Training in the Age of Distraction: Learning Design and Mobile Strategies that Grab Learners’ Attention

Struggling to hold your learners’ attention? Discover learning design strategies, mobile learning solutions, and attention grabbing training ideas that work in today’s distracted world. Transcript below.

[:11] Dave Asheim: Hello, everybody!
[:13] Dave Asheim: Welcome to our webinar.
[:17] Nicholas Igneri: Hey? We'll start in a few minutes. This is next speaking. It's just the the top of the hour, but we want to give our colleagues some time to enter the room, we'll just start in a couple of minutes.
[:29] Nicholas Igneri: As we're waiting, we have a we have a Poll begin to engage you in this conversation, we'll put up the poll, and as individuals come in, you could just answer a simple question, and we'll we'll look at it in a moment.
[:43] Dave Asheim: And also Nick, everybody go ahead in the chat window, find out where that is.
[:49] Dave Asheim: and tell us your name and what city you are in. do that while you're answering
[:58] Dave Asheim: Nick's distractions, Poll.
[1:01] Nicholas Igneri: Dave's gonna distract you from my.
[1:03] Dave Asheim: I'm gonna distract you while we're talking about distractions.
[1:09] Dave Asheim: It's just fun to see from all the different cities and states where everybody is.
[1:14] Dave Asheim: go ahead and do that and
[1:17] Dave Asheim: answer the poll. Question 2. There's Randy from Jackson Hole.
[1:22] Dave Asheim: Hi! Randy's 1 of our speakers today, Nick, you're in.
[1:28] Nicholas Igneri: I am in St. Petersburg, Florida. Yes.
[1:31] Dave Asheim: Nice.
[1:33] Nicholas Igneri: Hot, humid Saint Pete.
[1:36] Dave Asheim: We've got Santa Fe and Dalton and Philadelphia.
[1:41] Dave Asheim: South Lake Tahoe. Tom. Nice to see you.
[1:46] Randy Coin: Tom is our team member.
[1:48] Dave Asheim: Hi, Tom! Nice to meet you.
[1:52] Dave Asheim: Mary Lou, from Rochester. I know Mary Lou. She's 1 of our clients.
[1:58] Dave Asheim: Derek, from San Francisco. That's where our company is really based.
[2:04] Dave Asheim: The other thing, Nick, just for everybody to know we are recording this.
[2:09] Dave Asheim: and tomorrow morning we'll send out a copy of the slides.
[2:14] Dave Asheim: both Randy and Nick and my contact and a video link. if it was interesting to you, or if you had to dash off, or you want to share it with some team members
[2:26] Dave Asheim: love for you to pass that around, and you'll have that link in the morning.
[2:32] Nicholas Igneri: Okay.
[2:33] Nicholas Igneri: one other thing in in the chat window, if you don't mind, as we close out the poll and distractions, why don't you put in the chat the common distractions you see from your learners in your organization, let's think about, begin to put up some distractions that we're dealing with, and we're struggling with.
[2:57] Dave Asheim: Nick and Randy, what do you think about these answers?
[3:01] Dave Asheim: How distracted learners are?
[3:03] Dave Asheim: Quite a quite. It seems
[3:06] Dave Asheim: it's 5 or 10, I guess that means it's a bit severe.
[3:12] Nicholas Igneri: Yeah.
[3:13] Nicholas Igneri: yeah, and I'll in a little bit, we'll talk about some data that I pulled together, and see how this compares to that data. .
[3:21] Dave Asheim: Yeah.
[3:22] Nicholas Igneri: But
[3:23] Dave Asheim: Nice.
[3:25] Randy Coin: Because certainly tracks with what we're seeing in our client, in our clients organizations.
[3:30] Dave Asheim: Yeah, I bet that's right.
[3:33] Nicholas Igneri: Okay? Well, look, we'll get back to the distraction question in a moment. Let's start off our webinar with some introductions. My name is Nicholas Ignieri. I am the host. Today I will be guiding our conversation and looking at your comments, and trying to answer some of your questions with A with Randy and Dave. I have over 20 years experience in the L. And D space, I'll chime in with my 2 cents every once in a while, too, as I, as I have my own thoughts on the topic.
[4:02] Nicholas Igneri: Dave, why don't you talk about yourself and engage myself, and what you do.
[4:06] Dave Asheim: Yeah, thanks. I'm Dave Asheim. I started this company engaged by Sal about 16 years ago, and I think, 15 years ago, I met Nick when he was working in New York City for a big consulting training organization
[4:24] Dave Asheim: and met Randy more recently. But both of these 2 speakers have immense
[4:30] Dave Asheim: background. if anything that they say catches your eye, you want to. You want to connect with them on Linkedin, and connect with them
[4:39] Dave Asheim: to learn more about their organization.
[4:42] Dave Asheim: Engage by cell. We're really a mobile company.
[4:46] Dave Asheim: When I think of Mobile, I think of text messaging and mobile web apps. You see an example of a text and a mobile site on the left hand side.
