Companies Getting Serious About Serious Games: 6 Reasons Why
The millennial workforce has grown up with technology. They are comfortable with all tech things and can easily adapt to new functionalities and devices. They practically do all activities on their mobile devices. Imagine asking them to go through a two-hour long training sitting at one place! Even if they agree to it, it will be a sheer waste of their time as they will not remember a thing!
Instead, use serious games for their training requirement. If your learners have fun while learning, they will remember the concepts better and apply them in order to enhance their productivity. Training with serious games helps your employees to grasp complex topics easily.
Here are 6 reasons why learning with serious games is a huge trend to look out for.
1. Serious Games Boost Employee Engagement
It is not easy to keep the learners engaged. They are hard-pressed for time and they like multitasking. As a result, it is difficult to hold their attention for long. If you do not offer them something of interest, they will not take a second look at it. Game-based training is a good way to tackle this problem: The interactivity included in serious games keeps the learners hooked to it; the narratives and gamification motivate the learners; the higher the motivation, the better engaged the learner is; an engaged learner learns better; they remember the concepts and apply them in their job role.
2. Serious Games Encourage Practical Application
Classroom-based or traditional eLearning may not be as interactive as it needs to be. But, serious games take it to a different level. They encourage learners to learn by doing. They allow the learners to make decisions, control their own moves, and so on. Training through serious games allows the learning experience to move in the direction your learner makes it go. This helps the learners take ownership of their success and failure. The outcome will be based on what actions they take. If they fail, they know what actions lead to the result and vice versa. So, online serious games help your employee learn by doing.
3. Serious Games Offer Instant Feedback
When training with serious games, your employees receive instant results. If they make the right move, they are rewarded with badges, points, and bragging rights. They are showered with recognition from their managers and peers. If they make a wrong move, they lose the opportunity to advance to the next level. Either way, the feedback is instant. This helps learners immediately see where they are going wrong. They can rectify their actions and practice the correct method, which prevents them from committing bad habits to their long-term memory.
4. Serious Games Are Measurabl
Determining and measuring the return-on-investment of traditional training might be difficult. It is not so easy to understand the attention span of the learners there. But, with serious games the metrics are available. Analytics can do a deep dive into your employee’s mind to determine how engaged they were in the game-based learning. The data captured can be further used to fine-tune and optimize the training.
5. Serious Games Build Collaborative Learning
Serious games encourage collaborative learning. Games are usually played in a social and collaborative environment. Your employees have to work together with their peers, at some point or the other, to achieve a goal. Even if there are individual tasks, they have to compete with each other to top the leaderboard. This builds their collaborative and social decision making, critical thinking, problem-solving, and people management.
6. Serious Games Offer A 'Safe' Environment
Serious games offer a practical and controlled environment where learners can practice their job skills. Employees who have critical job responsibilities cannot afford to practice and experiment at their work place. One mistake may cause irreparable damage to the organization. Game-based learning environments offer them a virtual pad where they can practice as much as they wish to. Even if they make mistakes, there will not be any real-world consequences involved. So, your employees can make mistakes and learn from them. That way, they will be more confident at their work place.
Serious games are extremely productive for corporate training if they are designed with the social and technical factors in mind. There are no one-size fits all solution. Each solution needs to be tailored to specific needs. You need to enlist the help of experts.
Designing Digitally, Inc. develops serious games for a platform that fits your organization’s needs. We can output them as SCORM packages or xAPI for your LMS, websites accessed in a browser, executable files for Windows, or custom applications for iOS.
Get in touch with Designing Digitally to discuss more regarding your serious game needs!
