Rating: 
Summary: Learning as Gourmet Fare
Review: Clark Aldrich has written a personal story about developing a new genre of leadership development program. He takes you along for the ride as he becomes disenchanted with eLearning, quits a prestige job to find a better way, surmounts numerous hurdles, and ends up with Virtual Leader, a product you can buy today. Unlike most books on learning, Clark's is well written and witty; it's fun to read. "What would the world be like if eLearning truly worked?" If eLearning could bestow understanding and the ability to control things, the training organization would be more important than the lawyers. I'd be bragging about last night's learning experience. Of course, eLearning has not lived up to its potential. It's mainly virtual classrooms and online workbooks. The lessons have been degraded to the lowest common denominators of bandwidth, packaging standards, and generality. eLearning is sometimes no more than the pre-reading in a "blended" solution. There is an exception: the learning of people who must perform. Life or death. Soldiers, pilots, nuclear power plant workers, and Wall Street traders. They learn from simulation. Clark posits three forms of content: linear (most of what we're exposed to), cyclical (hitting balls on the driving range), and open-ended (with multiple paths and outcomes). He recounts the early days of eLearning from his perspective as the chief analyst in that space at Gartner. Vendors visit with dog-and-pony shows, some tripping themselves up irrevocably in the first ten minutes. Hundreds of companies and not one that was sufficiently compelling to inspire him. Or others. eLearning is to learning as fast food is to nutrition. It's all linear. It's crap. Next Clark quits his secure, prestigious job at Gartner to create exemplary eLearning, the best-of-breed that the eLearning vendors never showed him. He's out to build a "concept car" that will guide the industry. His chapter on "The Myth of Subject-Matter Experts" skewers leadership gurus mercilessly. They don't have the three forms of content. They don't have very deep models. They have anecdotes. They want a fortune to have their grad students cook something up. At a leisurely pace. If you're thinking about taking content from nationally-known authorities, read this chapter first. After months of research, reflection, blind alleys, and enough tid-bits to cover the walls with Post-It Notes, Clark and his mates arrived at a model of leadership that had the ring of truth. Leadership is "Getting a group of people to complete the right work." This is great stuff. I should know. Six years ago, my firm's EVP told me our clients needed a program on leadership. Could I come up with a model that could be the foundation of a workshop? Something compelling. (Worldwide, a million bankers had participated in our workshops. We considered ourselves the crème de la crème of bank training.) I jumped on the project with gusto, reading articles in the U.C. Berkeley library and on the web. I read Bennis, Kouzes, von Klausewitz, Peters, Drucker, my former professor John Kotter, and dozens of others. Eventually I boiled leadership down to a model of leadership and management accompanied by a page of bullet points. I appreciate Clark's model and methods because they are so much better than what I came up with. Clark would call my results "linear," the ultimate slur. Clark's model is good enough to become a Harvard Business Review Classic. About a third of the way in, the book totally changes direction. Clark takes us into the nitty-gritty of constructing the Virtual Leader simulation. We learn about principles of simulation, set design, character creation, animation, speech generation, control of movement, and magically making the cast autonomous, like Pinocchio turning into a real boy and wandering out of Gepetto's workshop. Some of this was fascinating but other parts of it read like Popular Science. The story from the first third of the book had turned into a how-to talk. This section was well crafted but it wasn't what I wanted to learn. The final third addresses what happened when they flipped the on-switch, the futility of grades, why there aren't more simulations, and what's wrong with schooling. Summary: Almost all training is linear. The world is open-ended. This is why almost all training fails. Simulations are open-ended. They are expensive but they work. Simulations are the way of the future. Thanks for taking us along for the journey, Clark.
Rating:
Summary: A visionary book
Review: Clark Aldrich is one of the few true visionaries in the training profession. This book convinces us that - despite numerous challenges - simulations can indeed change the way we learn. With clear, powerful arguments, Clark lays out why simulations are simply a better way to learn than the static webpages that we know as e-learning today; and suggests to us how simulations can and should be built. Clark is also a captivating writer and the book is a fascinating tale of the creation story of one of the more complex leadership simulations build to date - including all of the challenges that the development team faced and overcame.
