Why are games fun? Why do we engage in games? The answer is because they have the elements of challenge, mastery, fun, and socialization. These are the elements of games that we can leverage to promote learning.
An example of this in a classroom setting is to use game elements in a presentation. First, divide the audience into two teams and give them instructions on how to use their cell phones to text answers via an audience response system (I use PollEverywhere.com). Then, ask a question and have audience members respond to the question via a text answer. In real-time, the learners can see their teams’ answers as a percentage of respondents for each choice versus the other teams’ answers. This allows learners to feel they are part of a larger social group (their team) and they are challenged to answer the questions. After all, the audience responses are collected, reveal the correct answer. Whenever I use this technique, I find a great deal of laughter and fun during the presentation because the elements of games keep it fun as well as educational.
Another example is to start the learning event with a challenge. Humans love challenges and it’s a large part of why we play games and it is a great design tool for creating gamification. So rather than start an eLearning lesson or classroom lecture with a list of objectives, instead, start with a challenge. For example here are two typical objectives for teaching skills required during an audit:
- Adhere to the proper policy for providing information to clients
- Understand what is permissible to share with clients and what is not
Scrap the objectives and provide the learner with a challenge:
You are gathering data during the first day of an audit. During lunch, Mary approaches you and tells you that she has something important to discuss. The two of you go to your office and she makes an accusation that the VP of Finance is hiding an account…
What is the first thing you should do?
Which learning environment would you rather step into? You can still study the proper policy and what can be shared with clients, but now you are doing it in the context of a challenge and a story and it is far more engaging than learning content listed in a bulleted format and more educationally sound.
Effective gamification taps into emotions, challenge, socialization, and mastery.