Karl Kapp: Clark, your latest book, Learning by Doing, is about simulations, computer games and pedagogy and before I get started I wanted to let you know that I enjoyed the style and tone of the book, in fact, it even made me laugh in a few places. You seemed to be mimicking your topics a little in style and delivery. Can you talk about that for a moment?

Clark Aldrich: Sure, it was important to me when I wrote the book to make it represent the content I was discussing. In fact, looking back I regret that I didn't do more of it. I tried to make it a funny book, I tried to make it an interactive book, I tried to make it an engaging book. Because if one believes content should be that way then one should apply those same standards to a book as much as possible. It seems to have worked, several people who have read the book said they laughed out loud. I tried to create a book that role modeled content not just explained it.

Karl Kapp: As a reader, it is easy to see how you've translated some of the ideas of interactivity into the book like the word search at the end of chapter 4. But what is also interesting is some of the themes of the book. One them of the book is your explanation of what you call the "tapestry of simulations available today."

Clark Aldrich: Yes, let me explain it this way. I get invited into a lot of planning sessions, events, and meetings involving discussions about simulations. All of the conversations start off in a pretty predictable way where you have one person saying "oh yeah, simulations are great, my kids play computer games all the time and that's really exciting for me, simulations are great." And someone else says "oh yeah simulations, when I was in the military we used to use it all the time and we really learned a lot from it and I love simulations." And someone else says "oh yeah simulations are great, you know when I was a lawyer we did moot courts all the time and they are very helpful, they really helped us a lot." And someone else says "oh yeah simulations are great, at MIT we did the beer game and you know that was a great experience." And someone else says "oh yeah simulations, we use those for our call center reps all the time you know to teach them how to answer the phones correctly, they work really well, I love simulations."

And in a very short time you have rendered the rest of the day utterly useless because there are so many different takes on simulations and so many different perspectives and they're all so personal and intimate. But they're all, I don't want to say incompatible, but they're all talking about very different things.

An analogy that perhaps is easy for me to bring up is like in 1999 when people called me and said, "I want to do e-learning. I'm looking at Centra, Skillsoft and Macromedia, which one should I choose?" So there's this interest but it's sort of a naïve interest. People don't realize their own perspective where it's passionate and, by the way accurate and appropriate; it's still pretty incompatible with a lot of other peoples' perspective.

Karl Kapp: So your work right now is trying to make those different simulation perspectives compatible…trying to define the genre of simulations?

Clark Aldrich: Sure, and I think also it's defining the appropriate use of a simulation given a certain situation. If you want to train call center reps or if you want to train a new consulting force or if you want to get a new perspective, it's not enough to say "yes let's use a simulation to do that." It becomes absolutely critical to say "let's use the right kind of simulation to do that." And that link, that inability to make that jump I think has hindered a terrifically large amount of simulation efforts and it becomes a critical part in our discussions about measuring the effect simulations. If you're not using the right simulation genre for the right activity then, almost by definition, the metrics are going to be off. It seemed like a pretty critical next step to increase our understanding the simulation tapestry.

Karl Kapp: Right, that makes sense. So a person needs to define what it is that they're working on before they can actually improve it and move forward?

Clark Aldrich: Yeah, and again there are times when we use a MAC truck when it's time to use a pickup truck or there's a time when you need a Volkswagen and you know that spray painting the MAC truck a different color is not going to help you if what you really want is Volkswagen which is where I think a lot of the vendors are today. They are saying "oh we have this great MAC truck, oh you want it different, okay I'll paint it blue," somewhat useful but not necessarily overly useful.

Karl Kapp: So, as you discuss in the book, simulations are really kind of in mid-evolution and trying to define something in mid-evolution is difficult.

Clark Aldrich: Well I think more specifically different kinds of simulations are at different states of evolution. There are some very mature simulations and there are some very innovative simulations and they're not really the same thing. I think no matter what your risk level there is a right simulation genre for you but don't confuse the two.

Karl Kapp: So there are different simulations depending upon risk level and also amount you're willing to invest?

Clark Aldrich: Oh, sure, absolutely, budget is a huge part of any kind of simulation development effort and that will necessarily open up some doors and close others.

Karl Kapp: Let's move to a slightly different topic. In the book, you discuss some dramatic results of simulation-based training. Can you talk about those results?

