Trivie, which gamifies corporate training, has launched a new way for employees to connect with remote learning amid the pandemic. Photo via Trivie.com

How much of corporate training do employees actually remember? Texas-based Trivie, a training reinforcement app, sought to not only answer that question, but change the results entirely. Using adaptive learning and gamification, the Trivie app is reshaping online learning while the world adapts to remote working in a global pandemic.

According to Gallup Panel data, 62 percent of Americans currently say they have worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic. In a connected yet socially distanced environment, corporations are choosing to automate remote learning and disseminate critical COVID-19 guidelines with the help of Trivie.

One of Trivie's founders, Leland Putterman, who is based in Houston, first had the idea for a consumer-facing trivia game 18 years ago. When the app rolled out in 2013, it garnered more than three million downloads. Like anything in technology, App Store games were diversifying. Competing applications were deviating into in-app purchases — a move Putterman's app hadn't planned.

Rather than sink under the pressures of an unfit revenue model, the founders pivoted to a more fruitful investment in an untapped space: corporate training. After receiving multiple emails from users asking if developers had ever thought of using the app for company training, Putterman jumped into research on information retention and learned that trivia vastly benefits human memory.

With a new business plan and research backed by neuroscientists, the Trivie app launched in 2016. Reaching a broad list of organizations with five to over 40,000 users, Trivie has generated the praise and trust of business goliaths such as Subway, Unilever, and Anheuser-Busch. The app has been used to roll out onboarding, marketing training, safety protocols, sales information, remote learning and more.

"The vast majority of companies and organizations do nothing after a training event," he says, adding that, according to Trivie's own research, the app has found 50 to 75 percent of people had forgotten workplace education within a month. "It makes training one of the least effective business processes out there because everybody knows people don't remember their training unless it gets reinforced."

What if the secret to remembering is forgetting? Studies have shown that re-learning information over time strengthens memory recall.

"The way our solution works is very unique in that we want you to forget so you can re-remember again. The process of re-remembering is what pushes things into durable memory," explains Putterman.

When a company sets up a training on the Trivie app, the program serves each employee personalized training refreshers over time that are balanced with the retention levels of each unique learner. Using adaptive learning, the app prompts employees to remember previous facts until they master the subject.

"The AI [artificial intelligence] on the backend predicts when you're going to forget again, and it automates the whole thing," Putterman says.

In a Trivie control group, half of the test subjects used Trivie and half received basic employee training. Putterman stated the Trivie users typically have 95 percent retention after a month while non-Trivie users show less than 60 percent retention.

Employers can see the results of each Trivie assessment, pinpointed down to individual questions — a feature that is especially crucial for compliance and safety protocol. One of Trivie's university clients published a training on Title IX, where students passed yet 65 percent missed the question: "Whose responsibility is it to gain consent during a sexual encounter?"

When the university received the results, "they were able to see down to that level of detail—and that knowledge gap is pretty darn important," explains Putterman.

"Training is important but nowadays it's mission-critical," he says.

While Trivie already had many clients with needs for safety training, COVID-19 has brought new compliance guidelines to the forefront of every industry. Currently, Trivie has made the CDC's coronavirus guidelines available to all of its clients for no additional charge to be used across their entire employment bases.

Putterman acknowledges the pitfalls of sending out a corporate memo only to hear crickets.

"In a Trivie platform you would send a video, PDF, or word document via Trivie. You'd know people opened it up and after they're required to take a quiz so you know they understand what was in the message," Putterman explains.

An internal discussion board also allows company employees to discuss why the communication is essential to the organization. Another prominent feature of the app is a customizable survey.

"You know as well as I do that there's a ton of anxiety out there [about the coronavirus]. Wouldn't it be nice to push out a survey and then have a discussion around how people are dealing with it?" he questions.

With most of America's workforce working from home, Putterman expressed that it's common for employees to feel disconnected.

"The only way to maintain that company culture and close communication with confidence is to use something like Trivie," he says. "There's no feedback loop right now. The only way to bridge that gap is to have something like Trivie that's the glue."

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Chevron enters the lithium market with major Texas land acquisition

to market

Chevron U.S.A., a subsidiary of Houston-based energy company Chevron, has taken its first big step toward establishing a commercial-scale lithium business.

Chevron acquired leaseholds totaling about 125,000 acres in Northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas from TerraVolta Resources and East Texas Natural Resources. The acreage contains a high amount of lithium, which Chevron plans to extract from brines produced from the subsurface.

