Title: Serious Games for Human Capital Management
Date: Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:15 PM EDT

Join us for a Webinar on May 13. Space is limited.

[ Register Today ]

Last week, I attended the IEEE Learning Standards Technology Committee (LSTC) meeting in Alexandria, VA. There are at least a couple topics discussed at the meeting I'd like to cover. I'm starting in reverse order in this post since I'm covering a topic discussed on the last day of the three-day meeting.

On that third day, Chris Guin of BBN joined us to review the "SCORM RTE Web Services Interface." This was developed as part of an "Integrated Prototype Architecture" funded by Joint ADL Co-Lab beginning in 2006. A paper describing this work was submitted in 2008 in response to LETSI's call for papers on requirements for a successor to the current-day SCORM standards. As the paper describes, the web services interface follows "as closely as possible" the SCORM ECMAScript Interface for Content to Runtime Services Communication (IEEE 1484.11.2-2003).

A key difference between the two versions of the same interface is that while the ECMAScript API facilitates communications to an LMS from a Sharable Content Object (SCO) delivered within web client, the SOAP-based Web Services interface allows any application to act as an SCO. Thus, the web services version opens up the opportunity to use SCORM for integrations where content is delivered within a specialized simulation or game application rather than just a browser.

I have written in previous posts about how HR services have been influenced and advanced through the incorporation of ideas that grew up outside of the HR field (examples of such influences being customer relationship management, supply-chain management, and business intelligence). Those looking for the next source of big ideas to shape HR and human capital management (HCM) need to keep an eye on the field known as "serious games."

Serious Games Day at IBM

Last week IBM hosted "Serious Games Day" at its software executive briefing center in Research Triangle Park, NC. I came away from the event with an appreciation for the accelerating sophistication of serious games and with a few insights about their increasing relevance to strategic human capital management.

I'll describe some of the games demonstrated at the event, but first I want to zero in on a few of the most salient "take aways" for those in the field of HCM. A sign that it is time for those in the HCM field to take "serious games" seriously is the increasing activity around putting rigorously derived competency content into games (call them "business simulations" if it is more palatable to your management).

“Learning, education, and HR standards communities have very little to show in terms of cross-domain standards interoperability and convergence despite significant investments over a period of more than a decade.” Chuck Allen, Executive Director of the HR-XML Consortium, made this assessment of standards that cross the boundaries of standards-setting bodies in a “White Paper” submitted to the LETSI SCORM 2.0 Workshop held October 15-17, 2008 in Pensacola, Florida. Read more.

A successful standards initiative must influence as well as open itself to be influenced. I've mentioned in recent posts how HR-XML 3.0 advances the maturity of HR standards by incorporating design best practices and content developed by other groups (Open Applications Group, Inc. and UN/CEFACT). While OAGi and UN/CEFACT have much to offer, there are gaps. These organizations have focused primarily on material supply chains as well as domains areas such as finance, insurance, transportation, etc. There is no "HR domain" working group, nor are domains such as learning represented within UN/CEFACT.

Liaison With Learning Groups

There has been long-standing liaison between and among HR-XML and learning and education standards groups, such as the IMS Global Learning Consortium, the IEEE Learning Standards Technical Committee, the Postsecondary Electronic Standards Council (PESC), Learning-Education-Training Systems Interoperability (LETSI.org), The MedBiquitous Consortium, and the short-lived Web Services in Learning (WSIL) initiative. Unfortunately, an honest evaluation of the many years of HR/learning standards liaison would reveal few if any concrete results or progress towards convergence. Why? The fundamental reason is that each group, while in theory not opposed to convergence, quite naturally puts the immediate interests of its respective constituency in front of convergence goals. If convergence means breaking backward compatibility, it simply doesn't happen.