Clark Aldrich: We don't necessarily have the right vocabulary and/or metrics for generically talking about simulations from a traditional metrics perspective. However, I think the most typical metrics or the more typical result of a simulation is that someone sounds like a twenty year veteran of an area when, in fact, they just picked it up about three or four weeks ago. They sound like an expert. I think that's probably more telling than any sort of metric.

The criterion is that you don't know you're talking to someone who learned via a simulation as opposed to learning by other methods. It really comes down to the subtlety and passion in their voice and the sparkle in their eye when they're talking about the body of knowledge.

Karl Kapp: That is an interesting definition of success and one that is quite telling. Looking at it from the other side, can you talk about any spectacular failures of simulations?

Clark Aldrich: Any time you don't have the right simulation genre that is a failure. A lot of early "simulation" attempts were to use branching videos and other forms of branching stories to teach high potential managers new skills. A branching story is where you're given a bit of background and you have to make an A, B or C decision to move to the next branch in the programming tree and it's a series of answers to questions and you move along through the experience that way.

Branching stories turned out to be remarkably ineffective for high potential managers who really like and value creativity and who come to the table with a pretty good skill set and want to hone and refine their own skills as opposed to being put through a maze. That use of branching story simulations probably is one of the early spectacular simulation failures. You can't use those kinds of branching stories to teach high level management skills to high potential managers.

Karl Kapp: I'd imagine there are still vendors doing just that.

Clark Aldrich: Even as we speak. And in a lot of cases people say, "oh yeah you know we tried those simulations for our managers and it didn't work, therefore, we're not going to do any more simulations." You have to understand where those concerns stem from. The real news is that the exact same model, the same branching story model, works fabulously well with new employees and works fabulously well with unmotivated employees

In this case the branching simulation genre is not a bad genre. It was simply used in the wrong way. When that happens it creates a ripple effect. And that's the whole premise of the book…the proper application of a simulation genre depends on the audience and the content. If you ask an audience their opinion of a certain simulation genre invariably people who give an unfavorable opinion were those who took the simulation in the wrong place and those who have a very strongly favorable opinion took it in the right place.

Karl Kapp: In your book, you mention that computer game advocates and game enthusiasts are exciting e-learning developers while simultaneously mudding the waters. Can you explain a little bit about that?

Clark Aldrich: It is very easy to say, wow, aren't computer games great and this should be the model for education. It's an easy statement to make and it certainly was one that I've made many, many times. I think it's a nice statement but it's highly incomplete.

There are number of computer game enthusiasts out there who really want to drive all education to look and feel like computer games and like any visionaries they're half right and half wrong. At this point the degree to which they are wrong is a lot more interesting to me than to the degree to which they're right. The fact that they are half right can be said without question. Where they're wrong, where computer games are not a good a model has become more interesting to me then frankly where they're right, which seems obvious.

Karl Kapp: How are they wrong?

Clark Aldrich: I think the expectation of fun and the role of fun in an educational experience is a tricky one. A lot of people who advocate computer games as a model are of the belief that education is inherently fun and therefore if a program is not fun then it's not a good simulation.

One of the greatest observations of anyone who advocates, deploys and works with a simulation is the concept of frustration and resolution of that frustration as a cornerstone of learning.

Probably the best analogy here is sports. Let's look at our own understanding of the weight room and our own understanding of pickup games. For a lot of people it is fun to play a pick up game of basketball or whatever with some friends. No one really cares who wins or loses but everyone gets a workout, sweats a little and builds some muscles. Everyone generally has a good time. That is like playing computer games.

But all the serious athletes, the people who actually get paid for and who need to do well in that venue, spend a lot of time in the weight room. Simulations are more like the weight room then a pickup game. In the weight room, there is hard work, frustration, a lot of sweat, and sore muscles. Yet, at the end of the day there is greatly increased capacity in specific areas. One can work certain body parts seeing and feeling a huge improvement. These improvements are much more than could ever come out of just playing a pick up game.

You have to appreciate both sides of the coin. Appreciate the value of a pickup game but you also appreciate that a lot of simulations are closer to the weight room or the tennis backboard or a place where you rigorously improve a finite skill set in a way that helps you in other areas. It is not always fun or easy. Fun and the expectation of fun is an area where the computer game people are perhaps a little too zealous. Does that make sense?

Karl Kapp: Yes it does.

Clark Aldrich: Disagree?

