NIL Players and Lavender Dragon

Hi everyone, I'm Kryssia Kipp from Genially, and I'm here with these amazing professionals: Mary Nunaley, co-founder of Lavender Dragon, Amadeus Nunaley, her fellow co-founder of Lavender Dragon, and Mark Koesterer, founder of The Players NIL program. Thank you so much for being here. I'm actually dying to see how you create amazing programs and activities with Genially. Mary, would you like to take the microphone?

Sure, certainly. Thank you for joining us, everyone. I wanted to start off by introducing Mark, who's one of our clients, and we're also big fans of the work that Mark does. Mark works with student athletes, primarily in the United States, to help educate them on name, image and likeness. That's what NIL stands for, if you're not familiar with that. We met Mark a few years ago, when he was looking for something to make his courses come to life. So Mark, why don't you tell us a little bit more about The Players NIL, what you were looking for and how these activities really appeal to your audience?

Thank you, Mary, and thank you both for the opportunity. I'm excited to share our journey and the great work that Mary and Amadeus have done at Lavender Dragon. In July of 2021, some legislative changes happened in the United States allowing student athletes to monetize their personal brands. We refer to that as name, image and likeness. As Mary said, it is a new market, a newly created opportunity, one that has almost no precedent, no guidelines, no guardrails. So one of the things that we thought was really going to be important for young people, and for their coaches and administrators, was education.

Education around what it takes to build a brand, education around the pitfalls of this, the legal guidance, the compliance guidance, life skills that we thought young people should take advantage of, and how this name, image and likeness platform can essentially be a transformative situation for many people for many years to come, not just the years that they're in college. So we were very fortunate to meet Mary and Amadeus, and thank you for their contributions.

So Mark, given that the audience is primarily student athletes, why don't you talk a little bit about why you wanted more interactive, engaging content? We've got the regular videos, we've got some animated videos, we have things for them to read, but one of the things that you and your team kept asking for is: how do we make this more engaging, how do we really help drive that point home? So what was your thought behind that?

Well, I think as a parent of five children, I understand the attention span, and I understand the limitations of that attention span. In 2021, coming out of that early stage of COVID, many of our student athletes in high school and at the university level had been inundated with remote learning, online learning, Zoom meetings, Teams meetings, whatever platform their school was supplying. I just thought that they would probably resist more education in that format. Although what we're teaching is, I believe, very important, and perhaps the best life skills course they're ever going to take, we still needed participation, and we wanted to make sure that we were successful. Success to us was that a student would begin the process and complete the process, and not fade off in between. So with your help, we asked for guidance around making it more engaging, making it more interesting, and our goal was the success rate of student athletes completing the course and not dropping off.

That's fantastic. Not to put you on the spot, but have you received any student feedback about how your courses are different, or how they compare to other courses? And do you think any of that has to do with the interactivity that's been built in?

I don't think there's any question. There's no one doing what we do in this space. I talk to people and explain to them the individual lessons, the interactivity, the digital animation. I know that from a technical standpoint we probably don't want to call them cartoons, but that is a phrase that people can relate to. Look, we all have been in meetings with very static presentations: in the old days it was PowerPoint, perhaps it was a Zoom meeting with a PDF. To have something that is actually interesting, entertaining and educational all at the same time was a concept we were going for, but quite honestly, until we met you, Mary, and Amadeus, and your work with Genially, we didn't know how to get there. So you really filled in the blanks on telling that story.

That's fantastic. So before we move into the demonstration, is there anything else, Mark, that you would like to talk about in terms of The Players NIL, students, the power of interactivity, anything like that?

Well, I think like almost every entrepreneur, I like to tell my story, because I think I can relate to people. If I'm in a room, or even on Zoom to some degree, given my enthusiasm, my knowledge and my experience, I feel like I'm pretty good at holding a room and holding the attention span of the people I'm talking to. The problem with that is it can't scale. You can only have so many Zoom meetings, you can only have so many in-person meetings. So now we use those as kickoffs and as measuring sticks along the way, but we use the course that you developed for us as a day-to-day contact point. For those of you who think you have something to share, who have great ideas, who are trying to tell a story or grow an audience, this is a great way to scale it, and I think that's what's proven to be true in our situation.

That's fantastic. Do you have any questions for any of us before we move over to Amadeus and his demonstration? No, actually, I'm dying to see the demonstration. Well, please don't die on us, but I'm glad you want to see the demonstration.

We created several interactions for The Players NIL program using Genially. Some of them were straight templates, right out of the box: we didn't make any changes to them other than changing the questions. We also did some really cool, very customized work, and that's what Amadeus is going to show today: the beginnings of The Players NIL board game. Did I get that right? Yep, you got it right. All right, let me share this. Can everyone see that? Yes. Wonderful.