[4:54] Dave Asheim: We work in all industries. Some of our clients here are workforce development and hospitals and museums. But anybody that could use a mobile solution we are, we're all on board. that's about engaged by cell.
[5:10] Nicholas Igneri: Thanks, Dave. Yes, Dave and I go way back, and it's a pleasure to be working with him again in this capacity. , Randy.
[5:18] Nicholas Igneri: you're the founder and owner of Coin Harland, and once you tell us a little bit about your organization and what you do.
[5:25] Randy Coin: Sure. I'm Randy Coyne, as Nick said. I'm the the founder is actually the co-founder of Coin Harlan, and it's been in existence for 15 years. But I have 25 years of a custom, learning, design, experience. And I started in e-learning in roughly 2,002, and our organization. Is comp provides completely custom
[5:45] Randy Coin: solutions. We primarily do learning consulting. you see a few examples, there needs analysis templates, curriculum design. Sometimes we'll analyze existing programs.
[5:55] Randy Coin: our core services learning design. that's course or workshop creation in instructor led virtual instructor led and digital learning. We're here today to talk about codecs. But we do a lot of storyline rise and video development. And then the others are sort of in the lower left. What we kind of call crossover products. They can be used as learning. They can be used as just a resource.
[6:17] Randy Coin: They really kind of straddle that line, and then the up upper left is just straight information design. And Nick and I also go back, I think, about 20 years now, too. Nick was also a coin Harlan client, and our 1st buyer of Codex. .
[6:32] Nicholas Igneri: Yeah, it's a great tool. Randy will talk about that in a moment. And I think
[6:36] Nicholas Igneri: just the way the tool is developed and what it does. The functionality of the tool. I think you'll see clearly on how it can begin to chip away at distractions and begin to engage learners in a deeper way.
[6:47] Nicholas Igneri: let's just talk about the distractions that we asked you to do a poll. Let's see what the data says. I pulled this from a couple of sources, but I think it's kind of in line with the population here indicated. Go through a couple of numbers here. 76% of employees report being distracted. That's a lot. That's a lot of people being distracted. 70% of employees disengage when training models exceed modules exceed 20 min. Okay, we all know people have very short attention spans.
[7:18] Nicholas Igneri: and the tighter we can design our training, and the clearer we can do that the better off we'll be. We'll increase engagement in those programs.
[7:27] Nicholas Igneri: 65% report multitasking during training. I'm assuming that's really significant in the virtual training space right? Because people have the opportunity to do multiple things. How many of you are multitasking as we're doing the webinars as we speak 62% of employees report stress as a factor. And it's just a lot of stress in the world today for many different reasons. And that expresses itself in the workplace for sure.
[7:52] Nicholas Igneri: 61% of employees in an open floor plan report difficulty focusing. I've personally never worked in an open floor plan. I don't think I could. I am way, too. I would get way too distracted. for those who do that, I can imagine how distracting that is.
[8:10] Nicholas Igneri: 44% of remote workers report household interruptions. I work remotely and
[8:17] Nicholas Igneri: hopefully. We won't hear my dogs barking in the background. I'm sure there will be a disruption at any moment. And 34% of employees believe training is relevant to that job. Okay? a vast majority feel that training isn't relevant, that we're not making the connection between
[8:33] Nicholas Igneri: the organizational strategic initiatives and the how that aligns to the training that we're doing. And lastly, 25% complete optional training programs optional, because a lot of times when we do the tech training programs and security. You know, those are mandatory and must be completed. But the optional training programs, 25% are not completing those.
[8:56] Nicholas Igneri: these are not great numbers. And I think what you indicated in answering the poll question. When we 1st opened kind of all aligned to this, we have an engagement problem. the question is.
[9:09] Nicholas Igneri: what do we do about it? How do we begin to chip away? There's no one thing that we're going to do to solve the engagement problem. But it's a multifaceted problem. But I think what we'll talk about today is, how do we begin to chip away at that problem from a design perspective and a communication perspective and meeting learners where they are, and designing for those distractions.
[9:35] Nicholas Igneri: I'll hand it over to Randy. Point. Harlan had recently launched a really cool product called Codex. As Randy said in my last organization, I did purchase that product to build training. It was fantastic. I really thought, you know, it was a. It was a piece of content that had to be distributed to a lot of
[9:56] Nicholas Igneri: individuals that weren't aligned to the organization. They were volunteers. it was a really cool tool to grab their attention. They didn't really want to take the training, but they had to take the training, we had to design it in a way that grabbed their attention. Codex recently won a cool tool
[10:14] Nicholas Igneri: award from Edtech.
[10:17] Nicholas Igneri: we're getting recognition in the market for for that product. I'll hand it over to Randy. Sorry about that. I'll hand it over to Randy, and she will walk through codecs and.
[10:32] Randy Coin: Okay, great. And, Dave, just thanks much for having us today and giving us the opportunity.
[10:37] Randy Coin: My pleasure here.
[10:39] Dave Asheim: Yeah. Thanks.
[10:41] Randy Coin: All right.
