eLearning Gamification: How To Apply It and Win The Game
Figures confirm that gamification in training leads to a 60% increase in employee engagement.
So, if training is gamified properly, employees who get bored quickly and stop taking online
courses can get back in the game.
For those who still think that gamification is juvenile, here’s some food for thought:
97 % of employees over 45 years of age believe that gamification would improve work.
Checkmate!
In this video, I’ll cover the essentials of gamification and provide you with eLearning
examples on how to implement it successfully, so keep on watching.
Happy learnsday everyone!
I’m Polina and today is another great day to learn something new, so let’s get started!
What Is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of adapting elements of games (levels, points, challenges, etc.)
to non-game situations in life.
Gamification mainly aims at making our obligatory, routine, or formal activities easier and more
entertaining.
In the last twenty years, gamification entered many realms of our daily life: civil administration
routines, corporate loyalty programs, and so on.
And the game elements do make a difference.
One of the most famous examples is the speed limit lottery for drivers in Sweden.
It demonstrates how game elements can improve compliance.
To encourage people to observe the speed limit, road safety authorities installed a special
radar camera.
The camera would penalize drivers who drove above acceptable speeding limits and issue
a lottery ticket to those who didn’t.
The prize offered by the lottery ticket came from the fines each penalized driver paid.
The elements of a game added a competitive edge to the process, thereby making drivers
obey speed limits.
As a result, people started driving safely.
In eLearning, there are cases in which existing video games are leveraged for educational
purposes.
For example, the well-known Minecraft game launched its Minecraft: Education Edition
for K-12 learners.
This is a project intended to bring excitement to students while developing soft skills and
studying 25 different subjects, including computer science, languages, and social good.
In the case of Minecraft, they enhanced the gameplay with educational content.
That’s what we call game-based learning.
In turn, gamification is a vice versa process.
In gamification, it is online courses and other learning materials that we update with
game elements.
Now let’s talk about The Benefits of Gamification in Corporate Training
John celebrates his new achievement called “The Ambassador.”
He has scored more than his colleague Michael and made it to the top three.
No, it’s not World of Warcraft or something like that.
John and Michael are managers who work in retail.
It’s the “Standards of Service” training program that they are so eager to progress
through.
This is an example of gamification in corporate training.
“Standards of Service” doesn’t sound fun, right?
And it shouldn’t be.
But what gamification gives is motivation to learn this serious discipline, continue
through the course, and gain knowledge.
Based on behavioral studies, gamification unleashes a learner’s positive feelings
and motivations.
Thus, the person becomes more engaged emotionally and enjoys the process more.
As a result, one becomes more eager to learn (and work!) better.
Want a real life example?
Well, here you go.
Microsoft used gamification to engage call center agents who struggled with tedious,
excessive phone calls and had given up on training.
Microsoft’s “Making Agents Great” campaign deployed leaderboards of the best agents in
all offices.
Those who had earned the most points in training and work became widely recognized.
Friendly competition and social recognition resulted in better knowledge retention and
more effective work.
As a result, Microsoft achieved a 10% increase in the productivity of call center agents.
Also, scores and leaderboards can serve as tangible and countable achievements for learners.
They allow teachers and course instructors to observe the progress of their learners
quickly and easily.
Teachers are always aware of who is underperforming, and can readily give them a little nudge.
So, the benefits of gamification for your business can include:
1.
Employees’ motivation to learn and work on repetitive tasks - and who doesn’t want
that?
2.
Positive feelings from the process, emotional engagement, and joy
3.
Measurable achievements and observable progress - because we all want to know how well it’s
working Fundamental Concepts
Gamification is multi-realm and incorporates gaming elements, emotional outputs from play,
and behavior patterns.
Gaming elements are the basis, the mechanics of any game.
That’s why they are called game mechanics.
They fuel certain emotional reactions and, therefore, certain behaviors of players.
Let’s consider these three realms one by one.
Concept 1: Game mechanics Game mechanics include highly recognizable
elements like points, levels of difficulty and mastery, achievements (badges), ratings
of best players (leaderboards), rewards, progress bars, and challenges.
These will be the instruments that you leverage to a training course first.
However, when players overcome challenges and earn points, they are placed into a certain
story or narrative.
That makes storytelling another important element of game mechanics.
Concept 2: Emotional states of learners In gamified processes, emotional states are
what game mechanics make us feel and what we start to anticipate from a game.
