pedagogical innovation Archives

Monopoly: the art of negotiation – Discover our new pedagogical innovation!

Did you know? According to Monopolypedia, Mr Monopoly is No. 13 on Forbes’ 15-name list of the richest fictional characters, with a net worth of $1.2 billion. And that’s probably because Mr. Monopoly is a master negotiator.

One of the first board games based on buying and selling land for development, it quickly became the world’s best-known board game.

We’ve all played Monopoly before. We’ve all learned how to get rich on the backs of our loved ones in order to win the game. It’s a game that lets us have fun while developing essential negotiating and strategizing skills. No wonder Churchill loved to play it.

So what does a pedagogical Monopoly look like?

Negotiation in action

Based on the founding principle of the board game, we have adapted this module to meet a specific pedagogical objective. The aim? To develop negotiating skills.

Taking inspiration from games to develop soft skills is part of our DNA. Our partnership with Hasbro has already given rise to a number of playful, immersive formats, such as the Trivial Pursuit-inspired modules for developing general knowledge, and the Cluedo educational investigation, which aims to develop critical thinking and is one of our top 5 most consulted courses.

The principle: mobilize your negotiating skills and your sense of observation to land the ultimate property title. All this by exchanging only the shares in your initial investment.

After analyzing his possessions and those of the three owners with whom he will have to negotiate, the learner will build his negotiation strategy and action plan, and then dialogue with each of his interlocutors to achieve his objective.

In this “Monopoly: the art of negotiation” module, we cover several pedagogical principles around negotiation:

– analysis of concrete elements upstream to prepare your strategy (property titles of each owner, interests, objectives, personality, etc.)

– application of negotiation techniques during dialogues (analysis of the personality of the other party, choice of negotiating stance, etc.).

When the learner begins the experience, they have 3 property titles in their initial stake: a main title, which will enable them to build a negotiation strategy, and two “bonus” titles, which can help them to convince the other party in the event of difficulty.

Before starting a negotiation, the learner must consult the documents available in the office, which contain various elements essential to the development of his strategy. By analyzing these various elements, the learner determines how to conduct his negotiations to achieve his objective. Once the strategy has been defined, the learner can start negotiating with the owners.

Gamified learning experience

Taking inspiration from the rules of Monopoly seemed obvious, but the learning experience had to follow! To achieve this, we created an immersive, interactive module based on the codes of the famous board game.

The board, the starting square, the jail passage, the chance cards and the famous property cards have all been adapted for our version of pedagogical Monopoly!

And what would Monopoly be without Mr. Monopoly… The emblematic character accompanies the learner like a mentor throughout the module. He will intervene at various stages of the experience: briefing on the mission, advice and feedback throughout the negotiation phases, and congratulations when the objective is reached.

Better training impact

If we’re fond of gamified modules, it’s not because we like to play games, but because immersive, interactive, game-inspired modules are more effective!

But what is gamification? Gamification involves introducing game-inspired elements or features to make digital learning more interactive, fun and competitive. As a result, gamification encourages learners to become more engaged with the learning medium they are following, increasing information retention and building a learning culture.

Indeed, emotion is a shortcut to memorizing information. When emotions are called upon, our attention is captured, enabling our brain to memorize that moment. In this way, it is also emotions that articulate the inscription of a memory in the memory and consolidate it more or less durably. Indeed, emotion is a shortcut to memorizing information. When emotions are called upon, our attention is captured, enabling our brain to memorize that moment. In this way, it is also emotions that articulate the inscription of a memory in the memory and consolidate it more or less durably.

When we play, we feel emotions. Joy, frustration, stress and anticipation – games use these emotions to trigger our memory. By adapting this principle to digital learning, we improve information retention thanks to the learner’s interest in the training module. By experiencing a familiar, nostalgic feeling when returning to the famous game board, learners will pay more attention to what they are learning.

What’s more, the immersive, interactive format gives learners the impression of being in a real game of Monopoly, as opposed to being learning on a training platform. Engagement is guaranteed. In fact, one study revealed that 90% of employees are more productive thanks to gamification.

So don’t wait any longer and discover this innovative new module: “Monopoly: the art of negotiation”.

