The 10 rules of painless procurement - from both side

A few weeks ago I picked up on a tweet about the tender process from @kevinmulryne and added a few comments along with @innerquest

As we had all been involved in the procurement process (from both sides) we decided to come up with a few tips on how to manage the process - if you are looking to submit a tender or if you are looking for a supplier.

We used a shared google doc to come up with several ideas, tips, experiences and these are our top 10 for both! I hope that you find it useful.

by Scott Hewitt, Tim McShane and Kevin Mulryne

scott.hewitt@realprojects.co.uk

kevin@mulryne.com

tim@fluffyclouds.co.uk

First blog post for a while…

I started working in e-learning and games in the 90’s. During this time we have seen some amazing technical advantages and also seen some interesting advances within e-learning. In recent years games based learning or GBL has been a trend subject.

Game Based Learning does not only mean using games and hardware, game theory can be applied to e-learning design and your own resource development. Games are hugely popular across the world, the design of games does involve a development methodology and some of the elements may interest you.

For many people game based learning makes them think about brain train on their Nintendo DSi or something that is not serious. However there is another element of games and games design that is often missed – game theory. Within the development of computer games a whole range of skills are involved from creative writers, graphics designers, script writers, level designers and programmers. Here is a brief look at 4 elements of game theory that I consider when developing an e-learning or game based learning resource.

Reward

Nintendo has been using rewards within its games for several years. It you have played anyone of the super Mario titles you will be familiar with collecting golden coins as you move around the level or game. Even at the most basic skill level you can collate huge numbers of coins and you coins are freely available within the level.
As you collect coins these are converted into points or can be used within the game economy. The use of reward can also encourage the user to explore the level further in the quest for rewards. The placement of the coins can encourage exploration to areas that the user may previously have not thought of. This allows you as a designer to introduce other games elements, skills and content for those who have found them.

Within reward systems and game design Operant Conditioning is widely discussed and its principles influence many designers. This quote from gamedev.net describes it neatly

“Operant conditioning is the psychological principle that states that a person is motivated to do or not do an action based on whether they have been rewarded or punished for that action in the past. Operant conditioning principles also explain how to schedule rewards in order to maximize motivation to perform the action.”

Economy
At an end of a level users are often rewarded with their performance in terms of score. Some games also use the concept of the game economy. This allows users to ‘spend’ the reward points that they have collected. Depending on the game or resources this might be opened other levels, improving character performance or changing their appearance.

The use of an economy connects the user back to their achievements gradually, allowing them to be reward for smaller achievements and being able to receive benefit from them. In a recent e-learning course each time the learner completed the activity within each section they received a credit. Once they had completed the resource if they had the right number of credits we allowed them to play a ‘hidden’ game. This generated a buzz within the learner community who discussed how you accessed the end game. The only way to access the end game was if you had collected all of the credits. Learners were pleased about their reward at the end of the game and it generated a buzz around the learner community who also wanted to play the end game.

Recuperation
In many of the early arcade games you had 3 lives (attempts) to complete the game. For anyone of you who have played games like pitfall, nemisis, pac world or donkey kong you will remember what a challenge it was to move along the levels with only 3 lives! Recent games design has moved on, introducing the concept of health, allowing the user to continue their journey across the level even if they have made a mistake. The use of health does make the experience more realistic, increasing the game experience and encourages gamers to consider their actions in game.

Whilst it is still possible to lose all of your health, you may also have the opportunity to get additional health points back, often by completing a challenge. This allows the user to continue their game experience, stay engaged and learn about how their actions will affect their experience.
The game Gauntlet was one of the first games to use the concept of health to allow games to lose health and remain in game. It also allowed gamers to create health points as they moved through the level. This is a an interesting game to review as it was a game that could be played with up to 4 people sharing skill and health points to complete the level.

Problem Solving
The games industry has created games such as tetris and brain training that have all been involved around problem solving. However problem solving is a key element of all games from sports titles to simulations. The problem solving is gradual to allow the learner to develop their skills and then be presented with larger challenges as the game develops.

From my perspective I have been interested to see how internet based games have brought people together to play online games together and solve problems.  Users will come across a rule or problem which is stopping progress, with other gamers then can create a strategy or discuss tactics. From this then can then develop a solution that allows them to more forward.

I have reviewed and studied many games to see how they have encourage groups of users to come together to solve problems and I’ve used many of these techniques in my own work. One of the early multi-player  arcade game was called Gauntlet and it needed players to work together to reach the end of the stage. The game could be played on your own but it was a much rich and immersive experience when you added other users.

There is so much to game based learning and games design, you might have a different view. For me it involves taking elements of game design, game theory and development to enrich any e-learning resource, not just a ’serious’ game.

I might be missing something here but after spending the last 15 years working in e-learning and new media it is still far more common to have a conversation about accessibility when talking to a client about a website than a piece of e-learning. Website design has made great strides in supporting usbaility standards, although it still has work to do. With all the different platforms, browsers and technologies it is difficult to achieve complete standards compliance but it does appear to be a common theme in the web design areas. Within e-learning its just doesn’t seem to have the same importance at the moment.

