In recent times, the term “gamification” has gained widespread acceptance as a must-have content strategy. But what precisely is gamification, and how does it benefit e-learning? From the advantages to examples of gamification along with strategies for applying it to your e-learning portal, we’ll cover it all.
After reading this blog, you will have a better understanding of how to implement gamification for interactive learning. And you’ll be able to boost your company’s learning & growth initiatives.
Firstly, let’s start with,
What is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of bringing game principles, elements, and ideas to non-game environments to improve learner engagement.
Gamification can indeed be applied to a variety of situations. Gamification is frequently used in the workplace for employee training, recruitment, evaluation, and organizational productivity. Adding game-like characteristics to a non-game context, such as leaderboards, point systems, multiple levels, and badge awards, is known as gamification. Gamification aims to make something more appealing by allowing people to play with it. It has the potential to boost learners’ engagement if done correctly greatly.
Top e-learning apps that use gamification: –
- Khan Academy
- Udemy
- Memrise
- Sololearn
- Duolingo
According to Marketsandmarkets, e-learning gamification will grow from $ 450 million in 2018 to $ 1.8 billion by 2023.
The essential elements of gamification are stated below.
- Gamification for interactive learning is a technique for digitally engaging users, in which people converse via any digital medium, like tablets, computers, mobile phones, and so on, rather than in place.
- There are game mechanics such as badges, award points, leaderboards, and so on. This encourages learners to participate and act quickly.
- The purpose of incorporating gamification as a learning tool is to allow people to accomplish a goal. If a user achieves an objective, they will automatically receive the rewards.
How can we Use Gamification in Corporate eLearning Portals?
Apart from those mentioned above, there’re a variety of ways to include gamification in an eLearning product. We’ve listed a handful of them below:
1. Stories
Create a captivating plot that will attract your learners and lead them on a journey. Make a story that immerses learners in the action as they work through the content. This is an excellent approach to producing immersive information while keeping learners interested. Using characters or avatars to represent employees might add a fun element.
2. Competition
Allow learners to compete against other members of their team, anonymous individuals, or even themselves to maintain a high level of motivation. Consider incorporating leaderboards so that learners may see how they compare to their peers. This is especially useful for sales reps and high-performing staff who want to keep pushing themselves to achieve more.
3. Challenges
In a solution, challenges correspond to the learner’s learning objectives or goals. As a result, incorporating new challenges into an eLearning system encourages learners to complete the task and connect with it.
4. Rewards
Incentivizing your users with rewards such as badges, medals, or reaching new levels will help them stay motivated and engaged for longer durations.
5. Feedback
When a learner accomplishes a task or quiz, providing immediate feedback is a wonderful method to keep them focused and involved since it helps them to follow their progress as they go through the game’s stages.
6. Leaderboard
Everyone aspires to be a leader or be seen as a high performer by their peers. In this case, a leaderboard might be extremely motivating. Maybe it’s a list of the top performers, ranked by how many stickers they have or how far they’ve progressed. Moving up the scoreboard can boost a learner’s excitement and participation in most circumstances.
Moving ahead, let’s talk about,
What are the Top Benefits of e-Learning Gamification?
The top benefits of e-learning gamification are: –
1. Improves Retention
The use of gamification as a learning tool is quite appealing. However, without remembering, learning is incomplete. Gamification, as a pleasurable experience for learners, is a fantastic learning approach that also produces a better degree of engagement. Furthermore, the amount of engagement contributes to a higher retention value.
2. Gives Instant Feedback
The feedback, whether positive or negative, is an essential aspect of games. Learners advance in educational games by having the correct information or responding correctly to a question or scenario rather than by chance. Learners cannot progress because of a lack of information or improper response. Learners can track their progress during the game and might feel intrinsically determined to finish it successfully by introducing rapid feedback into gaming and relating this input to the game’s ending. Leaderboards and scoreboards provide additional feedback by allowing students to compare their performance to that of their contemporaries.
3. Improves Learning Experience
Passive learning via books and lectures does not necessarily aid comprehension of difficult subjects; in fact, it often adds to the aggravation. Gamification as a learning tool may improve the learning experience by using visualizations and examples to illustrate hard concepts. This method enables students to swiftly make associations with the material being studied and memorize it.
e-learning gamification paths encourage users to study regularly, receive incentives for completed tasks and share their accomplishments with others. The competition motivates them to take on more difficult objectives and celebrate their achievements.
4. Boosts Engagement
It’s critical for learners to be enthusiastic about what they’re doing. They won’t do anything properly if they aren’t driven. As a result, gamification as a learning tool is a method of motivating learners by awarding points or badges for accomplishing specific objectives.
How can Gamification Benefit Your Corporate Training?
You’ll get more than just improved engagement when you apply gamification in your company/business. By integrating games to specific business goals, gamification aids organizations in achieving both direct and indirect business goals.
Employees Onboarding
Onboarding new employees effectively is often a challenge, and businesses that rely too much on dry, monotonous onboarding materials, videos, and training sessions miss out on the chance to engage employees from the start. An organization can avoid these problems by embracing gamification in training.
Enhances Training Patterns
An organization can create a win-win situation wherein the individual is engaged, learning is considerably more entertaining, and the employee is far more likely to retain the knowledge they are being taught by implementing gamification during the training process. Organizations are trying for new employees to truly understand the requirements of their function, the expectations for behavior, and organizational standards by using interactive methods based on factual working situations.