A digital escape game to train employees: how to adapt this format to your training challenges?

Innovative and fun formats are always a hit with learners on a digital learning platform. In any case, this is what we notice on our client platforms. The more immersive and engaging a format is, the more popular it is.

We wanted to come back to the initiative of SQLI, a European digital services group with 2,200 employees, which proposed a very original animation on its training platform… A digital Escape Game to raise awareness about recruitment and integration of people with disabilities! In this Escape Game, the situations are reversed: each level of the Escape Game takes the learner to a world where people suffering from attention deficit disorders, autism or visual impairment are in the majority. It’s up to the learner to adapt!

These initiatives are highly recommended to boost the engagement of your learners and this is confirmed when we know that SQLI observed a 280% increase in connections on the platform the week the course was published. So, how do you get hold of this magic recipe that works every time?

Identify a fun and engaging format

Learning without noticing it, isn’t it a dream? But it is possible when you learn through an entertaining format. Alexis Guillotin, Group Development and Training Manager at SQLI, testifies:

“We noticed the great success of a fun format among our teams: the digital Escape Game! It allows you to learn without realizing it, by solving riddles to move on to the next level! So we reused our existing initial content, bringing it into this new format to raise awareness among our employees while keeping the gamification aspect.”

Thus, and we have been certain of this since the creation of Coorpacademy, to make learning more impactful and make training a long-term success, the quality and originality of content is crucial.

2 ) Define a theme

Cluedo, Babel Forum, police investigation… The Escape Game can take place through a multitude of different themes, it’s up to you to imagine a scenario and an adequate universe, and which will allow you to rely on it to develop the desired skills.

Of course, you are not alone! Our educational team is there to co-construct the course and imagine together the form that the Escape Game could take.

3) Adapt the theme to your training objective

The effectiveness of your Escape game is certainly based on the educational mechanisms linked to its fun aspect, but you must not lose sight of your objective: to train on a particular subject or skill.

In the case of the Escape game designed by SQLI, the objective was to show how the five disabilities listed (essentially non-visible disabilities) impact the daily lives and therefore the work of the people concerned. This digital Escape game was designed as part of the European Week for the Employment of People with Disabilities (EWPD), and was used to raise awareness about the recruitment and integration of people with disabilities. The pitch was as follows: “Travel aboard a ship in other dimensions where the disabilities you know are mostly shared. Practice with our simulation module to better understand the daily consequences of each of these disorders and diseases.”

4) The icing on the cake: an excellent communication strategy

To make your digital Escape game a real success, it is essential to promote it to your learners. To do this, there’s nothing better than to make the event a success! You can plan an event to promote the course and think about an appropriate communication plan. We recommend that you send a teasing email to your learners one week before the launch, followed by follow-up emails throughout the course. Finally, a summary email with all the steps and solutions to the Escape game puzzles, to encourage employees to finish or redo the game at their leisure.

Whether you already have a theme in mind, or a subject on which you wish to develop a course… unlike any other, we are here to guide you. The co-production of your custom Escape Game can be done in as little as 3 months for a single level Escape Game! Contact your Customer Success Manager directly to discuss this, or go to [email protected] for support.

And if you are not yet a Coorpacademy customer but are interested in this innovative course format, do not hesitate to contact our sales team: [email protected]

Clue, the pedagogical investigation is back!!!

Last year, we launched a learning experience based on the key elements of the mythical board game developed by Hasbro®: Clue. The learner, in the shoes of Colonel Mustard, had to solve the murder of Mr. Boddy in the Skill Island mansion, relying on a specific set of skills: cognitive bias and the art of argumentation.

To solve this crime, learners had to discover as many clues as possible by exploring the mansion and questioning the five suspects… who could mislead Colonel Mustard, knowingly or not! The learner’s critical thinking skills are therefore essential to unravel the truth from the false in this immersive learning experience. This skill, identified as indispensable by 2025 by the World Economic Forum, allows the learner to learn how to build rigorous reasoning in order to reach an objective, or to analyze facts in order to formulate a judgment.

