Author: Todd Maddox

I recently attended Zoholics 2019 in Austin, Texas. It was quite an event. The conference opened with the big news that was Zoho is moving its headquarters to Austin! This made headline news on the front page of the Austin American Statesman, and Austin mayor, Steve Adler offered words of excitement and encouragement during his Keynote address.

Zoho also announced two new product offerings. Zoho Commerce Plus offers a comprehensive E-commerce platform that provides an end-to-end solution for the commerce vertical. Zoho MarketingHub allows businesses to coordinate marketing with sales by integrating with a number of Zoho apps (e.g., Zoho CRM, Zoho Campaigns, etc), as well as other customer applications such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Given my focus on talent management and learning and development, two Zoholics topics were of particular interest to me. One was an update on the success of Zoho University, and the second was the announcement that Zoho has a Learning Management System (LMS) currently in beta.

Zoho University

Rajendran Dandapani, Evangelist and Raconteur at Zoho gave an enthusiastic presentation on the success of Zoho University. Zoho University offers a “crusade against academic credentialism”. It was built on the philosophy that the majority of new Zoho employees did not find their 4-year degree useful in their job, the necessity for good employees, and the realization that Product Managers were frustrated by how little new employees appeared to learn in college. As a former University Professor, the word “ouch” comes to mind, but when I take a step back and think about it, there is merit in this crusade, especially in the software development industry.

One of the main advantages of Zoho University, is that students (and their families) do not incur debt during the education process. Instead, students are paid to attend Zoho University, not the other way around.

There are also a number of learning science—the marriage of psychology and neuroscience—advantages of the Zoho University approach to teaching software development. First, the emphasis is on “learning by doing”. Students spend the majority of their time in labs working on real-world software problems, and very little time in lectures. In the end, developing software solutions is more about trial and error and behavioral learning than it is about learning facts and figures. Learning by doing targets these behavioral learning centers in the brain directly. Second, the learning is in teams, is highly collaborative, and centers around solving specific, current, real-world problems. The software development industry is becoming more cross-functional and collaborative by the day. Given this fact, it is highly efficient to instill this way of thinking and approach to problem solving directly into the educational process from Day 1. Finally, when lectures are necessary a “flipped classroom” approach is utilized. The lecture material is provided using videotaped content and the classroom setting is reserved for discussion and hands on practice. This integration of knowledge acquisition and behavioral training is ideal for software development.

Rajendran also mentioned that Zoho University plans to expand its curriculum to include Technology, Design and Marketing. Finally, the new Austin Headquarters will double as a new Zoho University campus. As an Austin local, I believe that Zoho University will be highly coveted by students in the Austin Metro area.

Zoho LMS

In my individual meeting with Chandrashekar L S P (Zoho Evangelist) and Raja Ramasamy (Head of Product Management for Zoho People Plus) I was delighted to hear that Zoho is currently developing an LMS. This is exciting news and is one product that is currently lacking from the Zoho One suite. I hope to obtain a detailed briefing and to learn more about the LMS in the coming months. Stay tuned.

1. Final Thoughts

I was impressed by the enthusiasm and loyalty of the Zoho users to the Zoho product line. Whether from organized customer and partner panels, or one-off happenstance conversations, the message that I heard was clear: Zoho users like the products, feel “heard” when they have a problem, and find the overall customer service experience to be outstanding.

I will continue to follow Zoho, with particular interest in Zoho University and Zoho’s upcoming LMS. It will be exciting to have Zoho’s headquarters “right down the block” so to speak.

 

Note: If you missed Parts I, II, and III of this blog series, catch up and read

• Part I: The Problem
• Part II: The Brain Science, and
• Part III: xR Hard Skills Applications

This is part of a four-blog series exploring the psychology and brain science behind the potential for extended reality tools to disrupt corporate Learning & Development.

xR and Behavioral Skills Learning: Whereas hard skills learning involves knowing what to do, behavioral skills learning involve knowing how to do it. People (aka soft) skills, such as the ability to communicate, collaborate, and lead effectively, or to show empathy and to embrace diversity, are behavioral skills. Similarly, technical skills, such as the ability to learning how to use new software, to upskill to a new software release, or to use and maintain a piece of hardware or equipment, are behavioral skills. Continue reading Why Extended Reality (xR) is Poised to Disrupt Corporate Learning and Development – Part IV: xR Behavioral Skills Applications, and Recommendations

