Taking a leap. Getting ahead. Exciting–especially when personally and organizationally, most of us are seeking new outcomes. But leaping also sounds scary. Change is scary, even when it’s what you need most. To be sure, reaching out for something new may mean letting go of something else. That’s one of my Natural Laws of Performance. [...]
introducing the zero engine. learning has never been easier.
learning with character: powered by personality.
flash forward. x-learning puts learners in control.
practice makes performance. simulate to stimulate.
learning. to go.
learning. without limits.
We are wslash. We make digital learning better. Our high-impact strategies make learning easier, more fun, and more effective. Explore what sets us apart, and what we can do for you.
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every-ware
Our unique approach puts your learning anywhere, on any device. Screens are variable, learning is constant. -
easy-learning
The exclusive Zero Engine™ approach eliminates friction and guides learners effortlessly towards results. -
pixel people
Digital characters bring fun and personality to courses, as well as valuable practice and feedback. Learn by experience. -
working w/ us
Our strategic process makes it easy to go from ideas to design to launch. Our people working with your people.
About
We're a different kind of learning company. Instead of asking, "what do we want people to know?", we approach projects asking, "what behavior do we want to change?" This guides learners, and your strategies, to success.
THE WSLASH DIFFERENCE
“eLearning is boring.” We hear it all the time, and you know what? It usually is. That’s where we come in.
Most elearning out there is predictable, uninteresting, and stuck on “click next to continue” in glorified PowerPoint presentations. Just as bad, designers mistake interactivity for effectiveness, interrupting learning with a barrage of buttons, animations, clicks and drags. Worst of all, most courses are an information dump that might satisfy stakeholders, but leaves learners confused and overwhelmed.
At wslash, we don’t just ask what, we ask why. We work with you to define what meaningful success looks like – then begin building strategies to that vision. We put it all together with courseware, technology, and techniques that are unlike anything else in the industry, making a positive difference for you and your learners.
For a deeper dive into what makes us and our solutions different, download the white paper on our exclusive Zero Engine™ approach to learning.
downloadPUTTING LEARNING FIRST
The most valuable thing we’ve learned in our almost 17 years of doing business: removing obstacles is key to reaching full potential.
We’re obsessed with improving the learning experience, and this contributes to a spirit of innovation that drives wslash and everything we do. We want learning to be easy, enjoyable and frictionless, with a clear path to your intended outcomes. When learners get it, apply it, and look forward to more, they – and you – find success.
WE GET RESULTS
We continually survey learners and measure outcomes so we can understand, innovate, and improve. Thousands of learners like yours describe our digital learning like this:
confidence w/customers 95%
improve my sales 86%
gain valuable practice 89%
found courses worthwhile 95%
recommend to friends 92%
The wslash team brings a level of creativity and forward thinking mindset that we have not seen from other companies. This is the best e-learning we’ve ever had at this company.
More than enlightening. A complete and total revelation in training.
The most engaging and informative e-learning that I’ve ever taken.
wslash delivers incredible, impactful assets on time and on budget, and go above and beyond to accommodate us. We’ve had rave reviews around their training and increased participation across all our learning platforms.
Solutions
Whether you have a well-established strategy or are just getting one off the ground, our custom solutions are designed to meet you where you are, and help you get to where you want to go. From any-device connectivity to rich simulations and practice scenarios, learners for companies like Sony, Qualcomm, Sam's Club, Michelin, Petco and many others have all discovered that wslash digital learning is effective, fun and engaging.
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Zero Engine Approach
Any Device
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x-learning
Flash Desktop
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Digital Characters
Any Device, Digital characters, Flash Desktop
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Simulations & Scenarios
Digital characters, Flash Desktop, Simulations
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Case Study: Sony
Case Studies, Digital characters, Flash Desktop
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Case Study: Snapdragon
Any Device, Case Studies, Digital characters, Flash Desktop
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Case Study: Newell-Rubbermaid
Case Studies, Flash Desktop, Simulations
working w/ us
When you build a house, you start with blueprints. To get to the blueprints, you first brainstorm, consult and imagine things with an architect. Our workflow is designed to keep projects moving swiftly and smoothly from the very first conversation with you, and emphasizes a partnership approach between your team and ours. Everybody's on the same page, moving in the same direction, with clear, common goals for success.
Project Kickoff
This is our initial meeting and is driven by a list of questions we discuss with you. Together we cover all relevant facets of the project such as business strategy, learner demographics, technology issues, client concerns, and so on. This conversation helps answer critical questions early in a project and establish some common language, goals, and expectations. By the end of this conversation we should have a clear idea of who you are, what you need, and what a project entails. We share those findings, and begin to offer strategy for success, in the next step.
Recap & Treatment
Following the Kickoff, we prepare a document for you that basically says, “this is what we heard you say” in our kickoff meeting. This ensures we’re aligned with your expectations from the start. It details the business objectives and behavior changes that will drive efforts in all future steps of the process. This is our opportunity to start laying out general and specific details on how we’ll approach your project.
A Compass Statement is included in this document. The Compass Statement sums up our direction as concisely as possible in a short phrase – “Create excitement around Fancy Widgets so sales teams have enthusiasm for project launch”, or “Provide practice scenarios between Fancy Widget Co. employees and its clients so salespeople can sharpen skills and become more effective.” A Storyline is also included. It is a narrative sentence, phrase or description that represents the key take-away of the course or project. These elements give us an umbrella concept and direction from which we can make strategic decisions on content and design. Creating this kind of filter streamlines parts of the development process of your course in critical ways, and allows everybody involved to be aligned with the same over-arching goals.
