Innovation Fredericton-based Syntesi heightening the training of tomorrow's worker

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John Pollack
Telegraph Journal

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A new learning innovation company plans to develop and offer new creative technological teaching tools including using avatars.

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David Smith/for the Telegraph Journal

Tim Workman, left, vice-president of capability development for Syntesi Corporation, Karen Stephens, chief operating officer, and Norm Couturier, president, gather at the Fredericton office. The company is exploring how existing and emerging technologies can be used to improve knowledge transfer, learning and training.

Syntesi Corporation, a subsidiary of Accreon, a Fredericton-based business consulting and information technology service provider, is looking for ways to train current and future workers that will meet its clients' needs and teach the workers using media they can relate to.

Tim Workman, vice-president of capability development for Syntesi, cites an American study suggesting more than 55 per cent of teens aged 12 to 17 are participating in online social networking, and half of them are gaming.

"That's where the next generation of learner is already," says Workman. "What do we have to do to better shape our products and experiences to get them to want to participate in a new forum?"

One of the ways they plan to do it is through online virtual world Second Life, an online software platform where users can socialize, connect, using voice and text chat. The company has been and will continue to research and develop ways to use Second Life for teaching and training. Syntesi can then implement a training exercise for a client or help them do it themselves.

Workman says this will be an effective teaching method.

"It allows you to create visual experiences that most people have not dealt with before in a very lightweight and open format that can be accessed by thousands of people," he says.

Workman uses the example of teaching a junior sales force how to conduct office calls. He would create a virtual office with a receptionist the trainee would have to talk his or her way through to get the key contact person, through controlling an avatar.

"Once they get there they have to interpret the emotions being portrayed on the face of the person they're talking to," he says.

Training through Second Life is a great substitute for instructive videos or any role-playing exercise says Workman, because the trainees have to pay attention the entire time and it eliminates much of the pretending.

"When people are actually controlling the characters there is a much more heightened sense of engagement which heightens their learning and their receptivity to new ideas," he says.

Though Syntesi is offering some products and services, that is only a part of its function.

"What we're looking at doing is exploring how existing and emerging technologies can be used to improve knowledge transfer, learning, etc.," Workman said. "We're looking to leverage off of a number of significant capital projects around aerospace and defence, that can create new jobs for a number of companies in the province in developing advanced courseware products."

And Second Life isn't the only learning innovation Syntesi will be focusing on.

"We're not holding ourselves to a single technology, a single methodology, a single application," says Workman.

Syntesi is also the Canadian re-seller for Playaway, an audio-player - the size of a deck of cards - that comes with pre-loaded content, mostly audio books. But Syntesi will also help companies use the technology, or any other audio technology, for audio training.

The company provided a special audio training program for Pentagon workers in Washington, D.C. designed to be used during their average one-hour daily commutes.