Note: If you missed Parts I and II of this blog series, catch up and read Part I: The Problem, and Part II: The Brain Science. This is part of a four-blog series exploring the psychology and brain science behind the potential for extended reality tools to disrupt corporate Learning & Development.

xR Applications in Corporate L&D

The key ingredient of xR technology in corporate L&D is the experiential and immersive nature of the technology that provides rich, coordinated contextual cues that lead to a sense of “presence”. You are either in a real-world experience augmented with information (Augmented Reality or AR), or you are transported into a new virtual world (Virtual Reality or VR). In both cases, experiential learning systems are engaged in synchrony with cognitive, behavioral, and emotional learning systems in the brain. I elaborate below. Continue reading Why Extended Reality (xR) is Poised to Disrupt Corporate Learning and Development – Part III: xR Hard Skills Applications

Note: If you missed Part I of this blog series, catch up and read Part I: The Problem. This is part of a four-blog series exploring the psychology and brain science behind the potential for extended reality tools to disrupt corporate Learning & Development.

Four Dissociable Learning Systems in the Brain

The human brain is comprised of at least four distinct learning systems. A schematic of the learning systems is provided in the figure below. Continue reading Why Extended Reality (xR) is Poised to Disrupt Corporate Learning and Development – Part II: The Brain Science

(Note: This is the first of a four-party series on the Learning Science of xR in Corporate Learning.)

Executive Summary

Key Stakeholders: Chief Learning Officers, Chief Human Resource Officers, Chief People Officer, Chief Talent Officer, Learning & Development Directors and Managers, Corporate Trainers, Content and Learning Product Managers, Hiring Directors, Hiring Managers, Human Resource Directors, Human Resource Managers.

Why It Matters: A major goal of corporate Learning and Development (L&D) is to build scalable tools that facilitate hard and behavioral (soft and technical) skills mastery. Mastery is most effectively achieved through experiential learning and repetition that engages multiple learning systems in the brain in synchrony and facilitates the development of situational awareness.

Top Takeaway: Compared to traditional learning tools, extended reality (xR) technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality, speed the development of mastery and expertise through repeated experiential learning that broadly engages multiple learning systems in the brain in synchrony and is scalable.

Overview

“Learning is an experience. Everything else is just information” – Albert Einstein

This is a powerful quote from Albert Einstein and is supported by learning science—the marriage of psychology and brain science. As I elaborate below, experiential learning is effective because it engages multiple learning systems in the brain in synchrony.

Taken a step further, if one can obtain multiple related, but distinct experiences, then one can begin to develop mastery, expertise, and broad-based situational awareness. It is one thing to have knowledge and behavioral skills, but it is another to be able to apply that knowledge and behavior under time or social pressure, when you are well or poorly rested, or with a team that is new or familiar to you.

When attempting to master hard skills, such as the ability to identify the signs of harassment in the workplace, it is important to experience multiples signs of harassment and from different points of view such as from that of the harasser, the target of the harassment, or a bystander.

When attempting to master people skills, such as the verbal and non-verbal communication skills needed to be an effective leader, it is important to gain experience with multiple verbal and non-verbal skills and from different points of view such as from that of the manager or employee, an interview or performance review setting, or a large contentious team meeting. When attempting to master a technical skill, such as the ability to maintain and run a large piece of equipment, it is important to gain experience with multiple aspects of the equipment and under different scenarios such as routine maintenance, emergency maintenance under time pressure, or a situation in which you are training or supervising a new technician. In each of these examples, multiple related, but distinct experiences provide not only the opportunity for learning, but also for developing situational awareness; a hallmark of mastery and expertise.

The need for experience-based learning and repetition to build mastery and expertise provides the foundational principles for the effectiveness of extended reality (xR) technologies in Learning and Development (L&D) in general, and corporate L&D in particular. xR technologies include virtual reality (VR) in which the learner is immersed in a completely new virtual environment and augmented reality (AR) in which the learner is in a combined real and virtual environment where digital information is overlaid onto the learner’s field of view. These technologies are grounded in experience-based learning and offer repeatable, broad-based practice that builds situational awareness and is scalable.

