Gamification Best Practices
Staff learning with gamification gives rise to various best practices, eradicating boring and unappealing corporate training for employees.
Utilising gaming designs and features in corporate training enlightens learners, boosting productivity and engagement. In your gamification incorporation strategy, it is important to consider the best practices for effective implementation.
We outline the top four practices for successful execution of gamification in your employee training strategy.
1. Introduce a leaderboard feature for progress tracking and motivation
Leaderboards are particularly useful to track progress of employees’ learning, as well as introduce an aspect of competition amongst colleagues for the first position on the leaderboard. For effective implementation of gamification, a middle ground between lessons that are facile and too difficult needs to be established. This will avoid the possibility of negative connotations surrounding the concept. The build up of skills will result in employees’ involvement in a fun learning experiencing, resulting in them continuing to progress through course content over a long period of time.
2. Release information in digestible, bite-sized bursts
Cognitive overload refers to when the learner is overwhelmed with information, causing reduced retention and the loss of previously retained knowledge. It is proven that learners are only able to withhold 3-5 new pieces of information at any given time. To counteract this, the release of new information in bursts is the most effective and reliable way for learners to maintain greater amounts of information in a shorter amount of time.
3. The 2 R’s: Rewards and recognition
The two R’s are the most important elements to a happy workplace, and here’s why. It has been proven that employees who feel valued and recognised perform to a significantly higher standard in every aspect of their corporate ventures. Translating incentives for employee encouragement in the form of rewards is the most effective way to embed long-term motivation in the mindsets of employees, having a lasting effect on the achievement of corporate objectives. Gamification builds a sense of healthy competition amongst employees, providing the opportunity to work together to achieve company and personal goals. Both of the R’s are at the forefront of gamification’s intention, hence its effectiveness in the performance of employees in various sectors of the company.
4. Build on previously understood knowledge
Our current workforce generations have grown up with technology at their fingertips, answering every possible question on the universe. If you don’t believe us, go ask Google if Google knows everything. And, yes, we just proved our own point. In other words, to suit the strengths of our working generation, information is best presented through technological means. Further, educating employees by building on previously understood information, as the greatest amount information is retained through reinforcing what is already understood by learners. This is what we call spaced repetition presented through the gamification element of microlessons.
Want to know more about gamification for effective company training?
If you’d like to use gamification to turbocharge your workforce training for practices, policies, procedures or products, get in touch with EdApp at enquiries@edapp.com. You can also try EdApp’s spaced repetition implementation, Brain Boost spaced repetition app, for free by signing up here.
Source:
Designing Digitally
Curated course examples
Author
Guest Author Daniel Brown
Daniel Brown is a senior technical editor and writer that has worked in the education and technology sectors for two decades. Their background experience includes curriculum development and course book creation.