Week 9 - Let the Games Begin, Why You Need Gamification in Your Learning Strategy ????

TL:DR Gamification is not new for learning teams, but your usage of it can change how you engage with your learners. It can be a fire-starter for your learners to engage with your programs and learn in new ways.

Before diving into the rabbit hole of this topic, let's start with this, what actually is Gamification?

It's the use of game mechanics in non-gaming activities to help capture and engage an audience.

Let's dive in and explore this topic from different angles,

1) Story time

2) Why gamification resonates with humans

3) Gamification & digital Learning, connecting the Dots

4) Benefits of gamification in digital learning

5) Gamification & Docebo - where we can add value

6) The big picture

Part 1 - Story time with Harald:

Last week, I hosted a sales team from one of our resellers in Docebo's London office. It was a great day with workshops, knowledge-sharing and some socials in the evening.

One particular highlight was when I held a gamified quiz about Docebo leveraging Kahoot and their gamification-based quiz system. Being a Norwegian, it is safe to say I am a Kahoot fan-boy, but I had not used the tool in a business setting before, only to build quizzes for friends and family.

So when I decided to buy a Docebo trivia Kahoot quiz, I didn't know exactly what I had gotten myself into. However, to my surprise, not only did the group enjoy the trivia, it unlocked a competitive spirit in the crowd. The participants bought into the activity and fearlessly wanted to come on top of the quiz leaderboard.

In the spirit of Halloween, we had candy and other treats for the winners of the quiz, which did not hurt either. The power of gamification is to enable learners to become fully invested in the learning activity they are part-taking in. While this was a face to face activity, the same game mechanics can be applied to your digital learning programs.

Part 2 - Why Gamification Resonates with us as humans:

As children, we were brought up on awards, certificates, trophies, and badges of honour; they validated our work and made it fun to put in our best effort. From stars on your note book to trophies in sports, we found joy and satisfaction in being rewarded for our accomplishments. As adults, we remain playful and enjoy interactive scenarios that trigger competition and rewards - games of Charades or Monopoly can be a very serious competitive event.

Today, companies are leveraging game mechanics in innovative ways to enhance the user experience of their products, fireworks on your FitBit, or the like systems on social media are perfect examples of this. As humans in 2022, we thrive on social validation, and the interactivity with our peers.

So why leave this out of your learning strategy? After all, is this not some of the key reasons why people engage with social networks? I am not talking about building advanced algorithmic shenanigans into your learning programs, but the idea of being inspired by your environment around you and taking ideas from gamification and applying it to your learning strategy.

We all love to get rewards, for example from boys/girls' scouts, just ask this guy ????

Part 3 - Gamification & Digital Learning: Connecting the Dots:

Let's hear it from two industry expert sources on why gamification is key to digital learning:

eLearning Industry “Haven’t you always wanted to make it to the top of a leaderboard? Aren’t you used to getting points and completing levels and challenges to get to the next stage of a video game? All these components have been successfully incorporated into online training as?gamification features. Elements like badges, certifications, fun competitions, gifts, and more give an extra spark to your courses”.

Brandon Hall Group Gamification is a “positive disruption, a game changer that has the potential to level up the digital learning process”. BHG says it also has four key elements:

• “A challenge or a goal?that establishes what a person needs to accomplish to win”
• “Obstacles or impediments?which need to be overcome to achieve the goal”
• “Incentives or rewards?that users receive as they overcome obstacles and objectives”
• “Game rules?that define users’ interaction with the game”

As shown from eLearningindustry and BHG, taking game mechanics (enjoyment, play, openness, creativity, and challenge) and applying them to professional objectives, rather than solely entertainment, makes the tasks more enjoyable. Gamification can enhance workplace engagement, as well as learning retention. I know the team last week remember more about Docebo from my quiz than my power point slides, that's for sure.

You want your learners to feel like Mario flying on a magic carpet across the sky ????

Part 4: Benefits of Gamification in Digital Learning

Learner Experience:?The environment of learning feels exciting, thrilling, and one you want to be apart off. The better the experience, the more recurrent the audience will become.

Engagement:?Prove me wrong, but learners generally do not think their training materials are interesting or engaging. If learners are not interacting with learning, your program dies, like plants without water. Gamification serves to further motivate people and cyclically drive employee engagement.

Retention:?Learner retention is hard, so it’s crucial that we think carefully about how we present information to our audiences. Some healthy competition with leaderboards, badges, and contests drive retention because, when we enjoy the experience, it becomes more memorable and important to us.

Company Learning Culture:?No matter what audience you train, a learning culture is the glue to your learning program. Without it, learner becomes a tick box exercise.

This is the accumulation of the three items above and gamification can be rocket-fuel to make this possible. Gamified learning programs can take an audience from being happy, to engaged, to retaining knowledge and ultimately build a learning culture in your company or for your learners.

5) Gamification & Docebo - Where we can add value

Badges - a medal your users will gain when they complete a particular action. Have fun with it and get your learners bragging by creating unique badges like “Master of the Universe”, “Course Master”, or “Total Genius”. Badges and points are pivotal to gamification in elearning.

Points - add more value to badges by attributing any number of points that can be given to the user along with the badge. You can use these points to establish a rewards program or leaderboards to highlight achievement and create some friendly competition.

Rewards - further incentivize your learners to collect points and badges by creating prizes that can be obtained after they reach a certain threshold (think Amazon gift cards, lunch with the CEO, one work from home day, etc.). Rewards such as these will jump start your user engagement by giving learners the opportunity to win tangible prizes!

Leaderboards - displaying the users with the highest amount of points in the platform. By creating badges with different scores or points attached to them, you can assign badges to different leaderboard positions and facilitate internal contests!

Contests - a great way to get your learners talking about your?learning program. Create these for your users by assigning goals that are to be achieved within a specific time period. The goal should be for them to earn badges or points to receive a ranking on your leaderboards for each specific contest. Some you might consider running could be “Most Course Completions” or “Scored Highest in Course”.

Part 6 - The Big Picture:

The holy grail for learning organisations is to learners who are engaged and bought into your programs. They actively want to participate and can see the benefits of doing so for themselves and their organisation. Gamification can be rocket-fuel to make this possible, for your employees, partners or customers.

Want to see how you can take gamification from an idea to reality? Reach out to hear about how Docebo can use game mechanics like badges, points, leaderboards, rewards and contest to supercharge your learning experiences. Or maybe you want to hear the secret sauce of my Kahoot quizmaster game? Either way, if you want to use gamification for your learning programs, I'd love to chat ??

Thanks for joining me down the rabbit hole of gamification, and hope you'll join me next week as we continue on this amazing journey, together ??

Until then, take care

-Harald