April 2010

Deploying eLearning to tackle sustainability

eLearning plays an extremely important role in terms of sustainability. For those organizations looking to be more sustainable and save costs in the process, eLearning is the best way to improve and expand employee skill sets without having to incur additional travelling costs.

eLearning helps organizations expand training opportunities to more employees in more places. It’s available on-demand, providing instant learning at a moment’s notice. For organization’s looking to impart new security policies to their staff and educate them on new best practices, eLearning is the most efficient and cost-effective method of deployment.

What we can learn from Seth Godin

I was reading Seth Godin’s blog entry today http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ (yes…he is a marketing guru and no he is neither an education psychologist nor does he have a PhD in Education, at least as far as I know).  Seth is a best selling author, entrepreneur and agent of change. So what does this have to do with Security Awareness training or any training for that matter? For any corporate training to be adopted by an entire organization you need to understand how to market it effectively.

A sentence that Seth put in his blog today really resonated with me. It is as follows:

If you're having trouble persuading people to buy what you sell, perhaps you should sell something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about what you sell in a different way.

This can be applied directly to your security awareness training. Let’s give it a try:

If you're having trouble persuading people to take security awareness training, perhaps it is time to try something else. Failing that, perhaps you could talk about the training in a different way.

Security awareness training is an essential part of an organization’s yearly training regime and if you are facing resistance from end-users in taking the training then perhaps it is time to try some fresh content, videos or even games to make it more enjoyable. If you are currently conducting your awareness training via an instructor-led model, perhaps it is time to look at e-learning or even just add in some video or gaming type exercises into your existing structure.

Using Gaming to Learn

A recent article in Frobes on Women Gaming made some interesting links to not only gender based learning but also how we learn and develop skills as individuals. http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/25/women-gaming-video-forbes-woman-time-online.html

The concept of gaming is becoming more accepted in business where it functions as a superb training and operations tool. Videogames are now being used for collaboration and brainstorming as well as performance evaluation. Games based learning is proving to be the new learning tool of the future and it is definitely growing.

Games Based Learning also referred to as "Serious Game" is all about leveraging the power of computer gaiming to captivate and engage end users to develop new knowledge and skills. This type of learning enables users to undertake tasks and experience situations that may be too costly or otherwise impossible.

Although many of the concepts included in end user security awareness training are universal, such training often must be tailored to address the policies and requirements of a particular organization. In addition, many forms of training fail because they are rote and do not require users to think about and apply security concepts. A flexible, highly interactive video game, can support organizational security training objectives while engaging typical users in an engaging security adventure.

However, there are problems with deploying games-based learning for organizations. First, it is difficult to find a generic end-user interactive gaming software for security awareness. Second, the cost of creating such a game internally can be quite high and Third, maintaining and updating the content can be time-consuming and costly.