[10:42] Randy Coin: as I'm getting ready to demo codecs for you, I'm just gonna start here. We have a dedicated page, and on our website coin harlan.com slash codecs which Nick will put in the chat at the end. everything I'm about to show you you can actually visit and play with yourself right here in the use cases section, and I'm gonna be demoing parts of 2 today, the participant guide. And what I have is more of a micro learning design.
[11:07] Randy Coin: , as you can see here, this is the interface. And I just want to provide some context. If you think about. Every modern medium is competing and heavily investing
[11:19] Randy Coin: for our visual and emotional engagement today. And if you think about it with rare exception, that's not really happening in the learning space on a big scale. we have marketers creating content to grab our attention in seconds. Right? The Super Bowl commercials. We have apps that we know are engineered to be addictive. Companies are paying top dollar for the world's best psychologists and user interface designers
[11:44] Randy Coin: to, you know, grab people's attention with emotion color. They know what's working that makes people stop, stay, scroll and move on. But, as I said, if you look at corporate learning. Today, we're not really seeing that same investment.
[11:58] Randy Coin: and I won't get into it. I acknowledge there are absolute realities and constraints within the industry that make perfect sense as to why we're not caught up.
[12:07] Randy Coin: But we're still on, you know, on balance. We're looking at a lot of slides. We're looking at e-learning that looks slides. We're clicking next button. Still, even with rise. Yes, we're scrolling. But we've been scrolling the Internet for 20 years. we're just seeing it's just not caught up. And one of the things these are these are the types of things we were really thinking about when we design codecs.
[12:30] Randy Coin: and that we continue to think about as we evolve codecs. And I'm just going to kind of go open a few pages here and then really get into the demo. But something I want to point out is, I know that there. And some of you may be thinking this, there is digital learning. I'm sorry digital magazine technology on the market. There's flipping book. There's flip snacks
[12:52] Randy Coin: and a major thing. If you walk away today knowing anything about one of the differences is, we have full scorm analytics, just e-learning courses. A lot of those services just have scorm wrappers. And if this is too jargony for you, we can cover it in the Q. And a. And you're certainly able to follow up with us afterwards. But for those of you who need those scorm analytics to track all your training. Maybe you're in
[13:16] Randy Coin: a field safety training, or there's compliance and pharmaceutical, rest. Assured Codex provides all the same data tracking as you would with an articulate storyline course.
[13:26] Randy Coin: I'm going to go over the exterior, the interface 1st the ever present features, and then I'll move inward to the pages. we did borrow some from e-learning the things we didn't need to reinvent the wheel things that are working great. you have a progress bar here at the top, you can track how far along you are. You see, we have visual navigation instead of text-based navigation, which is different from a storyline or articulate course.
[13:53] Randy Coin: but you can see the page level tracking anything I have visited. You're seeing the check marks. you know exactly what you have and haven't done across the bottom. Simple. You can hide the menu if you'd , return to your homepage. But the features that are most important, I think to convey today are ones we built in for what we feel is important for personalization. something simple, I know. Many years ago, I said, I started as a learning designer in e-learning, we would talk about the font size.
[14:21] Randy Coin: Is it big enough for the average reader? But you can personalize that experience by using the zoom. But I'd say more important to the personalization are the features down here in the right, you know. For years I've been working in storyline and other e-learning technologies. And you couldn't highlight text. You know, you're in a classroom. It's really an important personalization feature
[14:44] Randy Coin: for learners. We go into a classroom. We have a hard copy notebook, and we often bring different colored pens and sticky notes, and on, and forth. And
[14:55] Randy Coin: this feature actually allows you to do your highlighting. It also allows you to take notes. Instructional designers build into worksheets and online courses very specific reflections. And they give you, and you'll see in here. We have some of these spaces to
[15:11] Randy Coin: answer very specific questions, but this is different in that. Just , if you had a pencil and a hard copy notebook. You can really take the notes that
[15:21] Randy Coin: occur to you. You know, one of the things I haven't mentioned is this is not just for e-learning. One of the things about codecs that's great. And we're actually working with our clients on is it's multi modality. we are using it as a participant guide. imagine you're in a zoom class and you have your notebook here, and you want to take a personal note.
[15:42] Randy Coin: You can do that in a way that we really haven't seen with typical e-learning. And I just want to go back to that scorm analytics. This is all being saved this whole time on your Lms. if you're doing your whether you're in a class in the participant workbook and you're doing it off the Lms, or you're doing an asynchronous course. Whatever notes and highlighting you're taking, they're being saved for you. again, you're just really able to personalize that experience.
[16:09] Randy Coin: You're also these are unactivated in our online Demos. But you can download the course and print it. again, back to that personalization for any kind of reason. If you just don't really digital learning, you can download the course and have a paper copy, you can print just individual pages.
[16:26] Randy Coin: And what's great about it, too, is whatever notes and highlighting you have done at the part at which you're going to, at the point at which you're going to download. All of that is saved for you. again, it could be because you don't really e-learning. But it could also be. You're about to take a road trip.
[16:41] Randy Coin: or you're about to get on an airplane. And maybe you don't see the need to really pay for your online connectivity, or that you know the it's not reliable. You can take that course with you in a hard copy.
