News Archives | Page 3 of 3

Knowledge Guru Spring ’14 Release is All About Options

April 29, 2014/0 Comments/in News /by Steven Boller

You want to use games for learning, but you need the games to fit the unique requirements of your organization. You believe that serious games can increase engagement and retention, but you are not so convinced that a platform can allow you to create games with enough variety to please your learners.

Most of all, you need to prove to key stakeholders that your learners, and your organization, are actually benefiting from the serious games your team creates. You’re ready to create learning that breaks the mold, but you’re not so sure the development tools out there are capable of meeting your needs.

If any of these statements are true for you, the Spring ’14 release of Knowledge Guru was made for you. We’ve made it easier than ever before to develop serious games that will delight all the right people.

Learners will love the new theme packs.
The Learning and Development team will embrace the easy authoring and customization process.
Key stakeholders will marvel at the improved analytics and reporting your team can provide on learning results.

Make it Your Own

We have collected feedback from our current customers (organizations such as ExactTarget, Kimberley-Clark and Johnson & Johnson) to build a platform you’ll be excited to use. Here is a sampling of the new features that are available today:

Four gorgeous new theme packs.

Choose from a “retro” business theme, a “Person of the Year” business theme, a space alien theme, and a fairy tale theme. Each theme has a unique backstory, “Guru” character, and set of rewards. You can now choose from eight different themes for your games, all of which use the spaced repetition and feedback loops critical to long-term memory.

Expanded user roles and powerful new controls.

You can create and destroy your own games, add game authors and assign them to games, and run reports for all games in your organization with just a few clicks. Choose which theme packs to apply to your games and easily switch between themes when you’re ready to give players a fresh experience.

Complete Branded Experience.

You can now upload your company logo. You can even add your company colors and a custom footer.

Improved Player Registration.

Knowledge Guru now includes two customizable registration fields, which you can use for categories like location, job title, department, etc.

Leaderboards Set Free.

Choose which leaderboards you want players to see as they play Knowledge Guru. You can even show a leaderboard based on the custom registration fields you create.

Improved Data Report and Export Functions.

The two new custom fields give you the ability to create custom reports based on what you need to track. Use the new report builder to select the player and game data you want to see. Download visual reports that use pie charts and graphs to segment your player data. Best of all, most data can now be exported in CSV format for custom sorting or easy import into an LMS.

Live Leaderboard for In-Person Events.

Every Knowledge Guru game now has a URL you can display at a live event that auto-refreshes the leaderboard as players progress through your game.

See What Spring has Sprung at ASTD ICE

You no longer have to choose between a generic mini-game that’s too basic or a custom serious game that’s too expensive and complex to build. With eight different theme options, easy customization options, and powerful reporting, we’ve turned Knowledge Guru into a tool you can truly make your own.

We’ll be showcasing the Spring ’14 release at the 2014 ASTD International Conference in Washington DC. The conference will be held May 4-7 in Washington DC.

Come see a demo of Knowledge Guru at Booth 619 of the expo. You can also request a demo here.
Hear Sharon Boller and myself present “Powerful Learning Games You Can Build in a Day,” Wednesday, May 7^th from 8:30 – 9:45 am. (Details)

Knowledge Guru Adds Business Theme Packs and Experience API Control Panel

October 11, 2013/0 Comments/in News, Product Enhancements /by Steven Boller

I’m excited to unveil two new enhancements to the Knowledge Guru® product: two Business theme packs and tight Experience (Tin Can) API integration. You can now create your own game in a business-themed world, with a businessman or businesswoman version of the Guru. …And when you’re done with that, you can easily connect your game to an LRS like Scormcloud or WaxLRS to track all of your game data. We’ll be showcasing these new enhancements at this year’s DevLearn Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada with a Learning Stage session and expo booth presence.

New Business Theme With Male or Female Character

The business theme packs give added flexibility to organizations who want to use Knowledge Guru games, but may not be able to use the standard Fantasy theme within their company culture. In Knowledge Guru’s Fantasy theme, players climb mountain paths to deliver scrolls to the Guru in his pagoda to become Knowledge Gurus themselves. It’s a fun setting… but some organizations need a game with a more realistic aesthetic. That’s why we created the new Business themes, where players try and join the Guru, now a dashing businessman or businesswoman, atop his Skyscraper of Knowledge. Instead of scrolls, they deliver briefcases. Where storybooks were once used, we’ve added LCD monitors and tablets. The new themes put players in a professional, business setting while still utilizing quality aesthetics and attractive visuals. Just because the game has a more “serious” look does not mean it can’t look good, too. Other than the theme itself, the game functions exactly the same as the Fantasy version. The spaced learning, repetition, and immediate feedback are still built into the game. Game creation and editing works the same, too.

Experience API Integration

Knowledge Guru was the first learning game to be Experience (Tin Can) API compliant, all the way back in October 2012 before the specification reached 1.0. Now, we’ve added an easy-to-use page to the admin dashboard where you can easily input your LRS settings and connect the game for tracking purposes. Most LMS’s are not Experience API compliant, and you will need an LRS to use this feature… but the Experience API spec will eventually replace SCORM as the standard for online learning. By adding this tight integration now, we’re helping you stay ahead of the game. If you’re already using a product like Scormcloud or WaxLRS, you can start tracking game data in your LMS right away.

Free Trial

Our new free trial page allows you to sign up and start building a game instantly. To try out the Business theme, just select “Business – Male” or “Business – Female” from the theme menu, fill in the rest of the fields, and submit. You’ll receive a confirmation email and your 15-day trial will begin. Start a Free Trial

Existing Customers

The Experience API control panel was rolled out to all customers across the system this month, and you can start using it right away. For customers who purchased games for future use that do not yet have content, we can easily change empty games from the Fantasy theme to one of the Business themes. Just contact us.