Karl Kapp: Well one of the things about that analogy is, and this is something that you mentioned in your book, that the best simulations simulate as much of the actual environment as possible. The weight room tends to focus on only one or two areas.

Clark Aldrich: It's not an either/or it's a both/and. You know you are not going to get good at any sport unless you actually play it. You absolutely have to go to the scrimmages; you have to go through the plays. There's no question that's a critical part. If all you do is spend time in the weight room you might build up your abs or your cardiovascular or whatever but you're probably not going to be a very good athlete. It's the combination of the two that becomes so powerful, the combination of the weight room and the scrimmages and the games.

Karl Kapp: So then going back to your earlier statement about someone finishing a simulation and sounding like a twenty year veteran; do you think that if a person just did a simulation they would actually be able to converse as an expert without having gone through playing a scrimmage or a game?

Clark Aldrich: What works best is simulation plus experience but simulation can greatly improve or decrease time to experience. Let me give an example, I'm going to use a leadership example but I don't really mean to. If you do a leadership simulation it's still not just a simulation because you bring with it all of your real life leadership experience.

Or if you walk into a room for the first time and participate in a nuclear reactor simulation, presumably you have seen a nuclear reactor and worked around a nuclear reactor before beginning the meltdown simulation. In that context you benefit from your previous experiences with a nuclear reactor.

When there are simulations around activities people are already pretty familiar with even if it's a superficial or superstitious understanding, then the simulation hones the skills they already have. When they're done with the simulation they'll have a very deep knowledge which will be a combination of the simulation and real life experience. With soft skills like project management, when people already have a lot of anecdotal experience or superstitious experience then the role of simulation can be to hone that knowledge so when they're done with the simulation and you talk to them they're going to have a terrific sense of how the material applies to real life cases.

Karl Kapp: Are you saying that a high fidelity simulation works best with people that already have some degree of experience?

Clark Aldrich: One reason you have a high fidelity simulation is because there is no equivalent experience. If we look at workplace violence or a nuclear reactor you'd want a very high level of fidelity because there is no chance to practice and develop the skills outside of the simulation. On the other hand, for a call center because people are on the telephone all the time you actually need a less accurate simulation. One that is still good but less than perfect because people are learning concepts in that simulation that they can immediately apply when the simulation is over. The combination of simulation plus real calls equals a very good outcome; you don't need a super, high fidelity simulation in that context. Again, if you were doing workplace violence, if you were doing fire fight, if you were doing something dealing with difficult employees or how to fire an employee or whatever, then you'd you want a higher fidelity because there isn't the chance to work it into real life as much…hopefully.

Karl Kapp: It's interesting to me as I look at the industry that there's a lot of talk about simulations and a lot of hype…a lot of reality as well, but then on the other hand there are a ton of page-turners being commissioned and really bad e-learning out there, maybe even more than simulations. Do you think that's going to be the trend or do you think simulations will trend upward?

Clark Aldrich: I am hoping obviously that simulations trend upward. I think there needs to be a greater understanding of the ecosystem of learning programs. There is always going to be more volume at the lower end of any system. In an ecosystem, think mosquitoes or slugs or grass. With applications, think email, instant messengers and Google searches and stuff like that. So at the bottom of the food chain, and I don't mean that in any kind of derogatory way, there will be a terrifically large amount of activity.

But I think there is a greater awareness up through the top of the food chain as well, even the middle of the food chain, of better designed courses that have a higher strategic impact on the organization. So having said that, I do believe that for most simulations you're going to need third party vendors to build them. They're not going to be built internally with only a few exceptions.

For example, Halo 2 the computer game took fourteen million dollars and over two and half years to develop. For the highest caliber simulations I think only outside third party vendors are going to have the time and the patience to create them. Once this happen in a higher volume, corporations will have a much easier job of deploying simulations.

Karl Kapp: Are external companies going to want to spend that kind of money on a potential product or a speculative product? Virtual Leader (a leadership simulation created under the guidance of Aldrich) was somewhat speculative especially because of where the industry was at that time, but it was highly successful. Could you discuss the topic of how third party vendors are going to be attractive to corporations when creating simulations and how the vendors can be successful?

Clark Aldrich: Sure, I'm not sure but I think Virtual Leader is probably the best selling leadership simulation right now and we're certainly in a huge number of schools as well as corporations and the military.