[16:55] Randy Coin: Okay? I'm gonna move from the exterior interface into the interior.
[17:00] Randy Coin: some of the ways we think we're really helping with engagement is we're not holding ourselves to the instructional design online learning
[17:08] Randy Coin: rigid standards of sort of yesteryear. Right? We're not looking at the title of the page has to be in the same place, in the same font and style on every single page. When you flip through a magazine, you know you really feel the choice. You can flip wherever you want. Let your eye stop wherever you want. There's visuals. Every article has a different
[17:30] Randy Coin: visual, has a different type of title, and we're really allowing ourselves some freedom balanced with good instructional design. Strategy, of course, but in terms of that engagement. We're really leaning more into the magazine space. You can see we're building in movement. again, there's not necessarily instructional value here, but it is eye catching.
[17:54] Randy Coin: I've mentioned that we've borrowed from e-learning. Why reinvent the wheel everything that you can do in a storyline course you can do here. this is just an example of a click to reveal.
[18:05] Randy Coin: There's many different ways to do, a click to reveal again, I know that's industry jargon. But illustrating this here, I'm sure you can see the point tech what percentage of the course you've completed by viewing the progress bar.
[18:17] Randy Coin: and we also have drag and drops
[18:22] Randy Coin: interactive checklists. Again. You can print all of this at the end.
[18:27] Randy Coin: and for those of you who've done a lot of e-learning, it'll be very familiar to you to see a quiz this. we've borrowed heavily from what's worked. It's always worked. It will continue to work
[18:38] Randy Coin: some areas that we've made some improvements.
[18:42] Randy Coin: we are using AI quite a bit, and at low cost, and or low cost and fast timeline, we're able to reduce
[18:52] Randy Coin: multimedia to just add to the engagement factor. You don't think I'm a real person.
[18:58] Randy Coin: You're right.
[18:59] Randy Coin: But again, you know, one of the great things about codecs is, if you're using this as a participant guide, it really makes more content. Mobile. It used to be the case. What was shown in the classroom stayed in the classroom. you know. Imagine this is a message from your CEO, or maybe the head of your L. And D. Department, and it used to be, you'd watch it once.
[19:18] Randy Coin: and it was gone. But now you can just put those same videos in the participant notebook, and when they leave the classroom. They get to take that with them. They can watch it again as many times as they want. They can share it with other colleagues. If they enjoy doing an exercise, they want to do it again, they can reset it. the content is much more portable than it had ever been.
[19:40] Randy Coin: Another feature that we've built in that as a learning designer really excited me is 3rd party surveys. in the quiz that I was showing you before any answers and the data around that would have to be mined in the data in the Lms by an engineer or a skilled Lms administrator. Here. What you're looking at. This is actually just Surveymonkey. I have my own Surveymonkey account.
[20:03] Randy Coin: and it looks it's just part of the course. this allows you whether it's, you know, an asynchronous, e-learning experience. Or you're in a classroom, you can build these surveys in, and you're getting the results on the back end in real time. if you need to make an adjustment for the iteration you're going to teach tomorrow, or or you just want to find out. Are the participants tracking. Are they understanding what I'm saying? You can build these surveys in?
[20:29] Randy Coin: that's what I'm going to show you with these, this participant guide. And now I'm just gonna quickly move over to
[20:38] Randy Coin: To one more example, I call this the micro learning example. This is just to show you the contrast. You know this is a completely different look and feel coin. Harlan is completely custom. And this, imagine this would be your brand and your content. But we did this on the Sbii model, which is a model that a lot of our clients use to teach feedback to. You know, managers and employees. You can see again. We've built in some of that movement to draw your eye.
[21:05] Randy Coin: Our table of contents looks a little different. Here we have some movement here with quotes.
[21:11] Randy Coin: But in this progression I'm just showing you again, this is all done with AI. This is a knowledge transfer video that actually is teaching you about the Sbi model.
[21:22] Randy Coin: If you've ever struggled with giving feedback that actually helps people grow, you're in the right place.
[21:27] Randy Coin: I'm sure this will get even better than it is now. But it is pretty good. We have some more ways of doing click and reveal.
[21:36] Randy Coin: And we're using AI to do activities where this is an interaction, for example, between a manager and employee where now you're seeing, after learning about the model, you're seeing a manager put it into practice, and you're observing, can you spot what they did? Well with Sbii? You can check your answer, and on and forth. just a lot of things. Hopefully, you can see between or among, you know, the visual design and the types of learning
[22:01] Randy Coin: activities we're building in. And then the ability to add media at a much higher rate for a much lower cost and development time than ever before.
[22:10] Randy Coin: With AI, we're really able, with this Codex tool to create much more engagement both in asynchronous and synchronous experiences.
[22:20] Randy Coin: and I will pause and hand it back to you, Nick.
[22:25] Nicholas Igneri: Okay, thank you.
[22:31] Nicholas Igneri: Okay, thanks, Randy. I I could say, having used a tool, have been on the client side of it.