So, The Players NIL board game. We wanted a fun way to ask your usual kind of multiple choice or true or false questions, but with a little bit more fun than just "hey, answer these questions about The Players NIL." And we thought, what better way to explain all of these concepts than to have aliens that have studied Earth culture, looked at it and thought, "hey, I want to have what the athletes have"? So their perspective is much like the players': brand new and just trying to get into the situation.

With that being said, we'll come over here and start our Players NIL board game with our two little alien chums. Each of these is one of the main objectives from one of the main pillars of The Players NIL that they are moving towards. On each of these little squares, we'll click on our buddies and go up to the first question, in this case about name, image and likeness. We see they got that correct, and they're going to move across the board, all the way to the very end eventually. I'll just show a couple of squares to show a little bit of what we've done. On square number two we have just a true or false, and once we finish up here, you'll see them move up to the first part of the board game.

This looks really in-depth and very hard to do with Genially, but it's actually really easy to create, especially if you have some of the assets already there. So let's take a little bit of a look at the back end and show how we accomplished all of this. Sorry, go ahead. No, I just wanted to mention that this first image, the map, is a custom graphic that another member of our team created for this project. This graphic was not built in Genially, so if anybody's wondering how to build that in Genially, just know that we brought in an outside image. Thank you. Yes, we definitely had great help with some of the graphics for a lot of things.

There are a fair number of slides here. Our first one is just a very simple click button to go through to the game board. What we did was use mostly interactive elements: whether it's an interactive shape that takes them to the next slide or one of these little buttons, those are primarily what we used to create this. Each square is just a button that takes you forward to a question. You can set the questions up however you want, and there are some really nice interactive questions you could use, but for what we wanted, we went with the buttons. Each of these is linked to go to either the correct page or the incorrect page, depending on what the answer should be, and that lets you be highly customizable in what you're trying to accomplish.

As you saw, these just kind of fade in, and you can use those however you want. Then we just continue on the board. For each of these board states, all we really had to do was reinsert our little friends where they're going to go. You could add more animations if you wanted to, but since it was already a decently long game, we didn't want to overwhelm with animations on every single slide. And this is a prototype, so if you go to The Players NIL right now you will not see this yet, but we wanted to showcase the power of this game.

It has a lot of options in terms of what you could do. If you're making this for yourself and you wanted animated GIFs as part of your map, you could have that to help it feel a little bit more vibrant. It's very simple to make once you know what you're doing, and it provides a really good experience for the learners, because who doesn't like moving through a map instead of just reading down a list of texts or answering a bunch of multiple choice questions?

Could you actually demonstrate how, when you click on the button, it takes you to a different slide? Sure. When we get the question and look at it on the back end, this answer is set to go to page five, which is incorrect, this one goes to page five, which is incorrect, and this one goes to page four, which is correct. So here we'll click on this one. They won't know: to them, this is just telling them false or correct. On the back end we know where it's sending them, but for them it's just going to feel like the feedback varies depending on whether they're right or not, when they are actually going to a couple of different slides. Could you show how you set that up?

Sure. We came over here to the interactive elements and used this little button right here, and you link that to "Go to page." In theory, you could also use it to link to a window or a text box on this screen that's either correct or incorrect, but we found it was easier and much more granular to control when we had it go to a page instead of just showing a tooltip. So you hit "Go to page," and you just need to make sure you're selecting the correct one. Especially when you have a lot of questions, you want to make sure your quizzes are lined up. In this case you'd have the incorrect one, and you can change the color, the size and whether it has any animations, and that'll control your back end.

Again, if you wanted to, you could put something like this multiple choice in here, but that loses a little bit of the sleekness we were going for. That's why we used the buttons over the prefabricated questions, but either one is a usable, valid option.

Suppose somebody wanted to add another slide to the game, how would they do that? If they were going to add another slide, or wanted to add some more questions, they'd come over here to the back end, to Pages, and hit "Add page." They'd probably just use a blank one, or if it was another version of the map, you'd probably want to keep using that slide to make sure you're not moving images or pieces around. Then you just need to make sure: okay, we're going to copy this game board right here, this needs to come over here for the next piece, and these guys need to come over here as well. Then we'll have to set up the triggers: instead of going to page four, this should go to the correct pages. When you're adding one page, especially if it's all interconnected like this, you're probably going to need to add a couple of them to keep the chain rolling and make sure everything works. But it's very simple: add page, duplicate page or copy them, a couple of different options to help add more pages.

