How to Make Learning More Engaging with Gamification

Corporate Trainers; Learning & Development; K-12 Education | By: Erin Patrick-Proza

How can we increase engagement while preserving learning and psychological safety? Gamification is where “serious fun” begins, because we get better learning outcomes while delighting our participants and encouraging repeat play. Gamification can help with improving participation, increasing knowledge retention, and boosting enjoyment of training in general. Sounds too good to be true? The power of play is an ancient form of connection for good reason, and making room for play is more important now than ever before. This blog will explore what that looks like in training today.

Why gamify?

Everyone learns differently, and everyone feels rewarded differently. This may be obvious with some of your workforce that lean heavily toward introverted and extroverted personality types, for instance. However, everyone wants and needs feedback so that opportunities are clear and expectations are transparent. Gamification is the process of using game-design concepts in non-game applications, and the objective is to improve performance. When we attach our business goals to gamified content, we get better results and a better learning experience. In this regard, work and fun no longer have to be mutually exclusive.

In fact, one of the major benefits of gamified content is using the concepts of gamification- such as points, rewards, and leaderboards- and customizing that content to meet your key performance indicators (KPIs). This is also a powerful antidote for combatting virtual fatigue and burnout. In a recent study by The Training Arcade, their results showed the effect of gamification:

• Encourage repetition of the content for an average of 1.7 times per participant

• 58% saw improvement in knowledge retention (from one session to the next)

One takeaway from these findings is that we remember information better when we are engaged with it, and creating a fun experience with learning certainly meets this criteria. This helps to provide a culture of learning that empowers our workforce to want to improve and learn more intrinsically, which also paves the pathway for more psychological safety.

Gamification and Psychological Safety?

There has been a lot of talk about psychological safety in the workplace lately, and for good reason. The world becomes more and more uncertain, and we have adapted to a lot of ‘new normals’ lately that just seem to keep coming. So, how do we help our employees manage their work loads and life stress while also providing them with the autonomy, transparency, and relatedness that is needed for well-being in the workplace?

Autonomy
→ People have access to quick, easy, and fun ways to improve their performance and it allows them to immediately practice and apply new skills

Transparency
→ Advancement opportunities are clear with the resources available to help people practice and attain the skills they need to move up

Relatedness
→ Gamification is a great mechanism for connection, because almost everyone loves to play games, so it helps to bridge the gap between generations and geographical locations

This idea of making the hard stuff more fun while feeling safe with our work community is maybe more important now than ever before. When we take the extra step of offering a level playing field of fun and interactive ways for people to improve themselves to meet (and exceed!) our business goals, we effectively provide a clear way forward for them to thrive and prosper. That kind of social capital is worth every penny, and the ROI will be evident. But don’t take our word for it:

"For our recent training I created a refresher Jeopardy-style game. It went over real well. I tried my hand at some customizations; adding opening music, and a few pictures, and made the avatars resemble our trainers and supervisors that were participating for the week.I find your product to be very easy to use and a lot of fun too."

Carolyn (Blue Cross Blue Shield)

The opportunity to grow and learn is a top priority for your employees, so why not answer that with a culture of learning that really stands out? Gamification is more than trivia, recall, and review. In its most optimistic sense, it is a mechanism that promotes learning in an engaging and fun way. It helps to meet your learners where they are with information when and where they need it, resulting in a better learning experience. If you’re tasked with employee engagement and exciting content delivery, game-based learning is now a very important methodology in your training.

At C3 SoftWorks, our goal is to help you find more unique ways to support your learning and development programs. If you’re not confident in your current approach, we’d be happy to provide a free consultation to learn more about your goals and what the BravoZone can offer, whether you’re just starting out with gamification or you’re one of our seasoned current clients. With over 35 years of experience in training and education, we’re passionate about helping people find solutions to their training challenges. We strive to make gamification easy so you can focus on creating quality content that everyone enjoys, including you!

Contact us for more information

Don’t miss out on our monthly webinar workshops about all things training and gamification! Topics, times, and dates will be posted on our website and our social media. Make sure to update your contact preferences so we can reach you with the registration information!

If you’d like to schedule a free and private demo to quickly evaluate if this is the right fit for you, please sign up for one here.

If you’d like more information on the products and services or would like to request a quote, please contact us here.