[22:38] Nicholas Igneri: you, you know, one of the things I want to stretch. I mean, you kind of talked about it in your presentation. That I found as a user really great is
[22:46] Nicholas Igneri: most training today is in a blended format. Right? And we're moving towards shorter and shorter courses, as the data showed that, you know people after 20 min they lose attention. we're moving towards more and more of a micro
[23:01] Nicholas Igneri: learning model shorter courses, a lot of them, maybe, or a number of them blended format what I loved about codecs. It's a great container for all that you can have. You can actually display your e-learning course in there you can display all your videos you can display. You can have all your assessments. It's it's 1 container for a lot of different content. you know, I found it very, very valuable, and thought it was a great tool. Very innovative.
[23:27] Nicholas Igneri: Dave, why don't we move over to engage by cell and talk about what engaged by cell is doing in the mobile space to help reduce disruptions and grab attention.
[23:38] Dave Asheim: Yeah, will do. Thanks for that, too, Randy. That was just insightful that I've never seen
[23:43] Dave Asheim: such a interactive kind of
[23:47] Dave Asheim: way to learn. I would. I would think everybody that has a a learning team would want to know more about it.
[23:55] Randy Coin: You, Dave.
[23:55] Dave Asheim: Yeah, our angle on this is much more ephemeral is more about
[24:03] Dave Asheim: nudging and touching and interacting with people.
[24:07] Dave Asheim: The 2 problems engage myself is trying to solve is get somebody's attention.
[24:13] Dave Asheim: Because if Randy and Nick are trying to get you to come back to that
[24:19] Dave Asheim: class or that course or that material. How do you get them back there and then? What about the size of the of the content?
[24:29] Dave Asheim: everything that we're doing at engage Buysell is trying to close that gap, trying to make the attention span such that a text message can come out, tap you on the shoulder.
[24:41] Dave Asheim: and then perhaps have a little bitly link to some content
[24:47] Dave Asheim: in Randy's tool, or on a website or or wherever. we try to blend these 2 things, we found that email doesn't seem to be working these days.
[25:01] Dave Asheim: Phone calls are not working, but people will respond to texting.
[25:06] Dave Asheim: if you can get your learners to agree to receive a text. And of course they need to agree to do that. You're going to get about a 98% open rate. And when you do that, at least you've got a chance to share that information.
[25:20] Dave Asheim: and when you can include some content
[25:25] Dave Asheim: in in our case, it might be a link to that. You see that training portal.
[25:30] Dave Asheim:
[25:31] Dave Asheim: you text somebody. It's been 2 days since we since you were online on this program. And you did something. It's time to review time to watch a video trying to fill out a time to fill out a survey.
[25:44] Dave Asheim: That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to make that little bit of content digestible. it's this 1, 2, punch, tap them on the shoulder, give them a link to, to interact or read or to do something. And those are the technologies that we've found seem to be working the best
[26:01] Dave Asheim: in the
[26:03] Dave Asheim: training space. back to you, Nick? Oh, yeah, right? a couple of client examples. We have a teaching hospital, Augusta.
[26:13] Dave Asheim: They will put all of their agendas and all of their workflows.
[26:17] Dave Asheim: They'll store all of the content that their residents and doctors need, and it'll just be at their fingertips
[26:25] Dave Asheim: in the middle case. We've got an Hr. Department that put everything that an Hr. Team needs
[26:32] Dave Asheim: to communicate with to their employees. They have about 500 employees on this mobile site, and when something changes they'll send them a text and say, Hey, we have a new manager. We have a new handbook. We have a new benefit or open enrollment is coming up.
[26:47] Dave Asheim: and then on the right side. It's kind of what Randy and Nick were talking about about polls and surveys once again. If you send somebody a text. And you say we'd love to get your opinion. Click this link. You've got a 50 50 chance that they're going to interact.
[27:01] Dave Asheim: And it's because it's on their phone. It's just dropped in their lap.
[27:06] Dave Asheim: those are the tools that we see most helpful kind of in the L and D space.
[27:13] Nicholas Igneri: , Dave, interesting. Do do your clients need you to
[27:18] Nicholas Igneri: integrate with the Lms or launch things from the Lms. How do you? How do you handle that.
[27:22] Dave Asheim: You know, when I started the company we named it train by cell, and we were going to all the Atd and the Shrm conferences. It turns out that that there are many wonderful
[27:33] Dave Asheim: Lms type tools, including the one that Randy has created.
[27:40] Dave Asheim: Our place in the ecosystem is not on the content side. It's more on
[27:47] Dave Asheim: getting your attention and nudging you to go over to that tool and to use the tool
[27:53] Dave Asheim: because those wonderful tools already exist. we're more in the the pathway or the gateway to get you over there.
[28:02] Nicholas Igneri: Got it.
[28:03] Nicholas Igneri: I think I think one way to think about it isn't a continuous learning journey, right? when you're when, as L. And D professionals.
[28:11] Nicholas Igneri: This is pretty common that we think about a continuous learning journey right? But continuous learning journeys are not just about the content flow. It's also about the full learner experience. if you think about the logistic reminders, how do you get the how do you grab attention and cut through those reminders. Well, I think what we're saying is engaged by cell. Does that? Well, through texting, that's where people are. That's what they're engaged at. Why not send the message there.