For example, unexpected rewards or bonuses bring us excitement and a feeling of surprise
and accomplishment.
The anticipation of these pleasures makes us eager to continue playing.
Another example is the feeling that some process is incomplete.
This feeling makes us return because a mission hasn’t been accomplished, or some levels
are unlockable so far.
When well designed, the gamified process can create a state of flow.
It is about mental concentration.
People become more focused on the task at hand, and no matter how challenging the task
is, they remain fully engaged and not easily distracted.
Concept: 3 Player behaviors Player behaviors are the ways that players
follow game mechanics, how they act and interact while playing.
For example, some players can become more competitive and don’t want to concede.
Remember the online “Standards of Service” course and John, who wants to beat his colleague?
Here’s the cause.
Others become curious, they want to explore game worlds and go back with a game item or,
in our case, knowledge.
It is reminiscent of Pokémon GO players who have to explore surroundings to find all hidden
Pokémon.
Explorers are driven by ‘eureka’ moments and want to try new things.
It makes them perfect testers for your new gamified courses.
The core drives of motivation are emotions and behaviors combined
One of the pioneers in gamification, the entrepreneur Yu-Kai Chou, defines emotions and behaviors
in gamified processes as the eight ‘core drives’ and places them in a framework called
“Octalysis.”
According to Yu-Kai Chou, these are the factors that motivate us the most:
1.
Epic meaning.
This is a sense of personal mission to make an impact on the community.
It’s about feeling big.
2.
Accomplishment.
This is a sense of self-improvement, of mastering something that used to be hard.
It’s about new levels.
3.
Empowerment.
It feels good to come up with solutions to problems and see the result and get immediate
feedback.
4.
Ownership.
You want to own it.
For example, a player may want more points or other virtual currency.
Or they may want to take control of a game.
5.
Social influence.
Social recognition, people’s opinions about you; rewards.
6.
Scarcity.
It’s like wanting something you can’t have, something beyond your reach.
A powerful drive to pursue goals and keep returning to the game.
7.
Unpredictability.
It means being eager to see what’s next.
Maybe you’ll win this time?
8.
Avoidance.
It’s about the fear of losing.
For example, time limits in training make us hurry up – otherwise, we fail the task.
Now, when we know there is more to gamification than that which can be seen on the surface,
the question arises.
What will be the actual emotional reactions and behavior patterns of our trainees during
gamified training?
Experts say we can only guess at them.
Everyone is different and driven by specific factors, so reactions can vary.
But as long as people feel motivated to learn and perform better, it will mean that the
gamification is working.
There are Two Effective Paths of Gamification: Gamifying Content or Gamifying Structure
1.
In Content gamification Gamification starts from content creation.
The content is based on a certain story.
A learner takes a journey through this plot, goes on some kind of quest, and gains knowledge.
2.
And as per Structural gamification Content can be non-game, but the process itself is
gamified.
While learning a course, a user takes quizzes, gains points and badges, and climbs the leaderboard.
It’s a fast and easy way to gamify your existing courses.
Let’s take a look at both of these in detail.
Content gamification Content gamification is about making content
more game-like.
More precisely, you create a story, add characters, and build challenges to engage and motivate
learners.
You can make your online training look like a quest, a detective story, or a journey.
To explain how content gamification works, we can study the learning journey that Lingualeo
has beautifully crafted.
Lingualeo is a user-friendly platform for learning English and other foreign languages:
Chinese, Hindi, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.
This platform is one of the most famous examples of content gamification in action.
It was created to delve into the language environment and employs the immersion method
of learning.
Let’s examine the four milestones of their path to gamification.
А powerful story In the Lingualeo world, we meet Leo – a
young lion that welcomes and guides us in the jungle of the English language.
Learners can explore this jungle and adjust it to their liking.
For example, they can make it a safe place with familiar words or a challenging vortex
of advanced vocabulary.
This means that they are in control of their learning path, and that is a good point.
We follow Leo on this journey and see small episodes of his life.
In some sense, we take responsibility for him – as we progress through the language
training, he also grows and goes through changes.
Once a young and inexperienced lion, he becomes a mature Leo Turisto.
Character development is another strong point of storytelling.
The creators of Lingualeo used extraordinary names for the platform’s menu and components,
to make us feel that this place is truly special, to escape the ordinary.
For example, the content library here is The Jungle, the community is The Pride, and the
game currency is meatballs.
Challenges Of course, learning in Lingualeo is not just
wandering through the content.