To make sure we’re communicating effectively, we include a few brief paragraphs that describe the Creative Treatment for the course. Together, these elements should be clear and descriptive enough that each team member feels confident about, and easily understands, what and how we accomplish the business and learning goals. At this point, we’ll make the recommendation for elearning, blended learning and/or performance support materials.
All combined, these deliverables should give you a great idea of what your course will consist of, how problems will be solved, and the approach we think will most contribute to success for you and your learners. In our next step we take these concepts and organize them into a sensible structure to help shape the course to come.
Design Document
This is an outline drafted in phases and sentences. It follows the direction of the Compass Statement and the narrative of the Storyline. It intends to make clear what’s in and what’s not in the content of the course, without going into more detail than necessary. It makes the Script predictable.
Style Tile
At about this same time, we’ll also deliver to you a Style Tile – a highly visual document that presents a visual frame of reference that’s in synch with your guidelines and appropriate for the course (colors, typography, textures, use of images and buttons, etc.). The Style Tile gives you, at a glance, the color scheme, mood, attitude, and personality of your course. Once you have a clear sense for the major pieces of your course, it’s time to put some numbers to it – time, scope, and budget.
Scope of Work
The Scope of Work is created based on the amount that’s detailed by the Design Document (if a formal SOW has not already been agreed to). If an SOW already exists, then our Design Doc is written to fit the plan and budget described. Precisely defining scope may be the most critical business step. With these details taken care of, it’s time to write your course.
Script
The Script expands the Design Doc to provide all the content in the course. The Script is written as much like the actual Final Design as possible, in terms of the text and format used. The message and meaning are the focus here. The Script is a document for reading and reviewing textual content – so the words are the focus, not images. When you like the message, then we’ll return to visual treatment.
The concepts, simplicity and visual presentation from the Design Document through Script, Wireframe and Final Design should easily blend together. This means less guessing and more certainty about the outcome, from the start.
Wireframes
Where the script provides text, Wireframes put the words into their structural context. Wireframes use simple shapes and colors to show the relationships between media, images, text, navigation, and other key course elements. From the Wireframe you’ll have a clear idea for how a course will behave, be organized, and navigated – remember the Style Tile already provides a sense for design and appearance. Once you’ve approved the Script and understand the course architecture, it’s time to put it all together.
Final Design
This is your actual course, live and online and impacting learners. The culmination of all steps preceding, the Final Design marries the Script, Style Tile, and Wireframes into a powerful, well crafted learning environment.
The Design Document, Script, Wireframe, and Final Design each provide both alpha and beta client reviews. These two rounds at each stage should be enough to attain a confident signature of approval from you, but we can identify in our Kickoff meeting if you have other preferences in this regard. Changes that do not follow the Design Doc, Storyline or Compass Statement will be considered Out of Scope (OOS) and will likely incur additional costs and can impact the timeline. wslash will not proceed with OOS work until you have approved a new scope and the costs assigned to that scope.
Blog
Visit our archive
As his profile says, “Andrew Sobel is the leading authority on the strategies and skills required to build clients for life and develop trusted business relationships.” In one of his recent blog posts he talks about the “willingness to challenge your clients” as part of becoming a peer and trusted advisor, rather than simply being [...]
According to the most recent SHRM poll, “creating a culture that attracts and retains the best workers” is projected to remain a priority through 2022. What a surprise, right? For me, leadership, engagement, retention, acquiring and retaining top talent and satisfied customers–all hinge on corporate culture. For me, culture is the combination of attitudes, values [...]
by Jack Pierce
Tagged with culture, organizational development, performance management
The pain we see across the country as we talk to clients, prospects and other businesses is a combination of cutbacks and doing more with less. We’ve all been to this well before, but surprisingly, research would seem to us this could be done. It requires developing capable people within an energizing corporate culture that [...]
Look, learning isn’t just an occasional activity to check off your list. To be effective, it must be strategically integrated into a larger mix of performance management initiatives. If you’re a client, have heard me speak, or have simply hung around this blog long enough, you’ve probably seen some version of the diagram above. wslash [...]
That’s what a senior training manager proclaimed at a Newell Rubbermaid national sales meeting. And with good reason, because we took an old ILT course and made it a highly immersive, popular, game-like, online course. The Sales Excellence 101 content had been around for years. What wslash added that was so compelling were three different [...]
I was recently interviewed for the Cox Learning Solutions Forecast 2013 report, which notes that there’s a growing interest in custom learning. Their researchers were puzzled about that and asked for my take, on “Why are organizations so specialized that they need ‘custom’ content to successfully train their employees in areas such as soft skills, or [...]
Employee engagement is part of the Holy Grail when it comes to organizational performance. In every mind of every person, is the question, “What’s in it for me?” In training, there’s also the “So what?” question that we try to answer with every “what” we train on. Can you answer these questions? Relationship turbulence amplifies these questions [...]
by Jack Pierce
Tagged with engagement, performance management, workforce development
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We'd love to talk to you about your next project, or just toss around ideas. Use the form below, drop us an email, or just give us a call.
(952) 955-1771
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