We have worked with e-learning teams where we have created levels of content to provide as much access as possible. NCSL is a fine example of an organisation that has a really clear set of guidelines for developers that includes their position on accesible content. These guidelines help everyone involved are opened up for developers to suggest improvements and also to challenge.

I’m sure that accesibility is a consideration for lots of learning providers, developers and trainers but it doesn’t seem to have the same weight within e-learning. A simple google search saw these results for the term accesiibility e-learning (7,280,000 results) website accessibility (64,500,000) - quite a difference. There are clearly a number of practitioners and researchers carrying out a great deal of work in this area and my google search is hardly a thorough piece of research but I did find the numbers interesting. I’ve got lots of friends and colleagues in the industry who are looking at accessibility but does the industry really discuss what’s needed?

Has the time come for the e-learning industry to look a set of standards relating to accessibility for e-learning design could help? A set of design standards and good practice might also bring some balance to the tender process where so much of the evaluation process is based on price. I know that lots of e-learning practitioners are carrying out great work in this area but isn’t time we all come together?

Thoughts?

During my web searches I found several interesting links and articles:

http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk/

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearningpedagogy.aspx

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue51/ball-rvw/

At the time of writing (15th July 2009, 13:07) we have 99 twitter followers, ok we’re no Stephen Fry! I actually find it quite flattering that 99 people want to listen to what we have to say, we think that some of it quite interesting. There is a lot of debate about twitter and its merits, how to use it, business model etc. I’ve been interested to watch how the online community has used Twitter in so many different ways and shaped it to fit their needs. Already we are seeing Twitter spam, Twitter SEO and Twitter lead finding services all of which have followed the trends of previous online services.

Personally I’ve got a twitter fon on my iphone and have found it be really useful for quickly catching up on news whilst on the move and I’ve been able to communicate with people who normally I would never get the chance to. Bradly Wiggins is an english cyclist currently doing extremely well in the Tour De France who has replied to his following that his messages keep him going. Mark Beaumont is an adventure cyclist who is using twitter to keep in touch with his followers and I’m sure from his perspective its a lot easier than starting up the laptop and typing in a long form email.

From a learning perspective there has been quite a debate about how it can be used and whether it is of any use at all. In the past few days this has been highlighted further by the publication of sections of a report by an Intern at Morgan Stanley about how teenagers use Twitter. The FT and the Guardian both ran the piece as lead articles and its generated quite a buzz on the internet news boards. I’m not sure what it tells us about the use of twitter in learning!

Interestingly there are people using Twitter with young people and with schools how it can be used in education and training. I was preparing for a speaking event on game based learning last week when I came across a research video from UTC Dallas on Twitter in the classroom. I’ve also found that the University of Minnesota are also using social media and twitter in the classroom. Both videos show how they are using twitter and social networks to increase the contributions made within the classroom. As one teacher says in the video “If you are not engaging with the call you might as well hit a brick wall.” They’ll be lots more debate on the merits of twitter, if you are interested then these 2 videos might just provide a starting point.

At the E2BN conference Twitter and Twitterfall was used to great effect to capture questions from the floor during the seminars, ok you needed a mobile device with twitter but it allowed for a much more open question and answer flow. This was an event largely attended by teachers and I was amazed by the sheer numbers who were contributing. I’ll certainly be using twitter fall in future presentations alongside the traditional question and answer sessions.

Over the past few weeks I’ve answered questions about e-learning strategies. I have been involved in the creation of e-learning strategy documents and projects for the public and private sector in the UK and thought that I would share a few of my thoughts.

This isnt’ an exhaustive list but it will provide you with a starting point. I would ensure that any strategy focuses on a number of key areas, these are going to be specific to your organisation but you may want to think about the following:

Participation
Who are the affected parties? What additional training provision will you need to put in place during the project lifecycle? Who are your stakeholders (internal and external)

Technical Issues
What is the current IT platform? How will your e-learning strategy integrate with future IT changes and developments? You need to think about how these are aligned

Content creation and acquisition
Where are you going to get content from? Are you going to develop it internally? What will your quality standards be? You need to think about the creation of e-learning guidelines so that you can control the output.

Feedback systems
How will you measure performance? How will cost of ownership and return on investment be measured? What are the projected costs? How will effectiveness of the learning be measured?

Costs
How will ROI be measured, how will you work with the cost centres within the business

Limitations
Think of the issues that you might have and get these highlighted early

Types of learner
Several things to think about: IT literacy levels, mobile learning, expectations of e-learning

Business Improvement
Where will this be? Cost, Improvement in access to training material, process efficiency?

There are obviously many other things to consider, some of which will be specific to your organisation but but hopefully this will give you  a starting point.

Real Projects are delighted to announce that Russell Prue is going to be the keynote speaker for Game Based Learning Event on May13th.