Every learner here needs to take on tasks and gain experience points.
Tasks can look like “Find a song in the Jungle” or “Click on 5 unfamiliar words.”
At the end of each learning session, one earns points and badges with Leo’s new clothes.
Another challenge in Lingualeo is not missing a single day of training.
It motivates users to come back to learn more every day and keep studying.
Feedback loops Feedback loops can be explained as the way
the system promotes or punishes a player.
It’s the “carrot and stick” approach.
For example, while completing tasks, you ‘feed’ Leo.
If a learner did well, Leo is happy and full.
It’s a positive feedback loop – the ‘carrot.’
Or we recently mentioned the challenge to not skip a day of training.
It’s a bigger mission, a series of spots on the map where Leo has to come step by step.
If a learner misses one day, Leo fails on his mission, and one should start over again.
It is a negative feedback loop – the ‘stick.’
Encouraging freedom to fail One of the main principles of video games
is the chance to start all over again.
Do you remember players talking about “multiple lives”?
In gamified learning, it’s called freedom to fail.
Here, making mistakes is OK.
And it makes us go back to the process, trying over and over.
Freedom to fail is closely related to a sense of incompleteness.
A learner wants to complete the task and avoid failure.
In Lingualeo, a learner can lose progress if they don’t feed Leo by completing tasks
regularly.
But Leo has multiple lives, and a learner can make multiple attempts to improve their
learning performance.
After each completed task, one receives a gift, and it feels like a short-term accomplishment
and brings a sense of joy.
Now let me talk about some success stories of gamified projects for onboarding, employee
engagement, and skill development that you might find inspiring.
Domino’s Pizza Domino’s Pizza is well known for its gamification
experiments.
The chain plans onboarding and induction online courses carefully.
They launched a gamified microlearning course called the Pizza Maker.
New employees strive to beat the records while playing pizza-making simulations and competing
for best scoring.
As a result, they improve their skills and recipe knowledge more quickly.
But it’s not the first time that Domino’s Pizza has reduced onboarding time significantly.
Their mobile application was a game for practicing good pizza making.
It was so popular that the company began to track the best results and frequently offered
a job to the best players.
While playing, the contestants had learned everything needed to make a pizza and be ready
to work.
Deloitte Leadership Academy Being a part of The Big 4 in accounting, Deloitte
never stops improving itself.
It launched a learning portal with materials on leadership skills for senior executives.
But even the content from the best educational institutions was not enough to engage personnel
deeply.
Then, game mechanics were added to the portal.
The solution was very simple, yet genial – they introduced leaderboards that refreshed every
week.
Now the leaderboards visualize the progress of learners as their Rank and Reputation on
the portal.
In their profiles, senior executives can demonstrate the rewards they get for successful mastering
of the content and see what others achieved.
It boosted senior executives’ engagement in leadership training.
Zombie Apocalypse Series The Zombie Apocalypse Series was developed
together with Karl Kapp, a world expert in gamification.
The series provides skill training in Sales, Financial Sales, Instructional Design, and
Educational Technology in the fantasy environment of a zombie apocalypse.
Most of these versions are card games, but Zombie Sales Apocalypse is the flagship project
and available as a video game.
Here, the learner (a sales representative) has to persuade a zombie to buy the antivirus
using their organization’s trusted sales model.
Conversational elements of the game are customizable and can be based on a certain sales model.
Together with the setting, they constitute a powerful story that immerses learners.
Choices made by the sales representative can be tracked and analyzed.
And of course, a zombie story establishes the fear of failure.
The Zombie Apocalypse Series includes the freedom to fail aspect by default.
Tips on Gamification (Dos and Don’ts) You will find more tips on gamification in
our blog post dedicated to the topic.
I will put a link to it in the description, so be sure to check it out.
Conclusion In conclusion I’d like to say that gamification
is not just a buzzword, it has huge potential to impact learner performance in your online
training, thereby improving employee performance in your company.
A clear understanding of game mechanics and your goals will help you leverage gamification
in corporate training properly.
Have you ever thought of trying it?
Or is your organization already familiar with gamification?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments.
If you liked this video, don’t forget to give it big thumbs up down below.
Also click the red subscribe button to come join the iSpring Community, we’d love to
have you onboard.
And finally hit the bell notification icon so you get notified everytime we upload a
brand new video.
We share more tips on our blog, so go ahead and explore it!
Take care and see you in the next video, bye!