In a quest to make learning interactive, immersive and lasting, Memcorp Immersive has been turning textual and lacklustre training content into interesting games. Gamifying training, they believe, engages and enthralls participants and they come out of the sessions absorbing more than they can think of.
In the following Interview with Insights Success, Shashwat Dhuliya, Creative Designer at Memcorp takes us on a journey into the world that is making training sessions interesting, immersive and something to look forward to.
1. Kindly brief us about your company and its initial journey.
In our crusade of building learning interventions that create the change we’ve tried just about everything. From running classroom training session using PPTs to making learning more experiential where people learn by doing. But in the process, we realized that the learning wasn’t creating a lasting change within the people. And after asking a few simple but right questions, we learned that our predicament was not because the learning programs didn’t have the right content. Our predicament was a result of the learning not being authentic. It wasn’t inside-out. So we had to create learning which would be authentic. “But how?” we asked ourselves and our clients.
Fortunately, we have a great support system because of which we found our answer in Immersive Learning. After years of hustling, we created a real life-like environment (taking into consideration all aspects of life), put people in it and allow them to make choices based on their understanding of the situation. And then create a safe place for them to discuss the reasoning behind their actions. This way the learning is owned by the learners and thus applicable.
2. Brief us about the Founder/CEO and the motivation behind choosing E-learning platform?
Mohsin Memon is the CEO of Memcorp Immersive who works with a group of passionate people that build games for learning. Mohsin is not originally from the learning industry, he switched careers 8 years ago from IT where he was a Project Manager at a Fortune 500 company. In the past 5 years he has extensively used games to impact lives. He believes people learn best when they play and he dreams of a world in which student go to school not to study or learn but to play; a world where learning happens as a by-product of experience.
When he’s not working, you can find Mohsin either playing board games, video games, trekking, surfing or doing his favourite thing of all- snowboarding in the Himalayan Mountains. Mohsin has been recognized as one of the few young minds that have been able to merge the world of games with learning. He’s been invited to speak at NASSCOM, spoken at 5 TEDx events.
3. What are the key points that you consider while developing the E-learning content?
Our games don’t provide content. Instead it’s a platform where people can consume their own content while playing the game. The principle of game theory, gamification and instructional design makes the consumption of the content more effective which leads to higher retention and engagement rate. Games when linked with content are a powerful motivator for the content’s consumption. In the future, we plan to build premade content which people can consume at own pace.
4. Brief us about the services that the company offers.
In order to talk about services that we render today it is important to understand the services we delivered in the past that brought us where we are today. About 7 years ago we began our services journey with doing run-of the mill training programs such as decision making, problem solving and communication trainings. Over the years we have recognized that the belief of Memcorp Immersive is to make it fun, make it engaging, make it a game! When we conducted these programs, we found our advantage in delivering the programs in a really fun and engaging way so we chose to do away with PPT’s. Our programs were off the cuff using a lot of human interaction activities and a lot of involvement from the participants and getting them to participate in the entire learning process. We took up a project with one our clients because there was a gap in the communication between the sales team and the managers. This whole ecosystem was simulated in a 3 hour process throwing in new and different challenges in each iteration. We wanted to do something different than a regular classroom training, something more engaging and exciting and most importantly fun for everyone because this was the very first game we ever built.
In 2015 we had a keystone opportunity with another client and the management of the team needed a game to develop awareness of collaboration amongst one another. Our services today span from dealing with Vuca, Strategic thinking, Strategic Execution, Project Management, Communication and Collaboration. The most unique thing about what we do in our services is not the topic of the service but the methodology and the way in which we deliver the service and the way we do that is through games. Imagine playing a game and by virtue of playing this game you learn important business and leadership skills that have an impact of how you deal with situations in the real world. We try to achieve our services by doing something unique, different, and meaningful for the participants and the users who experience our games.
5. What are the challenges in the Education Sector in India?
20 years from now, anything that’s being taught in schools will be irrelevant. It’s important to understand that needs are changing with time. What was important 10 years ago may not be relevant anymore. The gap between education and industry requirement is growing which is leading to disguised unemployment due to lack of skills. Less emphasis on skills like personality, innovation or creativity is a big problem. Since a child’s value is determined by his/her results and degrees, character building gets lost in the process. Parents and teachers fail to realize that the upcoming job requires strong soft skills along with innovation and creativity. The quality of teachers is a major issue. Schools need teachers who not only teach but inspire students to learn and bring out the creativity in them. This problem is further fuelled by parents who just want their kids to have a secure and safe job. Lack of technology and poor infrastructures are one of the biggest challenges that schools face in India. The education system needs to open to change.
6. Please share the latest technology that the company is utilizing to offer better learning solutions.
There are a number of technologies that we use. We started off using virtual reality, along the way we realized that we needed something that blended virtual, augmented and physical reality. Our games have been developed using react, ruby on rails and node.js. From the front-end standpoint, we use ember j.s but are soon migrating to technologies that are more robust and versatile in nature as the use of mobile is increasing and we recognize that we need technologies that are more universal in terms of where they can be applied and used. We have created a semi-virtual reality experience focusing more on human interaction during gameplay because we didn’t want to lose sight of the human element. Today we use technology to enable that classroom learning experience on a mobile device but it all started with doing traditional training programs in a unique and fun way.
7. How does the firm intend to handle its Societal Responsibility? Please mention any special charity or program as such.
We have been empowering change in the educational system by turning the process of learning important skills into a game. Until now we have conducted various gamification sessions in universities and schools to bring awareness about the new learning techniques. Our CEO has given several TEDx talks in universities which talks about how gaming can be the next big shift in the education system. Besides our motto, we love seeing people smile and putting forward a helping hand wherever we can. Instead of celebrating each other’s birthday, this year all the members have mutually decided to provide food for the needy instead of gifting each other on their birthdays.
8. What would be your advice for the budding start-ups and entrepreneurs in the industry?
Entrepreneurship is challenging. Most people want to follow the trend of entrepreneurship, only a few believe in their idea. So before you take the path, make sure if it’s what you want to do. The learning industry has picked up pace and it’s not long before it gets concentrated. The only way to stay on top is innovation. No company can keep doing great work if they stop innovating new techniques. It’s important to understand the trend and keep up with it. Some of the techniques that will thrive in the coming years:
Micro-learning: The attention span of people has drastically reduced over the years. Micro learning solves this problem by delivering content when it’s required in small bite size learning.
Immersive Learning: As compared to the traditional format of learning where you download information, immersive learning is about experience. As opposed to directive learning, immersive learning is about facilitative learning. It’s an environment where people have realizations and these lead to real change in behavior and habit. Everything that you go through is immersive learning. It’s when you detach these experiences from learning, it becomes superficial.
Gamification: It is going to be most accepted change in the learning industry. The game element engages learners, something that most learning programs fail in today’s world. As compared to other modes of learning games result in highest recalling value. So games when linked with content become powerful motivator for the content’s consumption.
9. Brief us about the company’s future perspectives.
We need to constantly learn in order to deal with the rapidly changing work landscape. The current learning tools are not engaging enough and don’t hold the attention span of busy professionals. We want to make trainings fun and engaging while adding value to it. We have been into servicing clients using the games we had designed. Going forward we plan to make the tools available for trainers and facilitators to gamify their learning interventions. Memcorp also has plans to build a market place to host plethora of games for various competencies and also develop content for the training fraternity so people can plug and play these games to build more engagement and counter the requirement of learning stickiness required by the corporates
Memcorp Immersive: Play, Learn, Repeat
