How Does Gamification Enliven Your eLearning Courses?

Let’s admit it! Irrespective of our age, gender, or official designation, we all have a little child within us who loves to play games. Today, like every other sphere, gaming has also gone digital. You will be surprised to know that 40% of the global population loves to play video games. You can find people playing games on their mobile phones all the time, whether at leisure, or while commuting, or even while walking down the street. You must be thinking what this has to do with eLearning. Well, according to a survey, 80% of learners said that they were more productive when they learned through play. It’s no wonder then that gamification in eLearning is a popular point of focus in the corporate L&D space today.

What is Gamification in eLearning?

Put in a nutshell, gamification is an instructional design strategy that aims at making learning fun. It is a process that involves using games and gaming elements in training programs. Gamification in eLearning:

• Facilitates effective knowledge transfer
• Connects learners emotionally
• Encourages active participation
• Cultivates a sense of competition
• Enhances knowledge retention

eLearning courses’ content and assessments can be gamified by including elements such as levels, scores and leaderboards.

Why Does Gamification Work? (The Psychology Behind Gamification)

Do you remember receiving gifts from your parents after performing well in school quizzes and tests? You were motivated to strive harder and score more marks in your annual exams, right?

Let’s be honest, even as grown-ups, the child within us craves acknowledgment and appreciation. Gamifications taps into the “brain’s reward center” which acts as the key motivator that fosters active learning.

Now that you know the science behind gamification let’s dive deeper. Let’s discover the key aspects that motivate a learner and how gamification can be deployed to stimulate them.

Explore This Comprehensive Guide on The Basics of Instructional Design.

3 Critical Aspects that Motivate a Learner

1. Autonomy: People tend to be motivated and stick to their goals for longer time periods if they feel that they are in charge.
2. Value: People learn better when they enjoy the learning process, and they also tend to actively participate thereby striving to achieve their desired goals.
3. Competence: The better people perform a task, the greater the hunger to master it.

By including gamification in your eLearning courses, you can target all these aspects and enhance your employees’ learning experiences. Gamification provides learners flexibility, and it can be customized to any topic. Instant rewards and challenges encourage learners to promptly progress through their courses.

How to Use Gamification in eLearning?

Gamification offers numerous benefits to learners and organizations.

Key Benefits for Learners

Active learning

When you add gaming elements to your eLearning courses, they bring life to your usually humdrum training content and encourage active participation. Instant gratification in the form of levels, scores and leaderboards instill a spark of healthy competition among your learners and drives up the rate of participation.

Enhanced engagement

A lack of engagement leads to lower levels of contentment at the workplace which in turn leads to a higher rate of dropouts. When you include gamification in your eLearning courses, your employees feel more engaged. In fact, it can be the solution where everyone benefits. Learners can relax and learn at the same time, and they can enjoy a break amidst their long working hours.

Knowledge retention

You must have noticed that you tend to learn better when you are involved in something. Gamification allow you to do engage your learners in a stimulating activity that enhances knowledge retention. It even boosts a better understanding of the concepts and helps your learners apply what they have learned in real-life workplace scenarios.

Instant feedback

Instant and constructive feedback given during a gaming activity helps learners gauge their performance and improvise their approach to learning. Rewards in the form of points and levels encourage learners to actively participate in the learning process as well as self-evaluate their progress. 

Key Benefits for Organizations

Employee loyalty and engagement

We have already discussed how including games in your eLearning courses can be a terrific way to promote learner engagement. When your employees feel engaged, they tend to be more loyal towards your organization.

Increased productivity

As gamification allows your employees to involve themselves in their training, it certainly leads to better learning and thereby increased efficiency at work. This in turn boosts your employees’ performance and levels of productivity.

Helps achieve business goals

When you use gamification as your strategy to give your eLearning courses a boost, your employees tend to learn better which leads to improved performance as well as the achievement of desired business outcomes.

Customization of content

Gamification offers you flexibility, irrespective of the type of training you are doing. Your training content can be modified, customized, and updated to make it more learner centric. You can use gaming elements to design interactivities and assessments for your courses and modules. Gamification can rejuvenate your training and provide greater satisfaction for your employees that ultimately leads to a higher ROI.

Data tracking

Gamification can provide you with ample data that can be used to develop business insights and consequently help you make critical decisions that will have a positive impact. Gamified solutions can help you track your learners’ actions such as time spent on the learning platform. This and other relevant learning statistics can be used to make crucial decisions that improve your business outcomes.

Training Scenarios Where Gamification Can be Used

a. Onboarding

Onboarding new employees and training them on the company’s culture, guidelines, norms and processes is an indispensable part of every organization. Going through lengthy SOPs, guidelines and handbooks is quite cumbersome for new employees. Gamification can make this process engaging. Quizzes such as ‘How well do you know your team?’ enable new employees to actively engage with the training content, and they also ensure that immersive learning happens.

b. Product training

Organizations are embracing innovation to maintain a competitive edge and are launching new products frequently. It can be tedious for sales representatives to go through lengthy product manuals and stay up to date with recent launches. Gamification is an effective way to impart product training. Learners need to be engaged in games such as identifying new features and benefits of the products and services. As a result, both learner retention and employee productivity are strengthened.

Wrapping it Up!

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!

Attending training sessions or taking up uninteresting eLearning courses after slogging through long working hours can be extremely draining for your employees. Go for gamification and add a bit of fun to your eLearning courses to help your employees improve their knowledge and skills and be motivated to meet your organization’s goals.

Do you want to discover the different instructional design strategies so you can make a greater impact? Take a look at our eBook. Grab your copy now!