DISTIL Best in International e-Learning Competition
Digital Games-Based Learning Company scores Best in Show and Best Service/Product Provider at DevLearn 2008
DISTIL Interactive Ltd., an Ottawa-based leader in the use of digital gaming technology as a corporate learning environment beat a field of 40 learning technology vendors to win two key awards at last week’s DevLearn conference in San Jose CA.
The Best in Show was awarded for the digital learning environment “Business in Balance: Implementing an Environmental Management System” developed in collaboration with the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) teaches organizations how to develop an environmental system for their workplace. The Best Product/Service Provider category was awarded for across-the-board product excellence.
“This is an exciting achievement by the DISTIL and CSA teams,” said CEO Robert Thompson. “While we strongly believe in digital gaming’s power as a corporate learning tool, being recognized by the attendees at North America’s largest international e-Learning showcase is a great endorsement. We believe a key ingredient in our Best Product/Service Provider award was our integrated assessment technology which mines the game-play data to provide feed-back to learners and to provide their organization with detailed performance information.”
DevLearn is a gathering of over 1,200 members of the eLearning Guild. The conference addresses the technology and professional-skill aspects of eLearning initiatives. Each year, attendees pick winners from five vendor award categories.
At the show, DISTIL also previewed its set of learning game authoring tools to a select group of industry thought leaders. Today DISTIL uses these tools internally to build its award-winning courseware but within months this technology will be released to corporate training departments so they can build their own games-based learning.
“Just as it is a driver in the entertainment gaming world,” added Thompson, “user-generated content will be the key to broad adoption of learning games by corporations. With DISTIL’s interactive tools, an instructional designer will soon produce a learning game module as easily as they build a PowerPoint presentation today.”
