How Can Organisations Leverage Gamification Using Digital Badges?

Gamification is an incredible tool. While it is mostly associated with educational programs, any organisation can benefit from it. From helping individuals learn better to motivating employees to learn new skills, gamification has many applications.?

In this article, we’ll take a look at how gamification works and how you can implement it through digital badges.

What Is Gamification?

Gamification is the application of game design principles, such as competition, rewards and interactive elements within a non-gaming concept. It uses our natural inclination towards competition and achievement to make an activity more engaging.?

An example of this is how e-learning platforms issue digital badges for completing a course. By receiving a socially shareable badge for each completed course, the learner will feel motivated to complete more courses for the reward.?

This is just one example of how gamification can enhance a learning program. To better understand the concept of gamification, let’s look at how gamification works.?

How Does Gamification Work?

Gamification works by employing game design principles within an activity. Specifically, gamification uses the following elements to make an activity more engaging:

Points & Scoring: Individuals receive instant gratification and a sense of accomplishment by receiving points for completing a task.?

Leaderboards: By providing a leaderboard, individuals are allowed to compare their achievements with others. This promotes healthy competition among the learners and encourages improvement.?

Recognition: Individuals are awarded recognition for any achievement, motivating them to earn more achievements.?

Feedback & Rewards: Instant feedback and rewards for completing tasks or hitting milestones keep the learners engaged and motivated.?

Now that we've covered how gamification works, let's also look at why it works.?

Why Does Gamification Work?

Gamification takes advantage of this primal human need -our intrinsic desire for achievement and competition. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, both self-esteem and self-actualisation require an individual to gain prestige, social recognition and a sense of achievement.?

Individuals are hardwired to seek solutions to achieve these needs. By linking an activity to these needs, gamification can turn that desire into motivation.?

This is apart from how gamification boosts learner engagement through competition and interactive elements. Studies have shown that 92% of educators believe learner engagement to be a key driver of success.?

By making the process of learning fun and engaging, gamification can enhance the success of each student in achieving the objective of a course.?

The success of gamification still depends on the implementation. There are innumerable ways to use gamification to enhance learners. Since our area of expertise is digital badges, we’ll talk about how your organisation can implement gamification through digital badges.?

How To Use Digital Badges For Gamification

Digital badges are one of the easiest ways to introduce gamification into your learning program. They are instantly verifiable, easily accessible and socially shareable. Follow these simple steps to implement gamification through digital badges:?

1. Set Objectives & Goals

What is the objective of implementing gamification? Is it to make the learning program more engaging? Is it to motivate your learners? Setting clear objectives will let you implement the right gamification strategy going forward.?

1. Design The Gamified System

Once you’ve set your objectives, it’s time to set a guideline for the gamified system. Find the answer to questions like how individuals earn badges, how many they can earn, how to share them etc. This system defines how individuals interact with the gamified environment.?

1. Badge Creation

Now that you have a well-defined system, it’s time to create the digital badge. For digital badges, what you need to keep in mind is that the information they contain should be anchored on the blockchain, making it tamper-proof. You can also choose to make them Open Badge compliant to increase its functionality.?

1. Integrate With LMS

This step is more or less optional, as Learning Management Systems are not a necessity for gamification. However, an interactive LMS will be able to enhance your learning program to incredible levels and will make gamification easy to implement. This will also enable you to automate the issue of digital badges, saving precious resources.?

An LMS will also enable instant rewards, automated leadership boards and progress-tracking systems to boost learner engagement.?

1. Feedback & Analysis

No system is perfect. Once your gamified system is up and running, the next step is to seek feedback from the stakeholders and analyse how you can improve the system. This will also enable you to constantly add new features and keep the learning program exciting.?

Gamification is a powerful tool to enhance education and skill development. By combining it with digital badges, you can reward learners with verifiable proof of skill that will help them move forward in their career.

To learn more about how digital badges can help your organisation implement gamification, visit our website.