So, those who strive to do it as successfully as possibly have a terrific opportunity to consolidate the market and to be market leaders. When developing products, there are a couple of different loops one can get into. One can get into the loop that the content is not very good so, therefore, I'll do it cheaply and it doesn't have much of a life. Do it and then forget about it and it won't have much impact on the organization because it didn't cost too much. That's one loop.

And then there's another loop where you say we're really going to care immensely about the content, we're going to care about deploying it. It's going to have a very positive impact on our organization. It's going to be deployed to everyone and it's going to actually impact the bottom line. Obviously that's a good loop. You've seen things and I've seen things where certain programs have actually impacted an entire organization and their bottom line and are reported in the annual report as the reason why the company did better than it did the year before.

We're getting to a point where we can almost have the best of both worlds, where we can have quality content that is not very strategic to the organization but contains important enabling information that can be created and deployed by third party vendors. A corporation gets all the benefits of having quality content without the corresponding high costs of developing it. My goal is to create an environment where there are more of those excellent programs being developed in a high quality, cost effective way. That's a basic premise of the book.

In a lot of cases the technology is just now enabling that nice combination of sweet spots of both very scalable content and very effective content. And if you can nail that sweet spot then you almost can't help but be successful.

Karl Kapp: So, who's going to go after the sweet spot? Obviously your organization is going to go after it but are game companies going to go after it, are e-learning companies going to go after it, who's going to go after that sweet spot?

Clark Aldrich: It can happen in any number of ways. Frankly, it can happen in colleges and universities. I predict that at least five of the fifteen educational genres that will be developed in the next ten years will be developed by college dropouts in their basement. The advent of graphic engines and applications like that will certainly reward at least some people for doing stuff in their basement. There still is a significant cost of developing simulations which I don't want to understate it. But I think the philosophy of developing a simulation is much harder to get one's mind around than the technical challenges.

I have a very hard time imagining people who are in their forties and fifties creating new simulation genres. People in their forties and fifties today would be able to get it, they would be able to understand it but I don't think they would be able to create it and even in some cases manage the team that could create it. It is one of these baton hand offs to the next generation. It's going to be the kids; it's going to be the Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers and who are going to think about content in a very different way than the old fogies.

Karl Kapp: So let's say that you were talking to a group of forty or fifty year old training managers about games and simulations, what advice would you give to them?

Clark Aldrich: Start playing computer games. There is a temptation for older folks to watch someone else play a computer game which utterly defeats the purpose. You really do have to control it yourself and spend time being frustrated and being uncomfortable and being at a disadvantage. They need to start getting the hang of it.

I don't understand any Human Resources or training manager today who doesn't have a working comfort level with computer games. They don't have to love them or play them for fun, but they should buy an X-Box or PlaysStation and a couple of games and start getting comfortable with the language. If they're not doing that then, they're distancing themselves from their customers in a way that I don't think any business can survive. So at the very least that's an easy step to do.

Having said all that there are a lot of simulations-almost the premise of this conversation which I think is wrong-is that either simulations are huge game like dense sorts of things or they're nothing. The whole premise of the book is that there's this great middle ground of stuff that is not going to break the bank, not going bankrupt the organization if they fail, not going to be super high risk but is still much, much better than what's out there.

There's a terrific amount of middle ground stuff that is solid, well understood academically, and effective and that is a place to go. At the very least you can ratchet up activity considerably without going all the way. But, again, if my first book was all about going all the way, I think second book is all about the middle ground of all this great stuff that isn't risking a career, or breaking the bank. I think the whole learning by doing philosophy easily encompasses this concept.

Karl Kapp: Before we move on, do you have any recommendation of games for the game-challenged HR or training manger to play?

Clark Aldrich: I think the SIMs is probably a good game. It actually requires a pretty powerful computer to run. But it has all the good and all the bad of a computer game. It's very interesting, it's intellectually satisfying but it's not perfect. It's not a perfect life simulator. It is a fairly decent game to pick up and play and fool around with.

Karl Kapp: My eleven year old son plays that game. He doesn't want a perfect life simulation. He wants to go in and build a ridiculous character and have the character do silly, stupid things.

Clark Aldrich: It's one of those profound differences. I'm not going to say it's an age thing but I'm going to say it's a context thing. If you give me a "simulator" and tell me to engage it and no one is watching and I'm in my pajamas…I'm going to engage it very differently than if I'm in a classroom situation with my boss poking his or her head into the room and my results being tracked.