The result? This educational innovation has been a great success. Indeed, with more than 12,000 starts, Clue: Murder on Skill Island is in the top 5 of our most consulted courses*.

But did the mansion really reveal all its secrets?

On July 26, 2022, (re)discover the educational survey that makes learners heroes of their training. On the agenda: more mystery, more secrets and more learning!

(Re)immerse yourself in the skin of Colonel Mustard and return to Skill Island to lead the investigation to find the culprit of Mr. Boddy’s murder and solve the new riddles that the mansion has in store for you… filled with new secret passages and clues to be found!

If you haven’t yet discovered this pedagogical innovation that won an award in the “Corporate Training” category at the French Award Ceremony “Les Cas d’Or de l’Edtech” in 2021, it’s time to start investigating… or re-discover it with this new 2022 version.

*Based on the ranking of courses played over the period from October 2021 (Clue launch month) to June 2022.

It is better to have 1 engaging course than 1000 boring courses

Most Digital Learning providers rely on a platform that provides a large library of content from various experts to cover as many topics as possible. While this may be a useful argument for HR decision-makers looking to provide employees with as much training content as possible, is it really the best approach to effective learning?

Wanting to learn

Do you remember, in high school, when looking at the clock slowed down time? Strangely enough, as soon as you participated, time returned to its normal course… Today, thanks to cognitive science, we can explain this phenomenon in a rational way. During our schooling, we get used to learning in a passive way, sitting on our chair, raising our hand and waiting for someone to give us the right – or wrong – answer. This pedagogical approach is based on the transmission of knowledge, and is centered on the teacher, who comes to deliver his knowledge in a unilateral way. The exchange is restricted, participation is a privilege. Beyond the inequalities that passive learning creates – and reinforces – within a class, we want to address the reasons why this method of learning is ineffective in terms of deep learning and retention of information.

At Coorpacademy, our pedagogical team, at the origin of the creation and co-edition of all the courses of our premium content catalog, relies on active learning. As you will have understood, this pedagogical approach is centered on the learner, and not on the teacher. Our quiz-based courses are based on the flipped learning method: we ask the questions, and it’s up to the learner to draw on their knowledge to test their skills! Because the learner is also involved in the learning process, his or her cognitive biases are more stimulated, which will encourage attention and retention of information. From then on, the learner is committed to his training, which he sees as a real opportunity to progress, for his own benefit.

Engaging and quality content

What differentiates Coorpacademy courses from all the other courses that you may play in your life, is the quality and relevance of the content to your training needs. Indeed, if our unique pedagogy and our functionalities borrowed from gaming are key assets to engage learners, the quality and the relevance of the content of our courses are essential for a real rise in competence.

To ensure that our courses deliver truly effective content, our educational team is still on the job. Thus, all the courses in our catalog are created by our pedagogical team or co-created with partner publishers, experts on certain subjects. Moreover, if you wish to know more about the recipe of Coorpacademy courses, we advise you to read the interview of Solène Rascle, educational engineer. Everything that is given to learn: the reading of documents, the viewing of our short course videos, and the course questions are read and reread by our pedagogical engineers, who carry out an important work of verification of sources, to ensure the relevance of the information contained in the course.

Stimulate curiosity

Continuous learning is about being curious throughout your life. Curiosity is an essential quality to progress, because if we focus on what we already know, we don’t have the opportunity to evolve. So our courses are also designed to stimulate the learners’ curiosity. As soon as they answer a question, a screen to explain the answer appears. Whether the answer is right or wrong, one element always appears: a “Did you know? This insert is an opportunity to complete the answer while amusing the learner with general or unusual information.

This little insert is also a way of saying to our learners: keep learning! Sure, you got the right answer, but learning never stops, there is always information that can add to your knowledge, and that’s why continuous learning is essential to progress.

In conclusion, for effective learning, interaction with course content is far more impactful than interaction with a large number of courses. The more learners are stimulated in their learning, the more effective the courses will be. With the active learning mode, the cognitive engagement of learners is reinforced by the manipulation of information, or by an action on their part. Thus, their attention is required, not to say solicited. In short, it is better to have 1 very engaging course, which makes the learner interact with the learning material, than to follow 1000 courses where the only interaction is that of your mouse clicking on pause, because you stopped following what was said 10 minutes ago.

