Using Accelerated Learning to Shorten Training Time and Save the Princess (If You Are Ready For It)!

Like many kids in the 80’s, I spent my afterschool hours playing a lot of video games. I loved them all – everything from racing to fighting to adventure and role-playing games. Over the years, I inevitably had all the popular video game systems, including those from Atari, Sega, and Nintendo. 

My favorite games challenged me with a lot of levels and variety. The different enemies, different worlds, different game mechanics, and the associated dynamics all combined to create fun that kept me locked away in my room for hours and out of my parents’ hair. I'd like to say it kept me busy and from fighting with my sister as well, but there were plenty of arguments over Double Dribble or who got to use the POW block in Mario Brothers. One thing was for sure - these old games were hard and unforgiving!

Just like everything else, as I became a teenager, the games got more complicated. The robustness of the worlds in the games and, of course, the secrets and areas to explore were so much more the shoot ‘em ups you plunked quarters in the arcade. These new games were meant for a depth of play and exploration that was counter to an arcade’s goals of getting you to drop a quarter in every three minutes. These were worlds created to keep you in them. It was great because you always had something new to do - at least for a while.

While I saved my quarters, these longer games did come with a cost: time. There were marathon Mario sessions and hours of shooting aliens in Metroid. Who hadn’t left their Nintendo on pause overnight while in the middle of a boss fight? As the systems matured and games increased in depth and complexity, we found out that we could take shortcuts through areas we didn't need to conquer again or didn't offer new gameplay that we needed to learn or explore. These were ways to accelerate our games and get to the end faster, proving our supremacy over the minions of evil. 

Getting There Faster with Warp Zones

These acceleration tools could take many different forms in the game: warp zones, fast travel, passcodes, save spots, checkpoints, you get the picture. While the method used for this acceleration was different, the purpose was the same. Warp zones operate essentially as a hidden passage from one area of the game to another, typically more advanced game area. These were colossal time savers and shortcuts - often allowing you to skip large portions of the game. Warp zones were cool because it was like you had to be in a secret club to know where they were, how to access them, and most importantly, where you were going to end up on the other side of the tube.

The Warp Zones here are clearly labelled with their destinations.

Taking these warp zones seemed like a great idea, but making that journey was not without its challenges. Often, the earliest levels in a game would teach you skills you needed in later levels. This teaching would happen in lower stress and more comfortable setting (that’s a great and hilarious video, but warning the language is more than a smidge NSFW). Perhaps they demonstrated how to defeat an enemy in a low-risk fashion and then allowed you to model that same behavior, thus showing that you knew how to take on these challenges and were ready for the next thing.

In today's learning marketplace, there are some trends taking hold and changing how we deliver our content to our users. Over time, with the advent of the internet, always-on internet connections, and mobile devices in our pockets, the amount of information an employee must know can be daunting. Traditional means of delivering mass quantities of content are breaking down. Companies are seeking ways to get employees out to the field faster. The increase must happen without reducing the amount and quality of the work produced. Standards of safety and budgets necessary to continue increasing productivity and, of course, profits must all be maintained. 

Adaptive learning is a lot like that warp zone from Super Mario Bros.

Introducing Accelerated Learning

You’ve probably heard of adaptive learning, which is a way of providing personalized experiences to your learners. One way of doing this is through accelerated learning. Accelerated learning is explicitly designed to get you where you need to go faster, so new hires can get up to speed quickly, and existing teammates can rapidly put new skills to use.  This learning model breaks the mold by asking, “Why should we start from the beginning every time?” After all, if you are a great technician, salesperson, support rep, or another skilled worker, why should you be penalized for switching jobs or changing locations? Where’s your warp zone?

When we designed SparkLearn, we thought of adaptive learning as a process that drives you towards an outcome, not just a technology or some sort of power-up in a video game. It’s a macro-adaptive approach, working to shortening the time needed to complete the content and move on to the next thing. It can reduce unneeded training, get people out working faster and with less friction. It doesn’t funnel MORE information into your head in a shorter fashion. It’s a way for you to ensure the learners can access the info they need but skip over things they don’t need to cover or rehash. Research shows that employees prefer adaptive learning over traditional methods, and engaged employees learn more and perform better at their jobs.

Accelerated learning via macro-adaptive approaches is, in a lot of ways, like a warp zone. At Float, with SparkLearn, we’ve had a lot of success using these techniques to let learners skip over things they know to use their time more efficiently. There are parallels in game design to the other prominent approach to adaptive learning, micro-adaptive learning. Micro-adaptive is a bit more like a game that changes the difficulty in-flight to match the player with tasks that meet their skills. Multiplayer games do this with Skill Based Match Making (SBMM), but single-player games do this as well when they employ Dynamic Game Difficulty Balancing (DGDB).

Accelerated learning paradigms are like the warp zones of learning technology.  For example, a warp zone in the game of Super Mario Bros saves a lot of time. The basic game has 32 maps or levels (8 worlds, four levels per world). With warp zones, you only need to go to the following worlds: start at 1-1 and on to 1-2. From there, you can warp to 4-1, progress through 4-2, and warp again to complete worlds 8-1 through 8-4. That’s only eight levels or ¼ of the game’s total levels! Sounds great, right? Warping could get you into trouble, though, too. 

Proceed with Caution

What’s the problem here? I’ll give you two: Bullet Bill and the Hammer Bros. Since the Hammer Brothers come in pairs, maybe that counts as three? ;-)

Bullet Bill can be deadly if you don’t know how to handle him.

If you choose not to warp, you will first encounter Bullet Bill in world 5-1, and The Hammer Brothers first make their appearance in world 3-1. In these first appearances, the player has a chance to learn their movements and counter their attacks in more comfortable settings. For example, in world 8, the player will encounter Bullet Bill while fending off Lakitu and his Spiny eggs. That’s a tall order for new players! The world 8-3 map has eight occurrences of Hammer Brothers! If you chose to warp ahead and didn’t know how to handle those situations, you are most certainly going to be in trouble.

Watch out for the Hammer Brothers. They are mayhem!

With accelerated and adaptive learning in SparkLearn providing tests and quizzes (essentially verifying they know what the warp zone is and what it does), you can also cut training time dramatically for the learners that know what they are doing (how to take on Bullet Bil or the Hammer Brothers). Organizations that use approaches like this have employees that are better prepared for their jobs. Also, because time is money, organizations can maximize their L&D investment by spending time training people on things they need to know and don’t already know and skipping past the unneeded stuff - just like warp zones!

When appropriately used, the warp zones get Mario to the Princess more quickly. In a similar vein, accelerated learning paths in an adaptive learning platform get your remote workers, your front-line employees, and all of the deskless team members out to the field faster. Are you ready to try out adaptive learning with your organization? Contact us today to get accelerated with SparkLearn.

Many thanks to the hours spent in the Mushroom Kingdom for this post and thanks to Dr. Jennifer Murphy for the editorial support. Quantum Improvements Consulting is doing some great work in human factors, learning research, and consulting. Check them out here.