Rating:
Summary: Rupesh Goel
Review: Clark has written a book both simple and detailed - for both the specialists and the generalists - in the big, bad, and exciting world of simulations. Sometimes the process IS the product - if you believe that you will love the notes in the book from Clark's developer's diary - he brilliantly captures the tradeoffs of design, technology, learning, legal and commercial issues, in the process of creating the simulations. I recommend this to anyone serious about simulations development or use.
Rating:
Summary: Leadership, Simulations and More¿.
Review: Clark's book not only describes an intriguing process for the development of simulations and the future of e-learning, he does an excellent job describing a leadership model that works. In fact, Clark's leadership model was studied and utilized by a number of my students in a team-based class. Using Clark's book, they were able to apply the concepts of balancing Power, Ideas and Tension successfully to accomplish work. Just as Clark described. The story Clark tells is fun to read, interesting and educational. I strongly recommend it to all my students...and they love it. My instructional technology students all relate to interactive computer environments from PS2s to Xbox to Riven to SimCity and Roller Coaster Tycoon and they see no other alternative to what Clark describes in terms of how they want to learn in the future (and now for that matter). My students also appreciate the insight into the development process of a major learning initiative. The story of the success and failure of bringing the product to market. I completely enjoyed this book because it adeptly foretells the future of learning and where academics and corporate training folks need to go. If you are involved with designing or managing learning within any type of environment, you need to read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Timely, Needed, and Important
Review: Every person who has played a modern-day simulation game has had to wonder how that level of interaction can be used to teach and train. Simulation and the Future of Learning doesn't just explain that it's possible, it proves it. Aldrich's extensive background in e-learning products gives him a very qualified view of what needs to improve in the future of learning. The answer is simulations. Real-time, engaging and realistic simulations. He explains in detail the hurdles, headaches, and horrors of developing what has become one of the best leadership training tools on the market--Virtual Leader. While there is little explanation of instructional theory and methods, this book is HIGHLY recommended to any organization looking to get into the educational simulation business. It provides a realistic picture of the decisions designers will face when building the next generation of learning products.
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to the Future of Training and Learning
Review: Having read this book twice, I'm struck twice by the reality of the "revolutionary" implications for learning and improved business performance. Looking at the problems with current training in the corporate setting, Clark Aldrich (and the team) have created an aperture into the future realities of learning that cannot be rationally be denied. Looking at the implications for business and improved leadership effectiveness, one is left with the distinct impression that corporate profits will ultimately be dependent upon the "true" learning offered by simulations, such as Virtual Leader, in contrast to the boring nothingness offered by most training and development efforts.
How they "did it" is a fascinating tale of creative genius at work, which by itself, would make this book extremely interesting. This tale is similar to the story told by those who discovered the "double helix" of DNA fame. But, they go beyond that.
This is a book that moves the field of "simulations" into the orbit of intense relevance for "learning" with applications to business problems and their solutions.
Don't let the hilarious and high level of humor detract you from the seriousness of the subject and the practical applications to business and learning. David L. Hanson, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to the Future of Training and Learning
Review: Having read this book twice, I'm struck twice by the reality of the "revolutionary" implications for learning and improved business performance. Looking at the problems with current training in the corporate setting, Clark Aldrich (and the team) have created an aperture into the future realities of learning that cannot be rationally be denied. Looking at the implications for business and improved leadership effectiveness, one is left with the distinct impression that corporate profits will ultimately be dependent upon the "true" learning offered by simulations, such as Virtual Leader, in contrast to the boring nothingness offered by most training and development efforts.
How they "did it" is a fascinating tale of creative genius at work, which by itself, would make this book extremely interesting. This tale is similar to the story told by those who discovered the "double helix" of DNA fame. But, they go beyond that.
This is a book that moves the field of "simulations" into the orbit of intense relevance for "learning" with applications to business problems and their solutions.
Don't let the hilarious and high level of humor detract you from the seriousness of the subject and the practical applications to business and learning. David L. Hanson, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist
Rating:
Summary: Welcome to the Future of Training and Learning
Review: Having read this book twice, I'm struck twice by the reality of the "revolutionary" implications for learning and improved business performance. Looking at the problems with current training in the corporate setting, Clark Aldrich (and the team) have created an aperture into the future realities of learning that cannot be rationally be denied. Looking at the implications for business and improved leadership effectiveness, one is left with the distinct impression that corporate profits will ultimately be dependent upon the "true" learning offered by simulations, such as Virtual Leader, in contrast to the boring nothingness offered by most training and development efforts.