I think we're overly focused on the notion of the game or the simulation, I don't think we need to be overly focused on young kids verses older people either. I think it's the context by which you engage the simulation. The context matters tremendously. You can take a very fun game like the SIMs or SIMs II and put a grade around it and put a teacher there tracking it and you're going to play it very, very differently.

Another thing worth noting is that computer game designers think a lot about "failure stakes." If you play any game perfectly it's a pretty boring experience. Computer games get interesting in the boundaries where you can make mistakes. Kids like to play in those boundaries because that tends to be where a lot of intellectual thought has been given and the boundaries contain a lot of entertainment value. For those of us who design training courses we tend to think about a pretty little model where we're mostly focused on success. It's almost like a mine field if we dare step off the path because we'll have to start over again. There's a lot more thought inherently being put into what success looks like then what failure looks like. It's a real long answer to I think a very fair question.

Karl Kapp: And the other interesting thing I find, and we have talked about this before, is that the kids have a propensity to use cheat codes.

Clark Aldrich: Yeah. We could ask "cheaters or just smart?" When there is an environment where there are cheat codes…ways of getting around things part the experience is challenging yourself but also knowing where you don't want to challenge yourself.

There's a slight variation on that in the world of interactive spreadsheets where the point of a good spreadsheet, especially where there's competition involved, is not to learn the rules but to learn how to exploit the rules.

I think in real life the people who are successful don't just learn the rules they learn how to exploit the rules. You need look no further than to Congress and you'll appreciate that philosophy. Again, it's an important shift.

Karl Kapp: Like the statement, "history books are not filled with people who followed the rules."

Clark Aldrich: Yeah, sure, but in a lot of ways the successful exploitation of the rules towards a new end.

Karl Kapp: Right.

Clark Aldrich: It's the same thing with the traditional training model of follow the rules and understand the rules and follow them and don't ever deviate.

Successful people are prepared to make mistakes. They understand mistakes have consequences but they're not a mine field where you blow up and die if you make a mistake. Instead what happens is you balance alternatives and you make constant tradeoffs and determine whether those tradeoffs make sense or not for you. Training should be much more of a careful balancing act. If you look at people who are successful they don't follow the rules but in a lot of cases they understand the rules enough to exploit them and maximize the tradeoffs. Like the quote " a gentleman is never rude unintentionally."

Karl Kapp: Can't books help us understand trade-offs, do we need to develop simulations to learn these types of lessons?

Clark Aldrich: One of the great travesties of western civilization and probably all civilizations is how proud we are of books as repositories of content. We are just getting to the point, and we probably will within my lifetime, where we look at books with spite and scorn and say "Oh my God, how tragic it is that we thought they were complete repositories of information." In fact, they are ten percent repositories and we've lost most of the content that these people had because all of the book information is linear content.

We've become virtuosos of linear content when, in fact, we gravely overestimated the value of linear content to any given situation. I think that's one of the legacies of the next generation is to rethink libraries and rethink repositories and content, looking at books a lot more cynically and looking at them as incomplete examples of technology and in some cases tragically so.

Karl Kapp: Your thoughts on books actually dovetail with your statement about how simulations in the future will help us find huge and gaping holes in history for example.

Clark Aldrich: We're all familiar with the lens of Marxism or feminism. You don't have to agree with those philosophies but you really have to respect the fact that if you look at Shakespeare through feminism or whatever you see things you didn't see before and in a lot of cases what you see is interesting. You don't have to buy into the whole philosophy of feminism to appreciate the lens it represents. I agree without question that the lens of "simulations" will empower the next generation of scholars to rethink content in a way that will make it a lot more valuable and a lot more useful to outside organizations.

Karl Kapp: So you envision, for example, a history professor putting together an environment of slavery and allowing a learner to enter that environment from the view point of a character like Marx?

Clark Aldrich: Simulation can allow a leaner to look at the economics of slavery, the model of slavery and the role of slavery in a more precise way. If you look at slavery through the stories of a slave or stories of slave owners or whatever that's certainly a perspective and very valued one. But as you start looking more carefully at what a slave's life was actually like, what a slave owner's life was actually like, what was the impact it had economically and what would have happened in America had we not embraced slavery, you would see a richer picture of history. In a simulation you could look at the differences between a house slave and a field slave and the complicated role of the head slave.