Lithium-ion batteries are used in an array of technologies, such as smartwatches, e-bikes, pacemakers, and batteries for electric vehicles, according to Chevron. The International Energy Agency estimates lithium demand could grow more than 400 percent by 2040.

“This acquisition represents a strategic investment to support energy manufacturing and expand U.S.-based critical mineral supplies,” Jeff Gustavson, president of Chevron New Energies, said in a news release. “Establishing domestic and resilient lithium supply chains is essential not only to maintaining U.S. energy leadership but also to meeting the growing demand from customers.”

Rania Yacoub, corporate business development manager at Chevron New Energies, said that amid heightening demand, lithium is “one of the world’s most sought-after natural resources.”

“Chevron is looking to help meet that demand and drive U.S. energy competitiveness by sourcing lithium domestically,” Yacoub said.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapital.

International Space Station welcomes astronauts from successful Axiom Mission 4

Out In Space

The first astronauts in more than 40 years from India, Poland and Hungary arrived at the International Space Station on Thursday, ferried there by SpaceX on a private flight.

The crew of four will spend two weeks at the orbiting lab, performing dozens of experiments. They launched Wednesday from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

America’s most experienced astronaut, Peggy Whitson, is the commander of the visiting crew. She works for Axiom Space, the Houston company that arranged the chartered flight.

Besides Whitson, the crew includes India’s Shubhanshu Shukla, a pilot in the Indian Air Force; Hungary’s Tibor Kapu, a mechanical engineer; and Poland’s Slawosz Uznanski-Wisniewski, a radiation expert and one of the European Space Agency’s project astronauts on temporary flight duty.

No one has ever visited the International Space Station from those countries before. The time anyone rocketed into orbit from those countries was in the late 1970s and 1980s, traveling with the Soviets.

“It’s an honor to have you join our outpost of international cooperation and exploration," NASA's Mission Control radioed from Houston minutes after the linkup high above the North Atlantic.

The new arrivals shared hugs and handshakes with the space station's seven full-time residents, celebrating with drink pouches sipped through straws. Six nations were represented: four from the U.S., three from Russia and one each from Japan, India, Poland and Hungary.

"It’s so great to be here finally. It was a long quarantine," Whitson said, referring to the crew's extra-long isolation before liftoff to stay healthy.

They went into quarantine on May 25, stuck in it as their launch kept getting delayed. The latest postponement was for space station leak monitoring, NASA wanted to make sure everything was safe following repairs to a longtime leak on the Russian side of the outpost.

It's the fourth Axiom-sponsored flight to the space station since 2022. The company is one of several that are developing their own space stations due to launch in the coming years. NASA plans to abandon the International Space Station in 2030 after more than three decades of operation, and is encouraging private ventures to replace it.

Screen-free hiking app developed in Houston earns 'Best of the Best' award

Peak Prize

An AI-powered, screen-free hiking system developed by Varshini Chouthri, a recent industrial design graduate from the University of Houston, has received Red Dot’s “Best of the Best” award, which recognizes the top innovative designs around the world.

Known as NOMAD, the system aims to help users stay in the moment while still utilizing technology. It will go on to compete for the Red Dot Luminary Award, the highest recognition given at the international event.

“NOMAD was truly a passion project, inspired by years of hiking growing up, where the outdoors became a place of peace, challenge, and reflection,” Chouthri said in a news release.

“I wanted to design something supporting those kinds of experiences by helping hikers feel more grounded and confident while staying present in nature. It was a way to give back to the moments that made me fall in love with the outdoors in the first place.”

The app “reimagines” outdoor exploration by removing the dependence on screens by using adaptive AI, contextual sensing, and an optional, wearable companion device. It employs a circular learning model that enables hikers to receive real-time guidance, safety alerts, personalized trip planning, hands-free navigation and more through a natural interface, according to UH.

NOMAD was developed at the Hines College of Architecture and Design’s PXD LAB. In 2023, Lunet, developed by David Edquilang at Hines College, received the “Best of the Best” recognition and went on to win the Red Dot Luminary Award.

The PXD LAB offers a platform to expand concepts into system-level designs that address real-world challenges, according to UH.

“Varshini’s work on NOMAD exemplifies the future-focused, systems-driven thinking we promote in the Advanced UX Design curriculum,” Min Kang, director of PXD LAB, added in the release. “NOMAD goes beyond being just a product; it reimagines how technology can enhance outdoor exploration without disrupting the experience.”

In addition to the Red Dot honors, NOMAD has already earned distinction from the FIT Sport Design Awards and was a finalist for the International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA) presented by the Industrial Designers Society of America.