How they "did it" is a fascinating tale of creative genius at work, which by itself, would make this book extremely interesting. This tale is similar to the story told by those who discovered the "double helix" of DNA fame. But, they go beyond that.
This is a book that moves the field of "simulations" into the orbit of intense relevance for "learning" with applications to business problems and their solutions.
Don't let the hilarious and high level of humor detract you from the seriousness of the subject and the practical applications to business and learning. David L. Hanson, Ph.D.
Consulting Psychologist
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Insightful with Lots of Practical Advice
Review: Here finally is a how-to manual that can help us all escape the mediocrity of linear eLearning solutions. From the 'most eLearning is like fast food' chapter, through the author's hopes for simulations and the anatomy of the Virtual Leader project, this book is refreshingly honest and fascinating all the way. The level of detail Aldrich provides really underscores his message and provides the proof we all need that yes, it can be done. I look forward to a world where thousands of Virtual Leader-type simulations are available, spanning all sort of subjects. I now have hope that it will happen sooner rather than later!
Rating: 
Summary: Infotainment and Evangelism
Review: High profile e-learning industry analyst Clark Aldrich became disenchanted with the yawning gap between the promise of e-learning and the reality. Attracted by the potential application of computer gaming techniques for training simulation purposes, he quit his job with the Gartner Group and joined a project team attempting to design a computer-based leadership development simulation. The result was Simulearn's Virtual Leader. Aldrich's book recounts the experience in this book.
Despite the promise of the title, the book is a curious mix of speculation, case study, and product promotion. Aldrich provides accessible frameworks for thinking about the underlying design considerations for the development of simulations, and some useful insights into the analysis of content and development of simulation architecture. Yet the book is not a tool kit or primer for would-be designers - the advice is rarely actionable - nor is it a deep study of the concepts and application of simulation models. As such its greatest value is as an introductory case study into aspects of simulation design. The case in question is the development of Simulearn's Virtual Leader product, and the book gives little insight into other forms of electronic or other simulations. The author is a Vice President of Simulearn, so his views are not impartial.
Aldrich makes some refreshingly provocative assertions: e-learning has failed to deliver because it's not sufficiently user-focused - it has been sold to senior managers as means of lowering the cost of training, rather than enriching the value of learning. Aldrich believes that education and vocational training are too "linear", emphasizing the acquisition of facts in a sequential, guided way rather than "open-ended", allowing the development of decision-making, interpersonal communication and creative capabilities required for success in work. In contrast, simulations offer rich combinations of linear, cyclical and open-ended learning, with the freedom to make mistakes, try new approaches and hone skills in a secure environment.
The book is often entertaining. Aldrich's account of the analysis of the leadership content in order to arrive at an underlying simulation model and architecture is amusing - framed as a quest to find the meaning of leadership and render it into electronic simulation, with himself as hero. It is slightly clouded by digressions on the nature of leadership - Aldrich seems to approach the subject with little background, and is suprised to find that (to paraphrase Warren Bennis) so much been written by so many to so little effect.
A number of glaring issues go unexamined: the leadership model and the simulation design of Virtual Leader require a standard of behaviour and ethics that are possibly more ideology than reality. Success in Virual Leader requires a degree of conventional virtue that most organizations espouse but is not always practiced by those in power. A fundamentally Machiavellian approach apparently won't work in Virtual Leader, but it is arguably an effective means of gaining and retaining power in most organisations. The player's experience of Virtual Leader is not evident from the descriptions -despite extensive descriptions of the design process and interface, the book gives little insight into how the player interacts with the game.
Aldrich is evangelical, which gives his writing energy and persuasive power, but like many evangelists, he is strong on belief and short on evidence for his views. While he is right to question the validity of conventional models of education and learning, his opinions are largely speculation, or based on the anecdotal evidence of others or his own experience.
And despite the evangelism, if Aldrich's predictions hold true, most organisations will never design a simulation using his approach. They are prohibitively expensive, costing many millions of dollars. At best, they may purchase an off-the-shelf simulation, and customise it to some extent, which is possibly one of the promotional intentions of the book.
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