Gamification is a word that’s been buzzing around Learning & Development for a good few years now, and yet, there are still thousands of businesses who aren’t reaping the rewards from this style of learning.
Why?
We think that in the ever-changing futuristic world in which we live that we’ve become obsessed with screens, apps and virtual reality and people are wrongly assuming that gamification needs to be electronic. In this article we’ll share with you the benefits implementing this learning trick might bring to you, and why we don’t think gamification has to involve the internet or even a power supply.
Gamification doesn’t have to involve the internet or a power supply.
We previously wrote an article about gamification that was posted on Training Journal (you can read that here) but this time we want to try and help you see that HR and L&D professionals should not be underestimating the benefits of gamification in learning. By cleverly infusing some game playing, point scoring and cool visuals it will boost the learner engagement, trainer delivery satisfaction and overall content retention and recall.
So why does gamification encourage anyone to do anything?
You could ask the millions of children who play Roblox daily. They build, play, engage and learn how to code on their devices.
You could ask the hordes of adults who regularly game play and enter digital, and sometimes virtual, worlds of dragons, war fields and space galaxies. They learn new skills, tricks and cheats every time they play.
Try asking why people run marathons and 5K’s on a Sunday when any normal person is just getting up? They learn ways to make their body perform for them.
You could ask why teams of people kick a ball around a cold muddy field?
The answers? To all these questions? It’s fun. It’s engaging. You’re interacting. You might win. It’s safe to lose. It’s easily accessible. It’s competitive. It’s satisfying. It feels good. If you remove the ability to win, or play, or challenge and suddenly none of those games have the same wide appeal. No way to win? No competition to enter into? No challenge for me? No motivation to do it. The golden word here. Motivation.
Motivation PLUS Learning = GAMIFICATION
When a learner can be challenged, can compete, fail over and over but keep going, see practical applications or learn through safe scenarios it changes the way people approach learning completely. There are 5 key benefits (there’s loads more but who has all day to read articles right?) of using gamification in your learning. See which ones you can implement in your way and see what difference it makes.
Gamification makes your learning interactive and fun.
It really doesn’t matter what the topic is. Every session can benefit from a splash of interactivity, motivation and fun. It doesn’t need to be an app. It doesn’t need to be an online role play. It doesn’t need to cost the earth. This isn’t about making every single element of the training a game, that’s simply overkill and will ultimately dilute your original message. This is about you cleverly exploiting the psychology that drives learner engagement.
When you’re a kid, you play, all the time. You learn through play, you understand problems, you learn about interacting with others and then, at around 5 years old you go to school. Ouch. Constant play ends. They tell you to sit in one place, and read, or watch and you start to learn about routine, logic and order and your creativity starts to get stifled. Great teachers find ways to keep it alive for as long as they can, but we start to conform. And we get taught that play, is only for playtime.
As children, we get taught that play, is only for playtime.
A key benefit of gamification is that it makes the way you learn more engaging, exciting, and easy thanks to its interactivity. Role-play and competitive parts can add an interesting angle when done well and they take the edge off something people don’t normally want to do.
We love adding in quizzes, with instant wins, or points, alone or in teams and for good measure we might even through in a league table. We also use tools like Kahoot to digitally engage and keep score without having to use technology too much.
We really love making old school card decks, paper challenges, clues and riddles to get the brain going. Learning scenario cards with real life situations are fantastic to learn safely and if you throw in a cheeky last minute curve ball to make people think on their feet it sticks and makes people want to play again.
Gamification can get you addicted to the learn!
Everyone wants the same thing when you share information. You want the learning to go in, be remembered, applied and retained for another day. A powerful (and yet sometimes missed) element of gamification is the fact that it gives us a healthy buzz because we’re enjoying it, and the impact that ‘buzz’ has on knowledge retention?
Yep – you’ve guessed it already. Our brains reward us when we do something good and make it feel great with a cheeky shot of dopamine. Our brains and bodies remember that feeling and therefore the learning feels ‘good’ when we remember it and is then easier to recall. Wow. That’s like a proper science fact!
Gamification helps you see the real-life stuff safely.
What we like with gamifying resources is that you can help people get practical with what they’re studying, without actually getting their hands too dirty. When you do this, and you see a potential consequence of a decision you make, albeit in a game, it helps you to cement your learning and understand the age old ‘cause & effect’ situation much better. We do this with learning scenarios. We create them into fun card games. A great example is using these on HR training. We tell a story. We give information. We provide rules and policies. Then you make a choice. Oops. You made the wrong choice this time, we’ll see you in an Employment Tribunal! Whilst only learning, this is much easier to handle than messing up in real life!
Gamification helps build collaboration and adaptability.
Back to when we were kids, we’d play with anyone, we’d join a game halfway through, we’d even approach people we didn’t know just to play with their toy or game. We lose this as we age but gamification helps build those skills back up. Watching a group of adults laugh and play and score points as they learn helps reignite those skills of working together, not fearing failure because it’s just a game and helps see their co-workers in a different and more positive way.
Gamification makes learning more fun and more efficient.
Now here’s one you didn’t see coming. Because Gamification makes learning fun and the people who are learning are relaxed, enjoying, being rewarded, getting dopamine hits they become more likely to interact with your amazing learning programme. The learning sticks, they use it, they get better and they come back for more.
So, if gamification can do all this, why isn’t it everywhere?
It’s because you haven’t seen the benefits in action, or assumed it was going to cost a fortune. It doesn’t. We challenge you to incorporate one of the below ideas into any piece of learning you have and see the difference that even the lowest level of gamification can bring. Of course. We can help you do it if you like.
For us, we’ll always include it, old school or future tech, because we know that gamification is an L&D game-changer.
Try incorporating gamification using one of these?
A quiz with points and prizes
Teams working together to solve a challenge.
A card game to learn something fast.
Scenario Game Cards with last minute curveballs
Symbol flashcards to make signs and warning stick in the brain.
Memory games to remember processes.
Using a tool like Kahoot to incorporate gamification without all the technology cost.
Practical games to build team skills.