[28:37] Nicholas Igneri: Awareness and alignment. I mean, you could do that in Codex. You could do. You could send a video out and say, Hey, here is a video of how this training is aligned
[28:46] Nicholas Igneri: to the corporate values or the corporate culture or the corporate initiatives assessments. I mean, this is where you get into the delivery a little bit May Codex, and it kind of takes over, you know, handle some of the assessments that you need to do. Maybe pre assessments about current learner knowledge. Now you're delivering the course you do that in Codex you line all your assets in the container of codex
[29:08] Nicholas Igneri: do reflection exercises. You could do that in Codex as well. Post assessments. Again, you know, application. People go back to their job. You want to see how those individuals are applying the knowledge back at
[29:21] Nicholas Igneri: back on the job. You can have them then re-engage with codecs and put their thoughts about applications. again, from a scoring perspective. You can report out on all these
[29:34] Nicholas Igneri: points in the learning journey evaluation. Again, you could do that in codecs, or you could do it through text. I think the combination of these 2 tools in order to manage the continuous learning journey. Really, I could see how it would. Really, it would really increase engagement and and capture our people's attention.
[29:56] Nicholas Igneri: But I think it's I mean, Randy. You brought up personalization a lot in your presentation, which is great, I think personalization in all aspects, whether it's marketing or L, and D is critical right to grab attention. That's why marketers try to personalize messages to grab attention. That's why L. And D. Tries to personalize
[30:14] Nicholas Igneri: other learning experience in order to grab attention. You want to talk a little bit about the personalized learning journey and and how you see Codex supports that. I mean, I know you talked a little bit about it in your presentation, but anything else you want to dig into.
[30:30] Randy Coin: You know I I've had this career for 25 years, and now I'm dating myself. But I would say that the continuous learning journey really hasn't wasn't fully accepted until more recent years, and that might be a surprise to some people. But
[30:41] Randy Coin: in my career there were a lot of one and done courses. And again, if I could go back and I don't have time today. There, there are a lot of practical constraints, right? Whether that's budget, or that's time or not having the ability to reengage people. I would say, a lot of the industry has come to accept the continuous learning journey, and I think that taking that to the next level is about personalization.
[31:06] Randy Coin: I think with Dave's tool particularly, you know, I know there are some extraordinarily advanced organizations out there who are really leaning heavily into AI, you know, or virtual reality. They have bots that can do some of this.
[31:20] Randy Coin: but the reality is for most organizations, particularly small ones, that they don't have those kind of budgets. I think this is a great solution that meets that bridges between where the industry has been and where the industry may be in 10 years, and it does it in a very professional and very aligned way to how people are consuming content both with Codex, as you know, some of the features.
[31:45] Randy Coin: but also texting. Dave made the point earlier, and through conversations in discussing this webinar. It's really the one medium that actually will get your attention. Now I am guilty of having emails fall off my my screen. I don't mean not to reply. But it is true. When the text message and that catches that the screen catches my eye, I actually turn and look, and I think I think engaged by cell has a really appropriate solution. For where people are today.
[32:15] Nicholas Igneri: Randy, have you had clients who wanted to use Codecs Mo. In a on a mobile phone?
[32:21] Randy Coin: , Codecs is designed. It is designed for a mobile experience, I think. For anyone who just pulls it up the website and launches a demo. They'll see. Of course there's a little difference if you're not on your laptop, but it is responsive.
[32:37] Randy Coin: And I know we did do one pilot where we were using codecs as the participant guide and the facilitator did get some feedback that the person, some people, or one or 2 people had done the whole experience on their phone, and it was fine, great question. Thank you.
[32:52] Nicholas Igneri: No problem. And and, Dave, what about engaged by cell? And how? How do you embed personalization into the you know, pre and post messages, and and your your flow.
[33:05] Dave Asheim: Yeah, it can either be fancy, because we can integrate through an Api into an Lms type system.
[33:12] Dave Asheim: or it can be as simple as
[33:15] Dave Asheim: when the texts are going out, it will grab keywords. Your 1st name, the your location, and embed that into the text. it looks Randy is personally sending me a check in text, although she sent it to 200 people that were taking that class. And we found, and I agree, a hundred percent with Randy. When.
[33:39] Dave Asheim: if you want to get people's attention, personalization is one of the keys. That's why, when we get the email from Nordstrom's and we'll say, welcome back, Dave. It's been 2 months since you came here. It's , Oh, somebody is my personal shopper, even though we know it's it's a bot.
[33:57] Dave Asheim: we found that if you can use personalization, if you can keep your messages really short, why texting is is important.
[34:07] Dave Asheim: keep it relevant. I just took that class a week ago a month ago, and now we're we're bringing it back to the to the surface.
[34:15] Dave Asheim: And if I could do it on my phone.
[34:18] Dave Asheim: Most people do not want to do heavy work on their computer.
[34:24] Nicholas Igneri: Back into the Lms.
