Your Chief Virtual Learning Architect

Learning to Performance

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Custom Design & Delivery

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Predictive Evaluation

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Enterprise Learning Strategy

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Dave Basarab Consulting has elevated the training experience, offering an end-to-end comprehensive approach that includes training strategy, instructional design, development, delivery , post program training transfer, and evaluation (via the unique Predictive Evaluation methodology). Virtual Chief Architect Dave Basarab has combined all of these individual training elements with his user-friendly, comprehensive Learning to Performance approach, which significantly increases companies' training ROI.

Why we are different

Innovation: Our primary focus is creating learning programs using a Learning to Performance approach.
Expertise: Dave offers the depth and breadth of his experience, including working internally at prestigious companies (Motorola, Ingersoll Rand and Pitney Bowes) as well as his knowledge and expertise as a highly-respected, sought-after consultant.
Partnership: Basarab collaborates with companies, serving as their own Chief Learning Officer whenever they need to plan, strategize, or implement training initiatives.

Training Services

Enterprise Learning Strategy

Enterprise Learning Strategy

At Dave Basarab Consulting, we're experts in creating Enterprise Learning Plans. We work with you to develop your company's learning strategy and direction.

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom Design, Development, & Delivery

Custom training is an effective way of developing the capability required to execute your strategy. We are a custom design house that creates programs specific to your business.

Learning Burst Development

Learning Burst Development

We can create and deliver your courses via our unique Learning Burst Method - keeping your employees at their jobs while receiving world-class training.

Predictive Evaluation

Predictive Evaluation

We predict the ROI for your courses and establish success gates. We then evaluate the course against the success gates to show value realized and continually improve results.

Leadership Development

Leadership Development

Turn-key virtual custom leadership development program that combines world-class leadership speakers/educators with post-event personalized coaching to provide you with a cadre of highly skilled leaders.

Predictive Evaluation

Designing A Gamified Assessment That Tests Skills Without Trivializing Content

A well-designed gamified assessment can reveal whether people can apply knowledge under realistic conditions, rather than simply recall information. The strongest experiences use game mechanics to create focus, feedback and motivation while preserving the complexity of the subject matter.

For Australian organisations, this balance matters across compliance training, frontline operations, leadership development and technical capability programmes. Employees may complete learning between customer interactions in Sydney, during mobile commutes in Melbourne or across dispersed teams in Perth and regional locations. The assessment must be engaging, accessible and closely connected to workplace performance.

Define The Capability Before The Game

Begin with the business behaviour the assessment needs to measure. “Understand the policy” is too broad to guide design. A stronger objective might ask learners to identify a safety risk, coach an underperforming team member, prioritise competing customer requests or make a compliant decision using incomplete information.

Map each objective to observable evidence. If the desired capability is negotiation, the learner might choose a response, assess stakeholder interests and adapt after receiving new information. If the subject is cybersecurity, the learner could inspect a simulated email, identify warning signs and escalate it through the correct channel.

This approach prevents the game from becoming the centrepiece. Points, badges and progress bars should support the assessment purpose, not replace it. Sample courses can help illustrate how different learning formats connect content with practical application.

Turn Real Decisions Into Meaningful Mechanics

A credible gamified assessment places learners inside a situation where their choices have consequences. Branching scenarios, timed decisions, resource allocation and role-based simulations can all test judgement more effectively than a sequence of trivia questions.

Difficulty should come from the work itself. A hospital administrator might balance patient flow, staffing and privacy obligations. A retail supervisor in Brisbane might respond to a customer complaint while managing a short-staffed shift. A public-sector employee could weigh competing priorities under procedural and legislative constraints.

Use game mechanics to make those trade-offs visible. A limited budget can represent scarce resources, a changing scenario can test adaptability and a delayed consequence can show the impact of a poor decision. The interface should remain simple enough that learners concentrate on the task rather than figuring out how to play.

Build Fair Scoring And Useful Feedback

A score is meaningful only when it reflects the quality of the capability being assessed. Awarding points for speed may be appropriate in an emergency response exercise, but it can distort results in a coaching or risk-management scenario. Decide whether accuracy, judgement, process, consistency or collaboration carries the greatest weight.

A balanced scoring model can combine outcome points with decision-quality indicators. For example, a learner might receive credit for protecting customer data, lose points for making an unsupported assumption and unlock further information by consulting the right source.

Keep feedback specific and connected to the workplace. After a decision, explain what the learner noticed, missed or prioritised incorrectly. Then provide a short opportunity to try again with a changed condition. Useful assessment feedback should include:

The decision or behaviour being measured
The evidence that supports the score
The consequence of the learner’s choice
The standard or policy that applies
A practical adjustment for the next attempt

Review the assessment data for patterns rather than celebrating high participation alone. Useful signals include:

Which scenarios produce repeated errors
Where learners abandon or replay an activity
Whether confidence improves after feedback
How results differ between roles or locations
Whether workplace performance changes afterwards

This evidence supports a stronger business case for learning. The business and learning connection becomes clearer when assessment results can be compared with operational measures such as rework, customer complaints, incident rates or time to proficiency.

Design For Australian Contexts And Access

Local context can make an assessment feel authentic, but it should never rely on stereotypes or unnecessary regional detail. Use familiar workplace conditions, Australian terminology and realistic organisational structures. A scenario might involve a Sydney office, a regional distribution centre in New South Wales or a team serving customers across multiple time zones.

Compliance content needs particular care. If the assessment includes employment decisions, harassment, rostering or performance management, align it with relevant Australian obligations, including the Fair Work Act 2009 and applicable state or territory requirements. Privacy scenarios should reflect the Privacy Act 1988 and the way personal information is handled in the organisation.

Accessibility is part of assessment validity. Provide keyboard navigation, readable contrast, captions, transcripts and alternatives to audio-only clues. Test the experience on common mobile devices, since many employees access short learning activities between shifts or while travelling. Avoid scoring learners on fast reading, unfamiliar slang or complex navigation when those abilities are unrelated to the skill being tested.

Pilot, Validate And Improve

Pilot the assessment with subject-matter experts, representative employees and managers who understand the work. Ask whether the scenarios resemble actual decisions, whether the scoring rewards the right behaviour and whether the level of challenge is appropriate. A polished visual design cannot compensate for an inaccurate scenario or an ambiguous answer.

Compare assessment performance with other evidence, such as supervisor observation, quality audits, sales results or safety reporting. If high scores do not correspond with improved performance, examine the assessment design before blaming learner motivation. The activity may be rewarding pattern recognition instead of transferable skill.

A serious gamified assessment should leave learners with a clearer understanding of how good performance looks and why it matters. It can be engaging without being childish, competitive without being distracting and concise without becoming superficial. The essential standard is simple: every mechanic, decision and score should help demonstrate capability that matters at work.

Learning to Performance

Learning to Performance, a complete training approach, gives companies world-class training to drive significant return. This approach includes upfront work (Impact Mapping, design), training (for staff and company executives), and post-training efforts to ensure training transfer. This unique recipe - the key for successful training and adoption - is changing the way companies implement training. This methodology could work with any content for organizations in any industry.