Russell Prue said “I am delighted to have been asked to come and support the Real Projects Games Based Learning event on 13th May. There has never been a better time to take a closer look at this kind of technology and with plenty of evidence and case studies that confirm the learning benefits of games based learning this has to be at the top of your agenda. I will be showing a new concept in PE and Dance Exercise education with a Virtual PE Teacher system, pulling a “Bollywood” or “Salsa” instructor out of thin-air is something that technology can do in the C21st. There are plenty of competitive dancing competitions that really get you moving and with the ability for over 30 users to compete simultaneously on wireless dance mats this is a winner. More information from www.virtualpeteacher.co.uk

I am also planning to demonstrate the Kinaesthetic Interactive Teaching System (KIT), a 30 multi- users playstation style gaming system that develops cognitive and higher level thinking skills through the use of competitive game play. The camel race is my favourite and I am sure that you will get a chance to experience this amazing gaming system. More information from http://www.kinesthetic.co.uk I am also including a “how to use a Nintendo Wii Fit” to improve your concentration skills guide – this event simply cannot be missed.”

Russell Prue is an Award Winning ICT Evangelist and has presented to HM The Queen, members of the Royal Family, Heads of State and Ministers from the UK. He is well reported and enjoys a high profile as the best known ICT Evangelist in the UK. There is time in Russell’s session for some hands-on experience of these new uses of technologies and colleagues are urged to engage, dance, and explore. More information from www.andertontiger.com.

The Games Based Learning event is invitation only. For more information about the event please call Real Projects on 01603 762772

May 13th 2009 - Norwich

We are going to be holding the next e-learning forum event on Games Based Learning. After posting on the blog about our PSP trials and other games based development we decided it would be a good idea to make it the next topic for the e-learning forum.

The response to the event has been really positive, we are planning to have a number of speakers over a few hours making it a little longer than normall events. We’ll have a games area where people will be able to try all types of consoles and devices.  We have some speakers in mind but are interested in talking to anyone who might have something interesting to talk about during the event.

The event will be free and we will be hoping to see some new faces amongst the regular people who attend. I’ve been talking to lots of businesses and educators about games based learning and the possibilities. Last week the Games Based Learning conference (Tom Watson Speech) took place and futurelab have announced the are running a research project on games and learning. As some readers might know we have a link with the NUCA Computer Games Degree and it is interesting to see how games design, learning and learning technologies are becoming ever closer.

Last week I saw a superb session by Russell Prue on how games are being used in the Classroom. You can take a look at some of the resources http://www.andertontiger.com/norfolk/

We have been looking at the PSP for a few weeks and today we’ve had some success! Sam, Ed and Jonny have managed to get a number of our own games and activities working, albeit with a few tweaks here and there. It was great to see the content and designs working on a new device and our next step is to move some existing content over to the PSP and to see how that looks.

It’s clear that we are going to have to look at how content is developed for the PSP and we’ve already talked about the need for a set of PSP e-learning guidelines. From our research it only supports Flash 6 but that still allows us to do lots of pretty cool stuff.

we’ll keep you updated on how things work out with the PSP.

Norfolk e-learning forum

The next forum event is on the 18th March in Norwich. If you are reading this and want to come along send us an email at info@realprojects.co.uk to book. It is a free event and if you are interested in e-learning and learning technology you are going to meet other like minded people! The event is interactive and you’ll get the chance to interact using the AlphaSmart Neo 2.

If you are still not sure about whether to attend give the office a call on 01603 762772 to find out more.

We have just finalised our link up with the Computer Games Degree at NUCA. We have agreed to take a student from the second year for a semester at a time. Sam is our first lucky student! The aim of the link is to provide the students with an insight into e-learning and learning technology and they help us to develop more games based learning within our own projects.

I’ve been interested in games development for sometime and have posted articles in the blog and visited several courses so its great to get the link up sorted. I view the link as a two-way process as I think there is a great deal that the students can teach us about Games Design.

As e-learning developers we are always looking for ways to improve and use new technology and innovations. This link up should allow us to do this. We’ve been talking to Caspian about using their new development tool and the students were very excited about the possibilities of working with the tool.

…finally….during the interview process we asked the students what their favourite game was and why? I can’t afford to buy all of the games that they mentioned but we are going to look out for monster hunter which is something of a classic in Japan!

I’ve been on the road quite a bit recently and I’ve bumped into a number of friends and colleagues. IT was nice to get comments that people actually do read the blog!

Hello to all of our readers….I’m not sure quite how many readers we have!

At learning technologies I saw Clive Shepherd deliver his seminar on e-learning in a downturn. He mentioned blogging and how you needed to be prepared to contribute to the blog regularly, how right he is! I’d like to blog a bit more than I do but it is quite tricky to do this every day, although I’m going to try to make a few more blog entries than last year.

This month I’m making the final touches to the first norfolk e-learning forum event of the year and we are working on a number of projects in the public sector. I’ve also taken some time to write a series of short articles about project management which we might upload to the website.

Thank you for taking the time to read the blog, I hope that there is something interesting from time to time…

oh….I bought a PSP at the weekend so we planning to do some R&D as well as road testing an acer aspire one. My first acer aspire only lasted a week before the screen blew!