[34:25] Dave Asheim: And the Lms. And all that. But if I can be
[34:28] Dave Asheim: tempted a little appetizer that I get a little message, and it teases me into then logging into the Lms. And maybe through single sign on it brings me right back to that page all of a sudden. I don't mind having this personalized learning journey. But if I have to bring out my workbook or go log in, it just makes it really tough.
[34:52] Nicholas Igneri: Dave. Do trainers utilize it to try to engage with students after after a formal training.
[34:59] Dave Asheim: Yeah, originally, Nick, that wasn't a big thing. But I think, as more organizations are thinking, that texting is a business tool which is a kind of a new concept
[35:10] Dave Asheim: at the end of a class, they will, the instructor will say, would you to receive a text? A month, a text a week to kind of keep the material fresh, and if , reply, yes, or however, the opt-in is.
[35:24] Nicholas Igneri: Hmm.
[35:25] Dave Asheim: And gosh, we've got teachers that will keep that
[35:29] Dave Asheim: class connection going for 6 months or more.
[35:32] Nicholas Igneri: Okay, it's a great way to engage with learners. And again, I would assume that people are on the job doing their work, and they run into a problem, and they need some support, and they can use text to engage with a an expert.
[35:44] Dave Asheim: Yeah.
[35:44] Nicholas Igneri: Great.
[35:46] Nicholas Igneri: Okay? Well, this was an interesting conversation. I want to open it up for Q&A in the audience. if you have any questions, or you want us to dig into something a little bit more. Please feel free to type your question into the Webinar chat, and then we'll we'll take questions.
[36:03] Dave Asheim: Yeah, it's great.
[36:09] Nicholas Igneri: As we wait for some of those questions to come in.
[36:17] Nicholas Igneri: we can talk a little bit more about personalization, and and how that might support the the learning experience.
[36:26] Nicholas Igneri: I think one of the things that I heard feedback from in my implementation of Codex was
[36:33] Nicholas Igneri: the ability to engage with the content. when we when we do, you know, normal e-learning or participant notebooks is not engaging but the the visual engagement the ability to take notes, the ability to you know, do
[36:51] Nicholas Igneri: drag and drops and actually write in a book. It was really
[36:56] Nicholas Igneri: one of the things that the participants in my
[36:59] Nicholas Igneri: experience really loved Randy. Are you finding that a lot? I mean, I'm sure you are. But you know any anything
[37:07] Nicholas Igneri: particularly you want to talk about about those type of
[37:11] Nicholas Igneri: engagement tools within within Codex. And what we're sure
[37:14] Nicholas Igneri: you hearing about from your users.
[37:16] Randy Coin: Well, I think the context would be to remind people of there's much research and studies done on how people learn and what how they best retain and learning preferences.
[37:29] Randy Coin: And the feedback that we get is it's in the variety right? Not everybody
[37:34] Randy Coin: prefers to do things the same way. But we all know, you know, when we go back. If we're thinking about school or our college years, or if we've studied for a professional exam. We come up with a methodology that works for us. Some people write note cards and things that. And what with Codex, I think what is important for people is that there are. There are different ways to do the same thing
[37:56] Randy Coin: right? Some people can. Can. They love that digital experience? Other people want the hard copy. Other people want to take notes. Other people want to color code their notes. And you know it. Just there's just more to align with people's preferences, whatever those are.
[38:13] Nicholas Igneri: here's 1 more. One question that came in can codecs integrate with Microsoft forms, and Surveymonkey, you are able to embed a survey monkey into the Codex experience. Can you
[38:27] Nicholas Igneri: integrate with Microsoft forms.
[38:30] Randy Coin: We can, and depending on what your organization uses. It's a very simple test for us for our coder to look at how that 3rd party is set up, and if they provide permissions to display it in an application Codex or another application, it would not prevent us from using that if your organization uses a form that we can't embed it right on a codex page, we would just have to link out to it. But it's a very simple test.
[38:58] Randy Coin: whatever your organization is using, we can, we can figure it out.
[39:02] Nicholas Igneri: Another question came in, what size types of companies use codecs and or text messaging Dave, why don't we start with you with the text messaging, and what the types of companies that that generally come to you.
[39:15] Dave Asheim: Yeah, I think the typical company on the texting side
[39:20] Dave Asheim: are the ones that are maybe not. The multinationals never
[39:24] Dave Asheim: below that. many of the large companies have in-house
[39:29] Dave Asheim: trigger systems, pings, whatever you want to call it, and they're comfortable with that. But companies that are 5,000 people, and and under. They don't have some of those very sophisticated apps that have been adopted by all of their employees. it it can be from 5 to 5,000 people.
[39:50] Nicholas Igneri: And Randy, what about codecs? I know Codex is new to the market. But what do you think.
[39:55] Randy Coin: That's right. Well, we have we actually have a customer that has 14,000 employees. It's a global tech company. And they are using it in multiple modalities, some of which I didn't even speak about. we've used it as a hybrid participant guide and an Async course. you kind of double your return on investment, because you get to use the course in 2 different modalities, which again allows people to take it in the form that they'd whether they want to be in a live class or take it asynchronously.