The Coorpacademy course recipe: interview with Solène Rascle, educational engineer at Coorpacademy

Engaging learners in their learning is one of the main missions of Coorpacademy. The objective is to enable employees to continuously learn, in order to guarantee their employability in an uncertain world and a changing job market. But how to create innovative, qualitative and engaging content? What methodology should be applied? These are some of the questions we wanted to ask Solène Rascle, educational engineer in our content team and who co-constructs the courses in the premium content catalog with partner publishers.

Not everyone is familiar with the job of educational engineer. Straddling the line between engineering and teaching, the job title can sometimes lead to confusion. Nevertheless, training engineering is evolving rapidly as it becomes more digital and as learners show an interest in diverse and innovative formats.

In this interview, discover the job of educational engineer and go behind the scenes of Coorpacademy!

To begin this interview, introduce yourself in a few sentences…

I am Solène, educational engineer at Coorpacademy! To give you an idea of my background, I have always been quite knowledgeable about education and training. I started in teaching, I have notably taught French in London or organized cultural and academic programs for international and American students in France / Paris. I have always loved learning, discovering, sharing, and as I like to invest myself in various activities, I thought I could blossom in the field of e-learning.

The job of educational engineer is not yet very well known, it is a term that I discovered myself with Coorpacademy. Could you describe the main missions of this position?

So to begin with, you can imagine that I also discovered this job by applying to Coorpacademy! In fact, an educational engineer is in charge of designing a learning path, designing courses, learning experiences, all of this to train a given public on various subjects. Hence the name of engineer, which concerns the design, creation and implementation of training devices adapted to a public of learners, and to which is added the whole pedagogical part, so that the training devices meet the fixed pedagogical objectives.

How does the educational engineer create a course? Is there a methodology specific to Coorpacademy?

First of all, several factors can influence the way a course is created. First, it depends on the educational engineer in question, but also and above all on the target audience, the subject of the course, the objectives and the company or the partner publisher! At Coorpacademy, we have our own method for building courses. Our unique pedagogy is based on several pillars. We start by asking questions to the learner, who can then play the short course video whenever they wants. This is the principle of inverted pedagogy: the learner is involved from the beginning of the course and everyone can progress at their own pace! So at Coorpacademy, when we work on a course, we must first keep this format in mind. Then, we must also think about the fun aspect of our courses, with quizzes, battles between learners, and stars and lives to accumulate. The gamification of training invites the instructional engineer to think of these courses in an entertaining format, which makes the course and the learning experience more fun and engaging, as opposed to the classic course format, which we already know by heart.

To build a course, you must first master the subject matter, and for that, we work with partner course publishers, or experts. We have the pedagogical expertise, but not the expertise on all the subjects we will cover in the premium content catalog, which already includes more than 1,700 courses! So, when we have to think about creating a course, we talk to those who have the expertise on the subject, our role being to take ownership of it, to understand what is at stake, to define the pedagogical objectives and the skills that the learners will have developed as a result of the course.

Could you give us a recipe for creating a course at Coorpacademy?

Of course! First of all, you will need essential ingredients: curiosity, desire to learn, a zest of humour and a good dose of rigour. As far as the recipe is concerned, I invite you to follow the following steps:

Step 1

For a successful Coorpacademy course, start by getting to grips with the subject. Once you have a good grasp of the subject on which the course will be focused, you can define the pedagogical objectives with the client or partner. These elements are crucial to building a course architecture. With this detailed plan, we will be able to think about and define which essential ideas we want to convey, in which order we want to organize the ideas, in how many chapters and, above all, in how many levels.

Step 2

Once the course architecture is ready, let it rest, the better to make the dough rise! In non-cooking terms, this means leave yourself some time to analyze the course progression: is it coherent? Is there a gradation in terms of difficulty of the questions? What format would be most appropriate to best address the topic? All these questions are essential to ensure that the pedagogical objectives are achieved.

