Many of us believe that ‘work would be better if it were more fun in this day and age. However, how does this work in reality? When you look for methods to drive employee motivation and engagement, gamification may be the answer that you are looking for. Today, the benefits of gamification in learning are no longer underestimated. It enhances learner engagement and makes corporate training much more dynamic. Since it helps build an effective learning system, gamification is welcomed by almost every learner today.
What works in favor of gamification is our single biggest motivation – the desire to win! When it is applied to learning, it assists learners in developing skills with the help of an applied and practical hands-on approach. There are many compelling benefits that ‘gamification of learning’ brings to transform learning for the better. Here is a more detailed look:
- Makes Learning Fun and Interactive
Irrespective of the subject matter or your audience, gamification of learning helps create educational, exciting, and entertaining content. You may think that it turns work into games; however, that is not the case. Everyone has an innate drive to compete, learn, and outperform others and themselves. Gamification plays on the learner’s psychology to drive human engagement.
Gamification also offers learners a chance to compete with each other for rewards. These rewards can prove to be supremely gratifying for the learners. Giving out virtual badges could positively reinforce learners to come back for more content.
Thanks to the interactivity it provides, gamification makes learning exciting and informative at the same time. Also, when role-play and competitive elements are set up in the right manner, they work to add an immersive angle and make learning fun. All in all, learners always tend to engage with a more enjoyable learning program.
- Create an Addiction to Learning
What would you define as the most important objective of learning? The answer will most certainly be – instilling new knowledge in your learners. But, if that knowledge is not retained, will it be useful for them?
A surprising benefit of ‘gamification of learning is the natural high it provides to learners through leveling up. This ‘high’ helps the learner retain the newly learned information much better.
- Provides Real-Time Feedback
Imagine a situation where we self-review the things that we do regularly but only once every year. Will this be beneficial to us? Will this help us improve?
The ‘gamification of learning’ allows learners to work towards measurable, meaningful, and real-time targets and receive upper-level feedback when they achieve those targets. It is a given fact that it is unreasonable to expect too many improvements if one is not aware of the areas they need to do better. With the help of gamification, learners are told what they should know to improve regularly.
- Increased Engagement with Content
Gamification in eLearning provides learners with the chance to engage with the content in an informal and effective learning environment. If learners feel excited to learn, they’ll consume and retain the information in a better manner.
- Promoting Social Interaction and Competition
Gamification techniques help leverage the natural desire of an individual for socializing. It can promote social interaction for a more effective way of learning. Publishing a leader board facilitates a sense of community within the organization, and it allows employees to gauge how they are performing among their peers, encouraging healthy competition.
Badges are a visual representation of achievements that have been earned and collected in a gamified activity. They increase a learner’s motivation and sense of competence. When learners earn badges through badge-based learning pathways, it increases social interaction.
We all know that competition motivates many people, and gamification uses this same approach. Today, the possibilities of incorporating gamified elements into a corporate learning program are huge. Gamification increases a learner’s awareness and engagement and their productivity as well. This, in turn, enhances the overall performance of your organization.
Many still feel that gamification does not necessarily result in a learning outcome. It is high time that such a notion is changed and gamification is utilized as an engaging learning strategy.
