Growth Engineering Review
If you’re interested in a learning system provider with a focus on exciting learning efficacy, you’ll want to read this Growth Engineering review.
Founded in 2004, Growth Engineering is based in Windsor, UK, with additional offices in the US, Singapore and Australia. Their clientele is global and covers a range of industries, with a focus on consumer retail brands and hospitality. Growth Engineering wants to make the learning experience better and more engaging in a way that proactively and measurably shows a return on investment.
The team at Growth Engineering fundamentally believes that everybody is born curious and everybody wants to learn. But, they see that most education doesn’t engage the learner, so it makes little or no impact in terms of their behavior or their curiosity to learn more about a subject. For many years, Growth Engineering has been innovating and solving that problem with their solutions.
Solution/Products Offered
In this Growth Engineering review, we’ll cover their three primary products which are tightly integrated:
- The Knowledge Arcade – a customizable mobile app that incorporates social learning and gamification into the learning experience
- The Genie Authoring Tool – a sophisticated learning builder that makes it easy to create and gamify content that drives retention and performance
- The Academy LMS – a learning management system based on pioneering research into brain science and containing features for content management, administration, assessments and more
Growth Engineering Target Market
Growth Engineering focuses on industries that tend to employ younger learners and millennials, such as retail and hospitality. This includes extended enterprise audiences in such areas where gig workers predominate. Often they excel in the small and medium sized market, but also have very large clients.
Product and Technical Strengths
To solve the challenge of creating an engaging, exciting learning environment, Growth Engineering has designed its platform to support interaction around learning, sharing and asking questions. The ultimate goal is to help customers create a high-performance learning culture, where people are able to learn at their own pace, experiment with new ideas and collaborate in real time.
They also incorporate brain science, particularly what is known about the limbic system and how it plays into motivation. There’s going to be more success with learners who have the desire to learn based on an environment that has elements of collaboration and competition, rather than one where learners must check a box on required training. Naturally, this environment is strongly branded to make the learning come alive and reflect the corporate identity.
The Knowledge Arcade
The Knowledge Arcade is Growth Engineering’s engaging learning environment condensed into a mobile application. The thought process behind the Arcade was to develop a training solution that would ensure everyone could access their training whenever and wherever they want. The modern learner uses their mobile devices in short, sharp bursts, and the goal was to have the mobile app blend seamlessly into the user’s life.
The Knowledge Arcade is a highly-customizable learning environment that always feels like the customer’s home; it never feels like a Growth Engineering product. This leads to an immersive experience that people want to be a part of multiple times a day. Product statistics showed that learners spent between 17 and 31 minutes per day on the app in 2019, presenting a tremendous opportunity for organizations to deliver content.
The Knowledge Arcade harnesses the power of push notifications to maximize engagement levels. Users can be alerted when new content is made available, when someone replies to a social post, when there is breaking company news and more. The notifications are highly customizable and can be targeted to individual audiences.
Within an Arcade mobile application, the user sees a gamified record of their learning adventure. The homepage is essentially a scorecard and launchpad for self-development. Features like streaks, and the desire to keep a streak going, keep users coming back to the platform. Users are also rewarded for actions, such as logging in, completing content every day and winning knowledge battles. Leaderboards spur users on, and progress bars provide visual indicators for skills gaps and where to target learning effort.
Clubs provide social functionality, and have a similar look and feel to other popular social media platforms. The social feed allows learners to ask questions and share their expertise through pictures, videos, links and documents, which can then be liked and commented on. Club posts can also be easily translated to unlock knowledge across languages. Social actions are gamified to encourage more participation. Clubs can also be used as a classroom tool to blend real world classroom events with online learning. For example, before a classroom event, an instructor can set up a club and provide useful pre-class videos or PDFs. During the event, the instructor might create a challenge overnight where learners must upload a video to reflect on their learning during the day.
The Arcade is strongly integrated with the LMS, although the two work independently. The Arcade can alternatively be integrated with a third-party LMS.
The Academy LMS
In the LMS, the goal is to make the learning content as accessible as possible, so search functionality is front and center in the library. It’s as easy and familiar as finding Netflix content or Spotify songs. Users can also find content by categories and sub-categories.
Another interface tab is for a “to-do list” where administrators can push content that has a high priority for completion, such as for health and safety. For individual pieces of learning, users are given a breakdown of its contents, and what gamification elements are involved. Users can opt to download it for later or share it with colleagues via clubs.
The Genie Authoring Tool
Growth Engineering’s Genie provides the tools and templates for creating and gamifying content to promote excitement and delight. Within the Genie, designers can create assessments, classroom material, clubs, blogs and learning quests for battles. While designers can use Genie to create content, administrators can also upload third-party content or use any other authoring tool to populate the Arcade and LMS.
Battle of the Brain
Battles are an aspect of social learning within the Arcade and LMS that helps boost retention. The feature lets learners compete against each other in player versus player quiz battles. A user challenges an opponent, and five random questions related to a particular course or topic are drawn from a question bank. In addition to being a fun way to reinforce knowledge, the outcome of the battle is reflected on the leaderboard. If a learner doesn’t do well in the battle, they’ll be directed to remedial content.
Professional Services Offered
During system implementation, Growth Engineering also uses the system setup stage to help clients frame their understanding of, and strategize to achieve a high performing learning culture. Throughout the rollout, Growth Engineering provides guidance in areas like structuring a social learning calendar, how to apply gamification, and how to use the tools to create content. Branding is a key component of the implementation so that all the content templates are beautiful and appealing. Growth Engineering is also proud of its record on support and high Net Promoter score.
Opportunities for Improvement
It’s hard to be critical of Growth Engineering. They are pushing innovation in ways no one else is. However, they are behind on the live instructor-led aspects of learning management. In the age of COVID, integrations with Teams, Zoom or others is a key delivery method and something Growth Engineering should work towards.
My Assessment
There’s so much more that can be said about Growth Engineering and their innovative approach to learning engagement. The mobile application stands out for being its own platform and not just an afterthought or derivative of the LMS. The focus on gamification and social learning also brings engagement to a new level by fostering healthy competition. The combination of the mobile app, the authoring tool and the enterprise LMS puts Growth Engineering in a strong position to address a range of extended enterprise and internal learning requirements.
More Information on Growth Engineering
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