Content Is Abundant, Practice Is Not

What we talked about.

Helen Routledge, founder and CEO of Totem Learning, joins Sunny Ray from Leicester in the UK to explore why AI has made content cheap while genuine learning still depends on practice, feedback, and better ways to measure judgment. Routledge traces her path from a childhood love of psychology to studying at Abertay University in Dundee, where games culture and behavioral science collided and shaped her research into memory, teams, and simulation design. She shares what writing her book taught her about translating academic psychology into practical frameworks for the learning industry, and how twenty two years in the field revealed a system stuck measuring course completions instead of real capability. The conversation covers why Totem Learning has grown without outside investment since 2017, what problems generic course libraries and AI generated content still fail to solve, and how the company's new platform, Aurora, turns workplace decisions into measurable data on skills gaps and performance variance. Routledge closes by outlining Aurora's September launch and her goal of onboarding the platform's first ten client organizations by Christmas.

Helen Routledge explains why AI made content cheap, but real skill still comes from practice, feedback, and measuring judgment.

The questions, and the answers.

What is Totem Learning and what problem are you solving?

Totem Learning brings together entertainment, games, and learning. Game design is grounded in psychology and behavioral science, the same science used in learning, so there's huge overlap. We create safe, virtual practice spaces where people can learn and try out skills without real world risk, blending education and entertainment together.

You've said traditional education didn't work for you. What specifically didn't work?

At school you're asked to remember huge amounts of information that's out of context from the real world, like abstract math never tied to financial planning or mortgages. Our memories are actually quite poor, so downloading information without context made it very hard to retain and recall. I think a lot of young children still struggle with that same lack of context today.

When did psychology and games become one thing for you?

I ended up in Dundee, Scotland almost by fate. I've loved psychology since I was twelve, and I grew up playing a lot of Nintendo, so I always sensed something different about how games draw you in and make you remember characters and storylines. Being immersed in that games culture during my psychology degree, it all started to click together.

What did writing the book force you to work out?

I had to figure out how to explain the value of games to a wide audience, since gaming had a reputation as antisocial or just for kids. I distilled heavy scientific papers into something understandable, and I wanted to open up the black box of game and simulation development, showing that things like Angry Birds weren't really overnight successes.

What's still broken about how companies decide people need training?

Learning and development is still at the wrong end of the process, often disconnected from business strategy. There's also a massive reliance on generic course libraries that tick a box but miss the context of someone's actual job. And we're not measuring the right things. Learning management systems record completion and a score, but that tells you almost nothing about real capability.

Of information, practice, and feedback, which is missing most often?

I'd say practice. We're not short on knowledge, it's easy to get, but real practice is often missing because most learning and development teams stop at the knowledge stage. They haven't had the capability to build lots of practice into training. Feedback also relies on practice, since you can't give in-depth feedback on knowledge alone.

Content is abundant, practice is not. What does that mean for everyone selling courses right now?

It's disrupted a lot of people's plans. Generic course libraries will struggle because information is now accessible everywhere, and anyone can build an e-learning course with tools like Claude. What still matters is human judgment about what actually makes a good learning experience, because we still need practice and coaching alongside digital content. Static, fixed content is behind us.

Can you explain Aurora to a head of learning?

Aurora is a workplace simulation platform that lets us build realistic, scenario based learning quickly. Every decision someone makes inside it links to a business KPI, so we can capture how people prioritize and where their focus is. That data feeds an analytics dashboard showing skills gaps and performance variance across a cohort and down to the individual, so leaders know where to spend limited training budgets.