she was in the field or seek advise from other experts on difficult cases. Ntakan began receiving SMS and IVR notifications that directed her to access resources such as audio roleplays, podcasts, and mini lectures. As she and her peers began using the HELP resources, Ntakan realized that her inability to read and write was preventing her from making the most of the new resources. So, Ntakan enrolled in adult education classes. With increasing literacy, Ntakan began using the entire range of HELP enablement and learning tools, including group chats, case studies, job aids, decision trees for diagnostics, and assessments. As she moves from one household to the next, Ntakan now searches for content—the diagnostic and treatment procedures—relevant to the case she is dealing with. She also benefits from more frequent monitoring by her supervisor, who can now instantly review Ntakan’s work assignments and reports on the mobile platform and have more in-depth discussions during the face-to-face meetings. Ntakan’s mastery of healthcare skills is also increasing as the program’s learning managers recommend more learning modules based on her training completion and evaluation records. Ntakan is now a top performer in the HELP program. Using HELP, Ntakan and her peers are learning and sharing their knowledge, raising awareness, and contributing more to their communities. The group chat feature helped them persuade 200 mothers to bring their children for a nutritional assessment workshop, a 300% increase in attendance compared to earlier drives. In the Isoge community, health workers prevented a large-scale health safety issue by raising an alarm through HELP’s group chat about unsafe malaria drugs that had been supplied. As Ntakan progresses through the learning path customized for her on the basis of her performance and needs, her community has begun to regard her as a “digital Samburu” or village doctor. Ntakan takes this role seriously and encourages other health workers to complete their learning curriculum and transform the lives of those they serve.
  • 12. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Key Achievements of HELP: • Over 1,500 workers trained • Over 60,000 households covered • 1.7 million unique user SMS interactions • 95% user completion rate for IVR activities • 97% user completion rate for interactive SMS activities SupportforChange Time Ntakan’s Transformational Journey from Ordinary Jo to Jedi Awareness Understanding CommitmentAcceptance Faces obstacles: Lacks literacy, healthcare knowledge, performance support and frequent supervision #Heroes Expert Support Success Stories Notifications Facilitated Learning Knowledge Transfers Mobile Learning Case Studies Recorded Role Plays Talking Heads Social Collaboration Job Aids Digital Coaching Workplace Projects Assessments A range of learning and performance enablers across the experiential learning cycle Gains new friends: Expands support network through HELP, enrolls in adult education classes Gains new powers: Literacy, on-demand knowledge, diagnostic skills and expert support Becomes a hero: Operates as her community’s “Digital Doctor” Battles monsters: Uses enablement tools to save lives Wins the day: Achieves recognition as a top performer and HELP Champion Becomes a Jedi: Inspires others to become “Digital Doctors” #PowerMargin #FeelWatchThinkDo #aLure Supported by Engagement Strategies
  • 13. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Conclusion As Ntakan Lengerded’s journey of learning and transformation illustrates, to be effective, an learning strategy has several key characteristics: • First, it provides learners with the opportunity to explore formal courseware as well as informal, self- directed and socially-rooted learning. In the case of Ntakan’s peer group, this included classroom training, online and mobile learning as well as expertise sharing through social media and peer-to-peer interactions in the real world. • Second, it aims to empower learners with performance-oriented learning enablers at the point-of-need. In the case of Ntakan’s community, the right mix of traditional and digital methods was deployed to deliver these learning enablers, taking into consideration the constraints of the learners’ environment, culture, experiential and technological readiness. • Third, learners are offered some measure of autonomy in building their personal learning paths. For Ntakan, this autonomy increased her desire and will to gain the necessary literacy skills that would help her engage better with the learning content. • Finally, as learners move with optimum autonomy along the spectrum of formal to informal learning, an effective learning strategy will attempt to increase learner engagement by implementing a mix of engagement strategies. These engagement strategies are learner-centered and are embedded in the instructional methodologies of the learning products. High-engagement learning immerses a learner in a narrative of consequence, empowerment, and heroic transformation, taking the learner through the four stages of the experiential learning cycle, while using tactics—including branding, communications, gamification, collaboration, and audio-visual stimulation—to hook the learners’ attention and secure their commitment to the learning journey. References • 2015 Training Industry Report, Training Magazine, www.trainingmag.com, Published in 2015 • Digital Learning Technology: How Will Technology Transform Digital Learning In The Next Decades?, Kate Kalamara, eLearning Industry, www.elearningindustry.com, Web Article, Published on 22 July 2015 #FeelWatchThinkDo#iMatter #PowerMargin #Heroes #aLure
  • 14. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Copyright © 2016 Accenture All rights reserved. Accenture, its logo, and High Performance Delivered are trademarks of Accenture. The views and opinions in this article should not be viewed as professional advice with respect to your business. This document makes descriptive reference to trademarks that may be owned by others. The use of such trademarks herein is not an assertion of ownership of such trademarks by Accenture and is not intended to represent or imply the existence of an association between Accenture and the lawful owners of such trademarks. About the Accenture Capability Network TD&L | Innovation Center The Capability Network is an Accenture Strategy Group that serves global clients. CN TDL is a global consulting capability that specializes in envisioning, designing, developing and deploying industry-specific talent development & learning solutions using a distributed delivery model. We create tailored competency-based learning solutions for process, function, behavioral, and industry-specific needs for mid- to large market clients. With a 300+ team of deep-skilled learning practitioners, we have executed over 300 projects with more than 100 clients, across geographies—North America, Europe, Africa, Latin America, Asia Pacific—and industries—Products, Resources, Financial Services, Health and Public sectors. About Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, with more than 249,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high- performance businesses and governments. Its home page is www.accenture.com.