At Coorpacademy, it is on this basis that we will then produce all the course content, making it engaging with short and entertaining videos! To remain in the analogy of the recipe, it is a bit like the cherry on the cake.

Step 3

You’re almost there, but there’s still a lot of preparation to do: this is the production of the videos, which are our main course materials. To begin, write a script. This writing step may require working with an editor (external or partner). Once the script is finalized in your hands, it’s time to taste the dish: proofreading! And if it’s not to your liking, the ideas are not clearly stated or the tone is not appropriate, make the necessary changes. Finally, it’s time to cook! The videos are produced, and naturally, this step will also require you to pay attention to the final production, even if it means cooking a little longer.

Step 4

The oven is ringing! The course materials are ready and it is time to assemble them. On the basis of the courses, therefore the scripts, you will be able to write the inevitable quizzes, the Coorpacademy trademark. To make sure that the dish will be delicious, you have to put yourself in the shoes of those who will taste it! So, we put ourselves in the place of the learner, we try to vary the question formats (True or false, multiple choice, situation, illustrated questions, etc.) and to vary the situations. In fact, the hardest part is often finding the wrong answers! They should not be too obvious, nor too complicated.

Step 5

It’s time for service and tasting. Everything is ready. Put it on the plates, or rather, on the Coorpacademy client platforms! Then, after the final proofreading and uploading, it’s time to play the course of our colleagues, and to get some good practices and feedback from them.

What about custom courses, i.e. courses tailored to our clients’ topics?

For custom courses, the same production process and methodology is used. The steps of the recipe remain the same. The only difference will be in the subjects. Often, with custom courses, we will deal with subjects that are more specific to a sector, an industry, a customer need – and for a more precise target: learners from the same team, from a specific profession, or who already have a certain level of knowledge on the subject. The first step, which consists of taking ownership of the subject and defining the client’s training objectives, will also be defined by the theme that the client wishes to address. Then, it is the CSM team that takes over the cooking, by the way, discover the CSM job in this article!

What do you like most about your job today?

Beyond the fact that I really like Coorpacademy and my colleagues with whom I get along very well, what I like most in the work of an educational engineer is the multitude of subjects that I have to deal with. I learn every day and interact with a variety of people, so I never get bored! I also like the challenges that it can sometimes represent and the intellectual stimulation that it provides to think together about well thought-out course paths for learners.

Do you have any courses that you prefer to work on?

Overall, all subjects are interesting to work on, but if I have to name one, I would choose sustainable transformation because it is a current topic and because it is urgent to act! But in itself, all topics interest me. What will matter most to me are the courses that require different formats. It’s kind of fun to work on innovative formats, and then I like the reflection that it requires to build the course. Innovating, thinking, putting yourself in the shoes of the end user/learner to make the learning experience as pleasant as possible, always with the pedagogical objective in mind. Finally, I think that what stimulates me is to create, to do new things and especially when we invest in subjects that seem classic but are nevertheless unavoidable.

Could you describe a typical day for you?

I don’t have a typical day in the sense that, as we manage several projects or several partners at the same time, I am constantly developing my agility! Switching from one subject to another, from partner X to partner B, managing emergencies: my typical day is ultimately a mosaic. On the other hand, there are tasks that are constant and cannot be ignored: reading sources, books, proofreading and writing scripts and quizzes, and finally, a lot of spelling and typography work. It’s a job that requires both work and dedication upstream of the publication of the course, but also downstream because it also means following the feedback (from learners, customers, partners) to improve ourselves, perfecting our content so that it is as qualitative in content as in form!

Do you have any advice for those who are interested in becoming an educational engineer?

Among the ingredients of the recipe, you can’t do without the two main ones: stay curious and keep learning! Curiosity is one of the primary qualities of an educational engineer. You have to be willing to learn about all subjects, even those that don’t necessarily speak to you at first. From a more pragmatic point of view, there are more and more training courses for educational engineers, and I think that this can be a good way to discover this profession! But any experience in education, training, writing, or publishing are interesting experiences to have in this position. Finally, and not surprisingly, I would advise sleeping with a Bescherelle on your bedside table, because you need to have impeccable grammar.