August Learning Game Design Workshop Recap

September 7, 2013/5 Comments/in Learning Game Design, News /by Steven Boller

Another successful Learning Game Design workshop is in the books. Sharon Boller and Karl Kapp gave their first joint session in May of 2013 at ASTD International in Dallas… and the gaming goodness continued in Indianapolis on August 28th. We had a full room, with many participants coming from the Indianapolis area. Some out-of-town guests joined the party as well.

I assisted Sharon and Karl at this workshop at ASTD ICE, but this was the first time I actually got to experience it as a participant. It was an absolute luxury to spend an entire day playing games, learning about various game mechanics and game elements, and prototyping a game with a small team.

ExactTarget was our gracious host for the workshop. They have a great office space, and even provided participants with a midday ice cream break!

Flow of the day

Once initial introductions were out of the way, we spent some time going over Core Goals, Dynamics and Elements found in learning games. It was a nice way to gain some quick exposure to the terminology… without the workshop turning into a lecture.

Our terminology review only lasted about 20 minutes, and then we were turned loose to, you guessed it, play games! This was a workshop highlight, and helped “break the ice” among participants. Sharon and Karl carefully selected games, one competitive and one collaborative, that showcased the various game elements and dynamics we were discussing.

Our play session led nicely into a short discussion on best practices to follow when designing games. I found it easier to conceptualize these after just playing two games, noting mechanics I liked and disliked.

After lunch, we were split into teams for a fun review exercise… using Knowledge Guru®! Sharon took all of the content on game mechanics, elements and dynamics (lots of this can be found in the Learning Game Design blog series) and use it to create a guru game called Game Design Guru. Teams competed against eachother for 10 or 15 minutes, trying to get the high score. The spaced learning and repetition built into the game engine, and into the workshop itself, really helped reinforce the new terminology I had learned.

After our game, we broke into teams and spent the rest of the afternoon prototyping a game of our own. I was on a team with a fellow BLPer, Corey Callahan, and one of our clients. The client is currently developing ideas for a game she can use at her company, so we were able to use what we learned throughout the day to make a prototype she can (hopefully) actually use.

Once teams created their prototypes, we rotated to another table and playtested. The feedback the game designers received was just as valuable as the content Sharon and Karl taught earlier on; it’s only through trying to make a great game, getting feedback, and improving that we actually get better as game designers.

Karl summed it all up best towards the end of the day, when he said learning game design really comes down to “knowing what rules to break.” After a day of learning best practices and trying out our new skills, I left the workshop ready to produce my next learning game prototype… and make it better.

Games to Play and Evaluate

Sharon has compiled a list of games you can evaluate, including some game mechanics and elements to look out for as you do.

See the list here

Game Design Guru

You can play Game Design Guru to learn basic learning game design terminology.

Play here

Prototypes

Here is an example of a paper prototype created by participants at the Play to Learn workshop.

Attend a Workshop

Want to learn more about this workshop? Interested in attending in the future? Two more sessions are coming up this year: one in Chicago and another in Las Vegas. Sharon and Karl can also deliver a private workshop just for your organization.

Click here to learn more and see upcoming dates.

The Chicago workshop is a shorter, 2.5 hour version of this workshop.

Introducing the Learning Game Design Blog

May 8, 2013/1 Comment/in Game Based Learning, Gamification, Learning Game Design, News /by Steven Boller

Ladies and gents, welcome. We’re happy you have found your way to TheKnowledgeGuru.com… home of our Knowledge Guru™ suite of products.

This is the Learning Game Design Blog.

Some of you may read our weekly posts on the Lessons On Learning blog. We use that blog to discuss all things learning design, and games are a frequent topic on that blog. By adding this blog to the mix, we’ll be able to get even more hands-on with game based learning and increase the amount of content we share every week.

It’s an exciting time to be in the learning and development field. We’ve come a long way from the Click Next days of yesteryear… or so we say. Game based learning, gamification, mobile learning, and The Experience API (Tin Can) have opened the door wide open for new, innovative learning solutions… but a big chunk of the learning we see produced is still not what we all consider ideal. It’s up to those of us who truly believe learning can be fun and engaging to pave the way forward.

The body of research supporting game based learning keeps growing larger, but lots of organizations are still at the starting line, trying to chart their course. We’re here to help.

The Best Free Game Based Learning Resources Online

Obviously, we will use this blog as a place to announce updates and expansions to Knowledge Guru. We’re launching the new Game Creation Wizard at ASTD ICE in just a couple of weeks… and it lowers the barrier of entry for game based learning practicioners considerably. We’ll be offering a 30 day trial of Knowledge Guru, which means you’ll have an opportunity to see how game based learning works at no cost.

But we’re also on a mission to educate the L&D community about the efficacy of game based learning and show the way forward. Our series of free webinars, white papers and low cost workshops are geared towards learning game designers of all experience levels.

Two free webinars are coming up fast:

A Primer On Play: How to Use Games for Learning 5/30 8 am EDT – Register

A Primer On Play: How to Use Games for Learning 5/30 11 am EDT – Register

Real Learning Game Design Stories

Sharon Boller, President of BLP and lead designer of Knowledge Guru, will be a regular contributor on this blog. She’ll be kicking things off with a Game Based Learning blog series inspired by her experience designing digital and tabletop learning games for our clients.

We will also use this blog as a home for the game based learning content we curate from around the web. Our GBLPicks blogs will put the spotlight on a handful of articles on game based learning and gamification we’ve found valuable.

Check back often and follow The Knowledge Guru on twitter to see the latest posts. You can also subscribe to our Game Based Learning Newsletter to get the best content delivered to your inbox every month. The sign-up box is to your right.