You could envision what things would have looked liked economically if slavery had not been an issue or what types of inventions and innovations would have resulted if slaves were not part of the history of this country. I think you'd learn some lessons that might be applicable to your situation. The reason to study history is to learn from it. I think you get a lot more precise and comprehensive look at history through simulations rather than through books. And, unfortunately, in some cases a very disturbing look at history. One that can be covered up in a linear fashion but is necessarily exposed when viewed from the more robust simulation-based presentation of the non-linear content.

Karl Kapp: Okay, let's switch gears a little bit. If you were forced to start SimuLearn all over again what's one or two things that you would do differently?

Clark Aldrich: I would have focused less on the pure theoretical aspect of it and more on the game and pedagogical aspects of it. I think Virtual Leader is a powerful drug that's frankly a little bit bitter at this point. If you look at any kind of good educational experience as being a balance between simulation, game and pedagogical elements, I would say that we were really good with the simulation element and not nearly as good with the pedagogical and game elements. They were there but I think they were ultimately, definitely underrepresented. And I think that's fairly typical of simulations and the first attempt at creating simulation tends to be overly focused on simulations and not on pedagogical and game elements.

Having said that, again, there are risks, and I think I talked about it in some of the parts of the book, subsequent versions could tone down the simulation and ramp up the game elements to a point where you sort of defeat the simulation. In an attempt to remove frustration from the equation you actually ruin a lot of the learning. A constant dance is not to overly succumb to the people who say this is frustrating, therefore, it's a bad program and constantly challenging people to say it's frustrating and therefore it's a good program.

There is this Carroll O'Connor quote, "an inexperienced actor is thrown by nervousness but a good actor uses it." I cheapen the quote to say "an inexperienced learner is thrown by frustration but a good learner uses it." And I think it's the same thing of accepting the role of frustration and of it being a critical part of the equation and not getting rid the frustration element.

Another great example is people who design golf courses. They're not going to flatten the golf course because some people swear at it. That swearing is some of the designer's biggest pride. The people who find it to be very difficult still manage to push themselves to get through it. We are so much more sophisticated and mature when it comes to understanding our bodies and how to build better bodies then we are of how to build better minds. And, again, I think that's a real travesty from our own educational perspective that I think we have to resolve it.

Karl Kapp: Speaking of the educational system, I know you home school your son, how much do you use simulations with his education?

Clark Aldrich: Quite a bit. I mean there's the other side of simulations which are microcosms and I think, you know, we try to use a lot of emotion and a lot of microcosms as part of the portfolio as well as some more boring stuff. But there's a lot of simulations that we use. There's some very interesting thought provoking programs out there. We put a bit of academic context around them and part of his homework becomes defending what he did in the context of a simulation. I think that's very powerful.

Karl Kapp: Last question and it's about the last chapter in your book. The final chapter reminded me a little bit of the Matrix when Agent Smith is interrogating Morpheus. Smith says the first version of the Matrix had to be scrapped and started over again because they designed it with no pain and suffering and the humans rejected it. So what are you thoughts on that and do simulations have to build in pain and suffering?

Clark Aldrich: I think pain and suffering is necessary for learning to some degree that is part of the human condition. The analogy I gave in the first chapter of the first book (Simulations and the Future of E-Learning) which is that e-learning has developed to become fast food is still a fairly appropriate criticism. We can think of some e-learning in terms of small bits of content delivered on the fly where you don't have to turn off the engine to consume it. That type of delivery is not bad for some types of the learning but it's not going to create any kind of profound learning moments.

An amazing study I did with Virtual Leader and documented in the book is that we were able to increase productivity by 22% and that's just unheard of from a technology perspective. I think there is an opportunity to release the knowledge in people's heads but by definition it's going to involve a bit of frustration and a bit of pain and again that's a good thing and a bad thing.

Karl Kapp: Thank you Clark and thanks for the interesting treatment and exploration of games and simulations in your newest book Learning by Doing. Clark thanks for a great interview. Good luck with the book.

Clark Aldrich: Thank you.

Karl Kapp, PhD is the assistant director of the Institute for Interactive Technologies and a professor of instructional technology at Bloomsburg University. Kapp also is author of Wining E-Learning Proposals: The Art of Development and Delivery. He can be reached at www.karlkapp.com.