[40:21] Randy Coin: We're also using it as intact team conversation guides. we call that the cascade when manager, when we're not gonna do formal learning. But the organization needs to disseminate a message or something with change management, we're able to track those conversations now and blend in a train, the trainer using AI video. we have one
[40:40] Randy Coin: tech company that, as I said, is using it. In all of these different modalities we have another Bay area Tech company that was using it for actual technical certification course. All the way down to an entrepreneur who's using it to build newsletters with content that she's an expert in. we're seeing it run the gamut of company sizes, and and that that's for pharmaceutical industry. .
[41:06] Nicholas Igneri: Yeah. , Randy, how long does it take to implement codecs?
[41:10] Randy Coin: That's a great question. You know, one of the advantages the technology behind codecs. There is no 3rd party tool codecs. The technology is actually a Pdf web, reader. you know, when you open a Pdf and acrobat, or you might be able to open it online. That's a web, reader, and that's what the codex technology actually is. What we're building the courses in is we personally build them in adobe indesign
[41:34] Randy Coin: in graphic design software. And then we save them as a Pdf. And that is the basis of a course. any Pdf can become a Codex.
[41:44] Randy Coin: I would say. You know if you're it really depends coin. Harland services range from. We're starting with absolutely no content to a simple conversion. You're giving us an old storyline course. But I would say, for people who are used to building digital learning asynchronously through something articulate storyline, it's completely cutting the build out. once that Pdf is done, it can become a codex in just an hour or 2.
[42:08] Nicholas Igneri: Yeah. it's nothing you have to install on the client side. It's a tool that you use to build out your count content.
[42:14] Randy Coin: That's right. Anybody who's already building Pdfs, , I said, it's a very simple switch for us to take that Pdf. And turn it into a Codex.
[42:22] Dave Asheim: Dave this question for you are there tiers of alerts you can opt into for engaged by cell, for instance, can you opt into different levels of alerts.
[42:32] Dave Asheim: Yeah, thanks for that question, Thomas.
[42:34] Dave Asheim: If you at the far end, we can integrate into a piece of software. And if you've got alerts that are alerting people just you have alerts for email, then we can follow the same rules. Otherwise most of our clients will ask the the user the employee. How often would you to be
[42:55] Dave Asheim: communicated with via text? Some will say daily would be great, others would say, once a month. then.
[43:03] Dave Asheim: basically, then people are going into buckets of engagement. those that to get a a daily text, they might reply with the word daily, and then they're getting a daily text. it can be customized for the user.
[43:18] Dave Asheim: And this is for Andy. Does a learner need to create an account on Codex, in order to save notes and highlights.
[43:25] Randy Coin: No, I I'll talk. There's a couple of different ways. You can implement codecs again for those you of you whose organizations use learning management systems. Which is a critical part of one implementation. If you are hosting codecs on your learning management system and you're assigning that course.
[43:42] Randy Coin: Your employee, or whoever's using it. The learner will already have a profile and an account on their learning management system that'll already be set up. you're just assigning them a course. That's Codex instead of score storyline. And all the same way it works with storyline. It's gonna work with
[43:57] Randy Coin: Codex. If you're not using a learning management system. We can still build you a codex, and you can run it off an internal website, for example. However, it's too much to get into today. But you're not having that back end database of the Lms to save everything. you can take the course and write your notes and highlight if you print the course it'll print everything, but once you close it, you'll lose all that, because there's no backend database behind it.
[44:24] Nicholas Igneri: Great thanks, Randy.
[44:25] Randy Coin: Sure.
[44:25] Nicholas Igneri: I'm going to put in the chat again, the Codex website. you can go there. Randy and the Codex team have put together several different types of books, you can look through them and dig into it a little bit more. We would love to continue to the conversation with anybody who's interested in digging into Codex and engage by self further.
[44:48] Nicholas Igneri: We'll be sending out the recording with a a note if we want to.
[44:53] Nicholas Igneri: At that point schedule some time to have a further conversation. We could do deeper, Demos. We could talk about
[45:00] Nicholas Igneri: coin Harlan's approach to instructional design or engaged by sales approach to using chat and messaging to support the learning experience.
[45:12] Nicholas Igneri: I want to thank everyone for your time today. It was great conversation, Randy. Any final words.
[45:19] Randy Coin: Nope, just thanks again. For letting us share, and hope to see you again soon.
[45:24] Nicholas Igneri: Dave. Anything that you want.
[45:25] Dave Asheim: No thanks to Randy and Nick and I love the codex tool.
[45:30] Dave Asheim: make sure when you get that email tomorrow from Anna in our marketing team.
[45:36] Dave Asheim: Take 15 min and reach out to Nick and Randy and see if they've got something that can help your learners. I'm sure they do.
[45:45] Nicholas Igneri: Yeah, we'd love to have the conversation. Thank you much for your time. Appreciate it hopefully. We'll be in touch soon. Thanks.
[45:50] Randy Coin: Bye.
[45:51] Dave Asheim: Thanks, everybody.

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