This report focuses on a learning science evaluation of the potential for xR technologies to disrupt corporate L&D. xR technologies have the potential to improve the quality and quantity of training, to speed learning and enhance retention in all aspects of corporate learning. This follows because xR technologies broadly engage multiple learning systems in the brain in synchrony, especially experiential learning systems, and allow the training to repeated many times to enhance situational awareness and facilitate the development of mastery and expertise.

The Importance of Training in the Corporate Sector

The pace of change in the corporate sector is such that high-quality training is a necessity. Employees must constantly obtain new hard skills, whether learning rules and regulations in the workplace, definitions of appropriate and inappropriate behavior, or how to interpret data science applications. Employees must continually acquire and refine their people (aka soft) skills to be more effective communicators, collaborators and leaders. Whether it is growing concerns with automation, the extensive data suggesting that diversity increased revenue and workplace harmony, the #metoo movement, or more likely the combination of all three, employees and management must acknowledge the need for effective people skills training in organizations large and small.

Employees are constantly gaining new behavioral and technical skills such as learning new digital technologies, upskilling on some existing piece of software, or learning to use and maintain a piece of equipment. With each of these classes of skills–hard, people, and technical–employees must not only become proficient, but the goal is to obtain mastery and expertise. Mastery and expertise lead to situational awareness and the ability to perform effectively under any condition, whether routine or non-routine involving stress, pressure or anxiety, and the ability to anticipate the future. Whereas one can have a catalog of facts, and a repertoire of behaviors, in the end, one has to extract the appropriate information and engage the appropriate behavior in each distinct situation. Experience and repetition drive hard skills, people skills, and technical skills for situational awareness.

In Part 2, we’ll explore the brain science in greater detail and go over four distinct learning systems that affect learning.

If you enjoyed this blog, please share it on your social networks! And if you would like to learn more about how to use this information to support your corporate learning efforts, please email us at research@amalgaminsights.com to speak with me.

 

On December 22, 2018, the longest government shutdown in American history began. Approximately 800,000 employees have been affected with roughly 380,000 workers being furloughed and another 420,000 working without pay. Many of the 420,000 employees being required to work without pay make important, and often split-second, life or death decisions.

This includes the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and air traffic control, to name a few. While these employees are attempting to focus on their job (without pay), they are also pondering how to pay their rent or mortgage and whether to buy food, medicine, or gas.

With each passing day and missed paycheck, the shutdown is causing increased stress and anxiety. It creeps into the workers’ consciousness whether they like it or not.

From a brain science perspective, the likelihood of a major accident increases significantly every day mission-critical government workers are required to perform their jobs without pay, and with no clear indication of when their next paycheck will arrive.

Brain Science for Routine Behavior

From a brain science perspective, the effects of stress on decision making are well understood.  Well-established, routine behaviors such as swabbing luggage for bomb-making material or maintaining buoys and lighthouses is only moderately affected. Behaviors such as these are learned and initiated by the behavioral skills system in the brain that encompasses the basal ganglia, and is best learned and performed without “overthinking it.”

Situational Awareness Is Weakened By Shutdown-Driven Stress

However, cognitive processes and to a higher degree situational awareness are seriously hampered by shutdown-driven stress. Cognitive processing such as routing planes in flight and maintaining defense readiness in ports and on the oceans is strongly affected. Cognitive processing involves the cognitive skills system in the brain that recruits the prefrontal cortex and medial temporal lobes and relies heavily on working memory and attention. Stress and anxiety engage emotion centers in the brain that appropriate cognitive resources (working memory and attention) from the task at hand.

Situational awareness is especially affected by shutdown-driven stress. Situational awareness involves effectively processing and comprehending the situation around you, and projecting the future state. Situational awareness relies on cognitive, emotional and behavioral skills systems in the brain and involves knowing “what to do, when.”  Situational awareness is critical to Coast Guard, TSA and air traffic control operations because these operations require constant diligence to effectively evaluate the current and future situations that often require split-second decisions and projections into the future. It is this ability to “think on one’s feet” and to make the right split-second decision that is at serious risk when these employees are attempting work and simultaneously deal with the stress and anxiety of going unpaid.

