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Douglas Seifert, PhD

Doug leads a team at Syandus that combines cognitive science with virtual game technology to create rapid skill acquisition. The company has won several awards from the National Science Foundation’s Education Division.

Recent Posts

How to Use Apprenticeship to Drive Knowledge Transfer in L&D Training Programs

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Apr 22, 2019 4:59:00 PM

For many L&D organizations, too little of their training investment results in behavior change in the workplace. Here, we introduce how the apprenticeship model can help solve this vexing problem. It’s a way to make your training stick, and most importantly, transfer classroom concepts into desired behaviors in the workplace.

Apprenticeship has been around for thousands of years. At its foundation, it’s learn-by-doing. This model is utilized across many fields, including vocational training, aviation, and medicine - but how is it useful for training knowledge workers in business? Let’s find out!

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How and When to Use VR, AR, and Game Technology for Training

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Mar 12, 2019 10:17:00 AM

Experiential learning in 3D worlds is an exciting, highly effective way for learners to practice skills through virtual experience. These technologies are not one-size-fits-all, and it’s not always clear what is practical and effective for specific learning goals.

We’re going to dive in and take an unvarnished view of these technology to help you make an investment decision your learners will love. Then, we’ll wrap up with a fun exercise to illustrate the differences.

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5 Reasons to Ditch Videos for Virtual Hands-on Learning and Training

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Mar 11, 2019 1:30:51 PM

 

If you’re like many leaders we talk to, videos are not delivering the results you want. Why? Because certain types of training require more hands-on experience to make them stick – like leadership development, sales, coaching, and other areas where decision-making is important.

What’s the solution? For these situations, you can move training resources to virtual technologies that provide hands-on practice and coaching feedback, while still preserving cost-effective mobile delivery.

Let’s dive into the five reasons to ditch videos for virtual, hands-on learning and training….

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Sales Performance: Tactical vs Strategic Initiatives…What’s the Difference?

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Aug 23, 2018 4:25:08 PM

 

What’s the difference between tactical and strategic sales performance initiatives?

Tactical initiatives typically solve pressing needs, such industry updates, breaking news on the competition, or the latest product information.

Strategic initiatives maximize the significant investments made by an organization in training, sales processes, and coaching. Strategic needs lurk below the radar and often go unnoticed, yet when strategic needs are addressed, they can create significant performance gains for the company.

Here we will explore three strategic needs to improve sales performance. They are hard to solve, and I will describe how new technology offers a promising solution to all three.

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Improving Clinical Outcomes with Virtual Practice

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Aug 13, 2018 9:00:33 PM

Dr. Britt Andreatta, a learning and leadership development expert and author of The Neuroscience of Learning, emphasizes that professional learning can be broken down into three phases: Learn, Remember, and Do. She also asserts that learning programs should focus more on the “Do” phase since that is what makes the learning stick – where competence and behavior change occurs.

This message resonates in continuing medical education (CME), where the goal is to effectively change the competency and behavior of physicians based on new medical evidence. In CME, the “Do” phase means delivering educational opportunities for physicians to personally practice applying the “Learned” information in realistic situations, so that they’ll “Remember” it. 

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5 Things a Virtual Learning Environment Must Have to Be an Effective Training Platform

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on May 10, 2018 12:13:38 PM


 

The future of learning technology is already here. It’s virtual and immersive. It embraces Learn-by-Doing methodologies, and leverages advanced technology within a scalable Platform. Its power comes from the synergistic and catalytic effect of having all five parts working together. Lets take a look at how each of these five parts contribute to an effective virtual learning environment for training. 

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Game Technology (Not Games) Can Transform Your Training Program

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on May 1, 2018 4:34:00 PM

 


 

This article was published in e-Learning Industry on January 11, 2018 (link here

Learn how to use virtual game technology to enable your learners to practice in realistic situations and more rapidly learn optimal decision making. A 4-step process is described to create an effective, scalable, digital learning solution to improve performance using 3D game technology.

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4 Ways to Transform Training Programs with Expert Mental Models

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Nov 17, 2017 11:18:34 AM


How do we know what we know? It’s because we construct mental models that interrelate information in a sensible way, that we can test and refine with our experience. Learning requires that we assemble a new mental model, or integrate it into one we already have. These models can be completely wrong, flawed, suboptimal; or emulate the mental models of experts. Yikes! It seems we should care about mental models!

The mental models a learner constructs can directly impact the rate at which they achieve optimal performance, if at all. Let’s dive in...

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Virtual One-On-One Coaching + Role-Playing in a Realistic Environment = Increased Sales Performance

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Oct 20, 2017 4:14:31 PM


Want to know a great way to squander a sales opportunity? Let your salespeople practice proper sales techniques and good decision-making, in front of prospects. Yes, you can teach salespeople in a classroom, or through meeting-style role-plays, but is your sales training and sales process translating into real performance gains? These common problems stem from the same source — and there is a solution.


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Can’t Clone Your Best Sales Coach? Try Virtual Coaching Technology.

By Douglas Seifert, PhD on Oct 11, 2017 2:56:01 PM


Great performance requires great coaching. Sales is no different. It’s a situational-thinking game.

Optimal performance requires both practice and expert coaching from those who’ve mastered your sales processes. We all know this, but acting on it isn’t easy: Setting up one-on-one, expert sales coaching is difficult, and expensive to scale. And sales managers often lack the aptitude to be great coaches.

Technology can help! We’re not proposing a mad scientist’s experiment to clone your best sales coaches here... the real solution is better! There is a realistic, optimal coaching strategy that can be implemented in a scalable way.


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