And finally, a little quiz: If you had to choose between these 3 new courses in the catalog, which one would you choose and why?

The new Trivial Pursuit courses
The “Making Better Decisions with Game Theory” course
The “Preventing Discrimination and Encouraging Diversity” course co-published with Wolters Kluwer

I would say Trivial Pursuit because it is a perfect course for summer and vacations! Trivial Pursuit is 30 questions to learn while having fun, while developing one’s general culture and knowledge of certain subjects. Moreover, at Coorpacademy, we provide you with an explanation of the right answer and a “Did you know?” as a bonus, unlike the classic general knowledge game. Frankly, a course played on the phone at the beach with your friends or your family, it is still the best way to learn in a fun way and with others!

Trivial Pursuit – Planet and Environment

Coorpacademy announces a partnership with 7-Shapes to learn the main principles of Lean Management

7-Shapes, through its 7-Shapes School offer, the 1st interactive training offer in Lean Management, 100% online and accessible to all, and Coorpacademy, an EdTech start-up offering intelligent learning experience platforms to more than one million learners, announce a partnership to train employees in Lean Management.

Lean Management is a work organization philosophy based on collective intelligence and aimed at improving a company’s performance. Invented by Toyota in the 1970s, this philosophy has led to the creation of numerous methods and tools that offer many advantages: elimination of non-value added, reduction of excessive inventories, improvement of deadlines, quality, and greater agility thanks to the involvement of all employees.

While most of the world’s large corporations have a Lean approach (also called Continuous Improvement or Operational Excellence), the training and application of Lean Management remain complex to organize. Indeed, traditional Lean training courses are often face-to-face, time-consuming and costly, and most of the time they are only aimed at managers and engineers. However, one of the foundations for the success of an operational excellence approach is that it be carried by all employees. 7-Shapes takes up this challenge by making Lean Management training available to everyone!

7-Shapes School offers a practical, fun and engaging solution to Lean Management training, whatever the learners’ level. The learning paths are composed of modules that are unlocked as the learner progresses. For the theory part of Lean, the 7-Shapes School includes motion design videos, interactive lessons and quizzes. But the specificity of the 7-Shapes School lies in its challenges and mini-games, exercises based on an interactive business simulation. These exercises allow the learner to put his knowledge into practice and encourage him to take action in the field, on a daily basis.

In order to train all employees in Lean in a fun and efficient way, Coorpacademy offers with 7-Shapes to integrate these interactive training simulations on Lean Management, directly on the learning platforms of its customers. This new option, in the form of an add-on, enriches the “Premium Content Hub” offer with high added value for the increase in competence of all the employees and the development of their employability.

In addition to this, Coorpacademy will enrich its content catalog by proposing two courses co-edited with 7-Shapes to understand the history of Lean Management and to learn the basic concepts of operational excellence.

About Coorpacademy

Founded in 2013, Coorpacademy is a European startup member of the EdTech France association, specialized in innovative and scalable digital learning solutions. Based in Paris and in Lausanne at the Swiss EdTech Collider of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Coorpacademy is at the heart of research on new learning methods. With its platform, Coorpacademy accompanies the transformation of companies by engaging their collaborators, partners and customers in their rise in skills. To unleash this desire and desire to learn, Coorpacademy has developed a proprietary Saas platform based on innovative pedagogical engineering supported by the EPFL innovation laboratories and exclusive content focused on soft skills. The result: a more fun, flexible and collaborative learning experience, focused on the learner.

About 7-Shapes

7-Shapes is a training start-up founded in 2017 that creates and publishes 7-Shapes School, a performance training course offering based on a business simulation, a fun and operational way to effectively learn the principles and tools of Lean Management, Agility and Supply Chain.

7-Shapes offers its courses in the form of licenses that can be used by consultants, trainers or Lean managers to train all company employees. Many schools also use the 7-Shapes School to train their students. Most of the 7-Shapes courses also lead to hybrid training courses that can be certified and are eligible for CPF, OPCO, FNE, regional funding, etc. More than 5000 people have already trained with 7-Shapes School and the satisfaction rate of the solution on the CPF is 4.86/5.

Tag: pedagogical innovation