Boosts Performance
Gamification for interactive learning keeps learners engaged throughout the session by capturing their attention and keeping them active. Quizzes, riddles, and competitions are interactive features that keep the learner engaged. It enables people to comprehend an entity and behave effectively in accordance with its goals. It also aids learners in understanding how they are performing and what they may improve on. Companies also have a clear picture of how their team is performing and what changes they may make to improve their results.
Time-Efficient
Gamification as a learning tool, determines the interests of learners. Gamification for interactive learning components is more likely to be preferred by your workforce or employees than regular training sessions. They're more inclined to stay on the platform longer in order to discover more about your company's vision, goals, and objectives. eLearning can also be leveraged for sales training, compliance training, soft skills, customer support, and induction programs as a full platform. It ensures complete attention as well as ultimate delight.
Enhances Productivity
With active participation, it attracts more individuals. Because e-learning gamification isn't boring, it motivates employees and learners to engage and complete a task according to their own time. E-learning gamification for daily chores and mini-tasks also ensures enthusiastic participation and increased concentration. As a result, even in structured corporate circumstances, it leads to increased productivity. As a result, companies can use gamification to boost productivity and accomplish short-term goals.
Compliance Training
Learners frequently consider or view compliance training as dull and boring. As a result of this difficulty, compliance officers and the training department have been looking for new and effective ways to keep learners engaged in compliance training courses. Gamification for compliance training is one such training method that can help to successfully create engagement among learners. One of the most significant benefits of gamifying compliance training is that participants can learn from their failures. For the learners to enjoy and gain from the e-learning module, the gamified module can employ real circumstances or imitate a controlled environment.
Boosts Communication & Collaboration
Employees require continual contact and input from their managers in order to perform well, yet this feedback is frequently misinterpreted as criticism, resulting in disengagement. Employees can be made more open to the possibility without harming their morale by designing a model based on interesting and engaging games.
Improves Customer Support
In today's competitive environment, effective customer service and after-sales assistance are critical to corporate growth. Gamification for interactive learning can help enhance employee performance in this area by motivating them to deliver on productivity and performance while inventing new ideas to make their programs more efficient and better than the competition.
Makes HR Processes Easier
Gamification can also be used by Human Resources to measure and review employee performance, show peer appreciation, build leadership, and create more comprehensive communication with the rest of the team.
As you’ve seen the benefits of e-learning gamification, now, let’s move forward and discuss,
Top E-Learning Gamification Trends and Use Cases to Watch Over in 2022!
Key e-learning gamification trends that will be popular in 2022 & beyond are: –
1. Real-Time Analytics & Product Innovation
The ability to offer real-time and meaningful information is one of the main advantages of gamification learning systems. This means that firms can track their employees’ development at any moment during their training program. This allows supervisors to make any necessary adjustments for their students right now.
Marketers are gaining significant customer insights from data similarly offered by their gamified platform. This enables them to have a knowledge of customer behavior and preferences. Product innovation is also aided by gamification analytics.
2. Mobile Gamification Solutions
According to studies, the world’s mobile phone users number around 5.22 billion. By 2024, there will be 290.64 million smartphone users in the United States alone.
Learning is now done when it is required. As a result, mobile learning has become extremely popular.
Learners can access their learning materials at any time and from any location using mobile learning. Mobile learning solutions that are gamified will help to boost engagement.
3. AR/VR Integration
As technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality advance, so will the adoption of these technologies by a range of businesses. Immersive technologies are already being used in various businesses to undertake onboarding and training operations. As the capability of immersive technology grows, richer gamified experiences will be possible. These encounters will increase engagement in a variety of ways and could be a game-changer for the gamification industry.
4. Blockchain Technology
Large corporations are implementing blockchain technology to improve their rewards programs. The inclusion of blockchain technology with gamification will provide gamification elements more flexibility. Awards or Achievements gained, for example, might be safely swapped for cryptocurrencies. Digital currency earned on a gamification LMS or mobile app can likewise benefit from the technology.
5. The Rise of Roleplay Avatars
Including an avatar in your sessions is an excellent method to motivate and engage your learners. The avatars will take on the role of virtual personas, giving the teachings a human touch.
The avatar must be thoroughly researched in order to be effective. It is vital to decide not only the avatar’s appearance but also its speech pattern and personality throughout the design phase. The type of learners who will take the course will decide these features. The avatar must have a strong emotional connection with your audience and be someone they can connect to and appreciate. You might also consider allowing students to customize their avatars according to their preferences.
6. Rapid Expansion
Gamification as a learning tool will continue to gain popularity across a wide range of industries. IT, banking, government, and even the military are among them. Notably, the IT sector’s continuous growth will fuel the proliferation of gamification across the business in the next few years. For example, to speed up job applications, IT corporations may gamify large-scale recruiting efforts. Virtual screenings and assessment tests will be gamified by recruiters to roll out and choose the right candidates.
Conclusion
Gamification has a large scope of benefits. Gamification approaches can benefit both learners and instructors, as well as your edtech business.
Gamification will also continue to be a great help in the workplace for increasing employee engagement and achieving company goals.
If you also want to develop learning management system for corporate training or have an e-learning application that needs to be updated with gamification, speak with one of our professionals to learn how you can do so and what game components you may include. Furthermore, if you need an eLearning app developed, contact our eLearning app professionals, who will take you through the detailed process of building an engaging, inspiring, and interactive e-learning gamification solution.
