Robert Thompson, CEO of DISTIL Interactive. (Darren Brown, OBJ)

Local e-learning companies harness the power of video entertainment

Big Joe's Gas Bar was prepared for the fire. But it wasn't prepared for the riot.

On a dark, windy night just outside this small business, fireworks from the neighbours landed on a gas spill on the edge of the property. Flames began to rise.

Emergency crews arrived on scene. Then crowds gathered to watch the festivities. Unhindered by barriers, they came closer and closer to the firefighters. The whole situation threatened to spin out of control.

That's when Kenton White hit the pause button on his computer game.

"As a site manager, I forgot about my neighbours," he explained. "People will panic. You need to develop a procedure to deal with the evacuation."

Mr. White is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Ottawa-based DISTIL Interactive, the company that built the above-mentioned game designed to test emergency preparedness procedures.

But DISTIL isn't alone as a provider of arcade-inspired learning. Indeed, Mr. White's company is part of a growing trend, and for local businesses looking for new ways to deliver training, gaming is the new buzz. Twenty- and 30-something employees – those often in the most need of training – often grew up playing World of Warcraft and Super Mario Brothers. For them, gaming is not only a pastime, but a way of life.

In an effort to catch the attention of this youngest generation of employees, DISTIL has developed a set of business games in concert with the Canadian Standards Association. At root is the desire to walk employees through procedures repeatedly, before they actually have to perform them.

This is especially important for a complex task like ISO 9001 certification, said Robert Thompson, the company's CEO.

"You can take an 18-month project and in a couple of hours, run through it three to four times," he said. "Employees gain experience in the project . . . more importantly, you can't close your eyes and stop playing."

It all sounds well and good during the first little while when the game is still new, said Roly Roy, a computer sciences professor at Algonquin College. His students – as do those in many other classes – use a virtual blackboard to discuss assignments on the Internet. Many of them grew up playing games.

But, Mr. Roy cautioned, they also grew out of them.

"Gaming is an interesting approach to getting kids interested. But once the novelty has worn off, you need to look at the content to see if it is of value," he said. "When they get into the game, will they go back? Is it amateurish? Will they continue to play? That's the rub."

Another catch is games can only teach you so much. Any basketball coach knows that students won't learn everything on the court; it also takes strategy sessions and perhaps some elementary physics lessons to turn mediocre players into excellent ones.

The same principle applies for companies. Computers can teach an employee a process – how to perform a series of steps to reach a goal, said Gerald Grant, a professor at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business.

But where humans still rule is in sharing and personal interaction, he said.

In other words, until computers have the range of expression shown in the new Pixar movie WALL-E, the classroom will still be the setting for negotiation and discussion.

"I think a classroom – as someone who teaches – provides an environment for interactivity," Mr. Grant said. "You can simulate interactivity with chat rooms, but it isn't the same."

Still, Ottawa's XStream Software heavily relies on that sort of simulation to market its software to customers and businesses.

One of the tools it offers is a virtual camcorder that records all the clicks and keyboard strokes you make in a program, to be played back or even exported to a video file for other people to use.

But the tool goes beyond the traditional computer 'macro' that records steps and plays them back, said vice-president Mahendra Agrawal. For one thing, it works in any computer program. For another, you can go back and add audio and video to give more instruction.

In a sense, it's like making a training video on your own computer; you perform the procedures and then put a little narration in to explain what you're doing, he said.

"The advantage of learning over the computer is (that) it is self-paced and 24-7 accessible," Mr. Agrawal added.

"For classroom learning, a) it's expensive and b) you can only have 12 to 15 students at a time. Here you can develop the training and thousands of users can come back over time."

But computer games also run up expenses. It takes time, technology and thickets of cash for a traditional software game – think The Sims – to become interesting and fun and most of all, something players will want to play over and over again.

The big companies can afford to invest millions in a game because they will sell millions of copies. Companies like DISTIL, Mr. Thompson acknowledged, do have to cut some of the sparkle and flash to make sure small businesses can afford their products.

"Businesses will not spend millions, but they will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we build games and tool sets so that you can build some modules over and over again."

An example is the coding for the avatars, or characters, in a game, Mr. Thompson said. Once DISTIL develops the coding for an avatar in one game, it can transfer that same code to another and cut costs through simplicity.

Still, concessions like these will decrease as technology advances. All in all, these tools point to a new wave of education that will make today's teaching methods look like dinosaurs in comparison, said Shawn McBride, acting chair of Algonquin's computer studies department.

"If we were to go 10 years forward and look back, education will be drastically different than today," he said.

"We're a Facebook generation, interacting online. Having to go to math class at two in the afternoon? That won't happen much longer."

By Elizabeth Howell

Special to the OBJ

---

WORLDWIDE E-LEARNING, BY THE NUMBERS

5 - Billions of dollars spent on e-learning, 2013 (projection)

Source: Robert Thompson, DISTIL Interactive

---

* To print this page, click on the "Printer Friendly Version" link above. When the new window opens, right-click with your mouse in the new window and select "Print".