All right, and I believe there's a video in here, correct? Let me double check. I think that might be in a different release version of this that we have. Okay. Where I was going with this is that you can also add videos. For example, if we wanted to add an introductory video, you can link to a small video that you've created, or you can link to an external site like YouTube. Yes, you come over here to Insert and move over to Video. If you have it via a link, you choose the link; otherwise it will pull it directly from Google Drive if you give it access. So there is some nice integration there, letting you back up the videos you want to use.

The next thing is you want to preview and make sure that your work works. Can you show them how they can preview their creation? Yes, that is exactly what I was presenting this in. If you come up to the right here and hit "Present," that puts you into how others will see it once they are actually taking it. This is where we did our little demo, and you can go through and make sure everything's working. You're going to catch a lot of bugs, or you probably will, the first few times around, making sure all your pages are linked and everything else works.

The nice thing is you can have the demo open along with the pages, so you can immediately see that something's not working like it's supposed to. If one of these buttons wasn't working, you can immediately go and fix it. This also gives you some page-by-page control, and this right here is a very nice button: it lets you see all of the interactive elements you currently have, just for a quick moment, which is great to see if you accidentally forgot something or clicked a button too many times.

Excellent. And what if you want to share this with the public, how do you do that? Great question. If you want to share this, you come up right next to the "Present" button and you have "Share." You then need to decide: is it going to be shared as a link, say in a post on LinkedIn or Facebook, or is it inserted as an iframe or a script? That's more if you're trying to share it in a learning management platform or something similar. It does have options for social media and for general sharing, and if you're sharing it with, say, Microsoft Teams or Google Classroom, there's some integration there as well.

Excellent. One other question for you: what if I wanted to edit my correct or incorrect feedback and replace it with, say, an animated GIF of somebody doing thumbs up or thumbs down? How would I do that? To do that, you would just need to come over here to wherever your feedback is. Right now we have text boxes, so you would need to come in and upload an image, or use one built into Genially, since they do have a lot of images. Say we wanted the thumbs up: you could come and use this instead, move this text over, size this up a little bit, and you could say "Correct" with a thumbs up. Now, instead of text, they'll get that.

Obviously we want to keep that text, so we won't keep that there, but that would be very simple. And if you wanted your own images, like here where we have our brand images, you can upload new images from your device, from Google Drive or from a link, and they do have a very large selection of GIFs and other images already built in that you can use. Excellent.

I have a question: do you ask your clients beforehand if they would like to collect data or see the responses for the multiple choice questions or quizzes? Yes, we do. When we're designing a lot of the interactives, that's one of the first questions we ask: is it important that you track this? Do you need to know what they're answering, or are we more making sure that they get through the experience? That is something you can decide. A lot of times it is a bit harder to track when you're hosting on a learning management platform like Thinkific or something else, since they can have some issues tracking outside sources.

With Genially, you could set it up so that they have to get it correct to get to the end of the game: if they're choosing the incorrect answers, it might send them back to retry. That's one way to know that they're getting through and answering correctly: did you get to the end? That means you had to have answered everything correctly.

Sorry to cut you off. Additionally, if you have the paid version of Genially, you can also export it as a SCORM package to put into a corporate LMS. If you're using an LMS that is designed mostly for independent course creators, like Thinkific, which is what we primarily use, they do not support SCORM files, but they do support HTML5, so you lose the tracking in some LMSs. I think that's where Amadeus was going. If you share the link, though, and click on that little bar up at the top that kind of looks like a bar graph, you can also track some information or data on the results. So let's say I share it in a LinkedIn post: I can get data on who's clicking on it and who's using it. It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. Yes, depending on how the client would like to measure the success of the training.

Wonderful. It's an amazing game, I have to say. There are a few other things that we also created for The Players NIL. I touched on some of those in the webinar back in April, but we did an interactive timeline, and that was a really powerful one as well. One of the key tenets, and Mark, please jump in and correct me if I get this wrong, is philanthropy and giving back. In that course on philanthropy, there's a whole section on the history of philanthropy and how important it is, so Amadeus also built this timeline that helps students grasp that philanthropy and charitable acts have been happening for a very, very long time. That was started with a template and then improved with the content that Mark's subject matter experts provided us.

This one is a much simpler, one-page piece, but each of these little timeline blips has the information as you go down the timeline, along with the pictures and everything else in it. So it was very informative, and more fun than just reading down a list of "this happened in such and such year." It feels a lot more engaging, more like you're at an actual museum learning about something. Wow.

And again, it's the same principles that were shown earlier: we sourced the images and replaced those in the timeline, and we have the information, so you can click on some of the pictures and see more. When you click on the plus sign, you saw that little popup, which would be a tooltip, for those of you trying to build this at home, or, if it's a lot of information, you might show it as a window. It just depends on the volume of content that you're trying to put in.