Conclusion

With each passing day the likelihood of a major accident increases. Critical decision-making centers in the brain that are central to the mission of the Coast Guard, TSA, and air traffic control are operating at sub-optimal levels because shutdown-driven stress and anxiety are holding important cognitive and situational awareness processes hostage. This is only going to get worse. Putting politics aside, and focusing exclusively on the psychological and brain science of decision-making, the only solution is to end the shutdown and allow these workers to do their job with pay, and with their full brain processing capacity focused on the job.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  Todd Maddox, Ph.D. has more than 200 published articles, 10,000 citings, and $10 million in external research funding in his 25+ years researching the brain basis of behavior.  Maddox is available for comment on this topic and can be contacted via media@amalgaminsights.com

Simulating Learning Processes in the Brain With AI/ML

Key Stakeholders: Chief Learning Officers, Chief Human Resource Officers, Learning and Development Directors and Managers, Corporate Trainers, Content and Learning Product Managers.

Why It Matters: The skills necessary for success in the corporate world are varied and include hard skills, people skills and situational awareness. While L&D is embracing the use of AI/ML to analyze learners’ data and to personalize learning paths, curate effective content, and attempt to better engage learners, what L&D has failed to embrace is the application of AI/ML to model each of these distinct learning systems, and their interactions.

Top Takeaway: Corporate learning vendors would be well served to develop AI/ML models that capture the processing characteristics of the three learning systems in the brain known to mediate hard skills, soft skills, and situational awareness learning. A comprehensive AI/ML model that captured the processing characteristics of each of these three distinct learning systems could be used to develop and test products and tools that optimize content curation, learning paths, engagement, and delivery processes that will differ substantially across systems and tasks to be learned.

Vendors with the Skillset and Expertise to Build this AI/ML Tool: Cornerstone, CrossKnowledge, IBM, Infor, LTG, Oracle, Saba, Salesforce, SAP, Workday, and likely many others.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and L&D

Continue reading Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) and Learning Systems in the Brain

Leveraging Brain Science to Build a Modern Learning Ecosystem

Key Stakeholders: Chief Learning Officers, Chief Human Resource Officers, Learning and Development Directors and Managers, Corporate Trainers, Content and Learning Product Managers.

Why It Matters: Many companies today aim to deliver a more modern learning experience to their employees, but they’ve already invested heavily in a Learning Management System (LMS) or other tools that may lack some of the learner engagement and content curation features that can be found in emerging Learning Experience Platforms. They need a hybrid solution that provides services associated with a modern Learning Experience Platform that can be integrated with their existing LMS. Continue reading The Scientific Case for Augmenting Learning Management Systems with Percipio Experience Services

If you have a passion for learning then DevLearn is for you. DevLearn 2018 was quite the event. With excellent keynote addresses, breakout sessions, numerous vendors and great demos it was action-packed. I enjoyed every minute of DevLearn 2018 and I am already looking forward to 2019.

I took a few days to gather my notes and thoughts, and I have a number of observations on DevLearn 2018. I am sure that others who attended DevLearn 2018 will highlight different topics, and acknowledging that I was only able to speak in detail with a dozen or so vendors, here are my Top Four Scientific Observations.

Whether Talent, Behavioral or Data……The Impact of Science Continues to Grow

Relevant Vendors That I Spoke With: Adobe, Allego, EdCast, Inkling, iSpring, Learning Tribes, LEO Learning, MPS Interactive, Mursion, OttoLearn, Rehearsal, Schoox, STRIVR, Valamis Continue reading Todd Maddox Ph.D.’s Top Four Scientific Observations on DevLearn 2018

If you are in sales, you have likely heard stories similar to this on numerous occasions.

“I have been in sales for over a year now, and I just can’t seem to learn out to give an effective sales pitch. My sales manager tells me that my body language is off, and my verbal skills are unnatural and forced. I read all of the required sales training materials and I have even read other articles, books and blogs on the art of an effective pitch. My manager demonstrates how to give an effective pitch and I have watched many videos of others giving an effective pitch. I feel like I understand the material, but when I get in front of potential clients it doesn’t feel right, and they don’t react positively to me. I am at a loss and don’t know what to do…”

Continue reading Allego’s Point-in-Time Video Feedback Trains People Skills in the Sales Brain