Adding Fun, Friendly Competition to Training
Jeopardy, MythBusters, trivia games, Words with Friends, Duolingo, Comedy Defensive Driving courses, and eLearning gamification… What do they have in common? They all bring fun to learning, which engages the audience and makes content memorable. As a multimedia and eLearning development company, Branch Media is mindful of the best delivery method for the content and training audience. Sometimes an eLearning game is a great choice, but only after careful consideration.
What Is Gamification?
Gamification is the process of adding games or game-like elements to something to encourage participation.
Gamification techniques can leverage people’s natural desires for socializing, learning, mastery, competition, achievement, status, and self-expression.
When properly executed, gamification works well for several purposes, including:
- Training: When games are aligned with learning objectives that are truly relevant to the audience, they create a training pathway that keeps people coming back for more. Most people think of an eLearning game as an alternative to a quiz. After all, they often both check understanding and retention of content taught previously. But eLearning gamification can also teach content for the first time, and we’ll share an example later in this article.
- Marketing and Customer Retention: More than 70 percent of Forbes Global 2000 companies said they plan to use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention, according to a recent survey.
- Ideation, or structured brainstorming to produce new ideas.
- Promoting Behaviors: For instance, the location-based Pokémon Go mobile gaming app effectively promotes ongoing physical exercise. Activity tracking devices like the Fitbit have a similar goal. They encourage users to exercise more to improve their overall health while enabling competition among friends.
Is eLearning Gamification an Effective Tool or a Money Pit?
The idea of incorporating games into training has gotten mixed reviews. If the game aesthetics, theme, and content don’t take the audience into account, eLearning gamification may be an epic fail. However, an eLearning game that is highly interactive and fits the target audience can be one of the most effective ways to teach content and engage learners.
A game with a silly theme to eLearning aimed at lawyers or doctors is a bad idea. (And yes, we have seen other vendors do things like this way too often.) But a game about healthy living habits aimed at new employees can engage them where other forms of learning fail.
What are Some Common Key Traits of Effective eLearning Gamification?
Branch Media has the in-house resources to create engaging eLearning games and courses. We guide clients with objective and expert input as they consider whether gamification of content is right for their training audience and needs. Then we bring the project to fruition, from concept development to programming, from content integration to deployment, and every step in between.
Whether the topic is employee onboarding, leadership development, a new product launch, health and wellness, soft skills, or some other topic, eLearning gamification can be engaging and effective. We invite you to contact us to set up a full demo of our work. In the meantime, we want to give you a glimpse of some of our custom gaming solutions, including:
Example 1: An eLearning Game Website to Teach Content
A retail chain was seeking a non-traditional way to equip and inspire its diverse workforce to make healthy choices. See the gaming solution we created for this eLearning experience.
Example 2: eLearning Gamification to Reinforce Instructor-Led Training
One of the nation’s leading transportation companies approached Branch Media in preparation for their annual leadership conference. The in-house training team knew from experience they needed reinforcement. See the gaming solution we created to drive home their face-to-face training.
What About Incorporating Games Not on a Computer?
Branch Media also produces marketing and support materials for other types of games. For instance, a national non-profit that strives to save and improve lives planned a scavenger hunt fundraising event. How did we help make it a success? First, Branch Media created a promotional video for the event. We also developed a website to help leaders plan, build their volunteer team, and set fundraising goals. Watch the promotional video we produced to learn more about this gaming experience.
It’s Game Time!
How well you retained the information we presented in this article? Find out as you play a game. Simply click the orange “Play Game” button, listen to the instructions, and then it’s game on.
Win at Your Own eLearning Game
Do you want some help with your next learning game? We’ve built many long-term client relationships over the last 20 years as a multimedia and eLearning development company. We deliver creative, custom solutions that solve real customer needs. What needs do you have? Contact us to set up a meeting to discuss them and how Branch Media can help.
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More Information About eLearning Gamification
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