One of the suggestions we have is to think about your learner as you're building this. Oftentimes they're going to be on a smartphone, so you don't want it to be a wall of text. You want the most important information, but you don't want it to fill up the entire page. You also want to make sure it's easy to tell where the interactive spots are, because if you bunch things up too tight, it might look fine on a computer but be very hard for someone to hit those buttons without everything popping up on them. Yes, and in terms of accessibility, I believe it helps a lot as well.

One last thing while we're in here: do you want to show them how easy it is to change 1499 to 179, and then the sixes on the bottom line? Yes, here we'll very easily fix that with a simple slide-over of the text box. Again, those are the things that you want to look for, as was said earlier about previewing, because when you're in the middle of building, sometimes you'll miss those little things. You also have a full control palette, just like you would in word processing software, whether it's Microsoft Word or Google Docs, that allows you to change your font, your font color and your font size. It's very, very simple and intuitive, and they do have accessibility options built in, which is very nice, just in case you have to add those. Love it.

So, is there anything else you would like us to show or talk about? Well, first of all, thank you for explaining how you did it. Yes, normally we don't show our clients how the magic happens behind the scenes, but I'm glad you were able to see that. I'm sitting here equating it to going to a fine restaurant: you order your meal and your sides just the way you want them, the waiter or waitress comes out and presents it to you, and you say "perfect." You have no idea what happened in the back room, all the work. So this is a fine meal being served at an excellent restaurant, with incredible preparation in the back room. Thank you for sharing. You're welcome, glad you enjoyed it.

I have a question from your client's perspective: how have the results been? How has your audience received it, and what has the experience been like? I think it's been very well received. I believe that we are doing something way different and more dynamic than anyone else. In some cases it's a little bit of a challenge to educate people about that, to show them that this is different. One of the things that Mary and Amadeus have helped us with is some of the marketing pieces, showing clips and examples to demonstrate and differentiate ourselves from a static PowerPoint or a Zoom meeting that the kids don't want to participate in. So we have this great restaurant, we have this amazing meal, and we need a great marquee on the front to draw people in. I would say that's the marketing challenge, but from a user experience standpoint, it's been excellent. Yes, they maintain the motivation to get the reward and to consume that content.

Yes, and again, Mark is a phenomenal use case, for lack of a better term. I don't think of Mark as a use case, but for the purposes of this webinar, because of his audience, he is. We have another client that works in manufacturing, and we've created Genially experiences for them to demonstrate different elements of the equipment that they manufacture. Unfortunately, we're not allowed to share that because of non-disclosure agreements, but they use it at trade shows. Much as Mark was saying, it really differentiates them, because normally at a trade show people are just like, "Come into my booth, here's some candy, here's my sales brochure, why don't you go buy this?" But this company is able to say: we can't put our equipment here on this trade show floor because it's huge, but we have an image of it, and we have this interactive activity where you can go in, push these buttons and, much like the timeline, learn about this feature and this feature and this feature.

So they're using it in a very unique way to showcase their product. Mark is using it in a very unique way to show students that online learning doesn't have to be a boring lecture. It's not just a video with five pages of PDF following it. We're really bringing you into the environment, into the activity, and helping you remember things, because if it's fun, you're going to go back. It's like, "Oh, this isn't a quiz, this isn't a test, this is a game. Okay, I'm going to keep doing it until I get the answer right, because I'm having fun doing it." Totally, and as Mark said, doing things differently changes the way... Yes.

Wonderful. Thank you very much for this demonstration. It was very interesting to see how you create this, how you communicate with your clients and how you bring these things to life. This project is amazing, thank you. Awesome, I'm glad everyone liked it. I learned something today. Well, that's always good: when the person who works for the company whose software we're using learns something, that's always a plus. In terms of gamification, I'm sure you know more than me. You are the professionals here; I'm more on the marketing side. Fantastic.

So Mark, any final words before we wrap this up? No, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to share what we've done. To those of you out there listening and watching, Mary and Amadeus do an amazing job at Lavender Dragon, and I'm thankful for their contributions to what we're doing. And thank you, Genially, for making great software that allowed them to cook a gourmet, Michelin restaurant meal. That's so kind, thank you.

Thank you, Mark, for being here with us today, collaborating and sharing your experience with us. Thank you, Amadeus, for this amazing demonstration and work. It's great to see all the comments and all the people in our community who really want to know how other professionals use Genially, and how they accomplish the objectives their clients have. Sometimes it's very difficult to achieve, but you make it so simple. Well, thank you, that's what we try to do. I've always thought that if you can teach things simply, people will be able to simply learn them.

Love it. Thank you very much, guys, and thank you to all the people watching us right now. I'll see you in another webinar, another how-to, maybe with Lavender Dragon as well. Have a nice day. Thanks for having us. Bye!