Implementing Effective Game-Like eLearning Content: Case Study

Implementing Effective Game-Like eLearning Content: Case Study
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Summary: Corporate Learning and Development teams are always looking for new ideas to help them achieve their training goals. The discussion of using games for learning has been going on for quite a while now, but only recently I had a chance to work on an interesting project!

Case Study For Implementing Effective Game-Like eLearning Content

A major challenge when training large amounts of people in a corporate setting is making sure that your learners are engaged and remain engaged. For learners to succeed in a corporate environment, content and delivery needs to be meaningful and relatable. But let’s face it! Learners need to see something new, something different from typical eLearning - a group of pictures and text on the screen along with narration! We now know that game-based eLearning results to the wanted reaction and the engagement of the learner. Better information retention, greater motivation, and increased productivity are the direct results of game-like eLearning content.

There are many attempts to implement an effective game-like eLearning content for corporate training, some of them have been proven successful. But we at PDEXI wanted to do something different. A Corporate Trivia game that can work as a stand alone application or within a Learning Management System and will engage learners as they compete on score answering questions related to corporate training material!

4 Tips For Designing A Trivia Game For Corporate Training

But how do you design a Trivia game to work in corporate environment setting? After many tests and feedback cycles it was concluded that the best way to implement it is as follows:

1. Use Avatars

Make sure to custom design avatars to accurately represent each questions category and reflect corporate culture.

2. Create A Question Bank

Create a question bank and Insert as many multiple choice questions as possible organized into categories of your choice.

3. Allow Learners To Choose

One of the avatars when landing on the spin wheel will allow the learner to choose any of the available categories of question. This will enhance the game and allow the user to collect all the avatars adding to the learners motivation to keep playing and learning.

4. Apply Game-Logic Design

Design the game logic so that:

  • Learners are challenged to answer questions organized in categories to get score and collect the category avatar.
  • Provides self study material (short videos and PDFs) in case the learner needs to master a certain category of questions and claim it's avatar.
  • Learners will get 6 lives (tries) every 12 hours. Each live will allow them to answer as many questions as they can go through as long as they get it right.
  • Each question can be answered in 30 seconds. If the learner does not select an answer or if they select the wrong answer; they will lose a life!

Using Trivia for training is not a new concept; in 2014 Gene Jones wrote an article on Making Employees Smarter Via Trivia and mentioned the following five ways trivia can make employees smarter and mobilize breakthrough thinking:

  • Improving cognitive skills by providing mental cross-training known as asymmetric thinking. By inspiring previously unexplored thought patterns, asymmetric thinking stimulates the brain to fire on more cylinders, thereby facilitating greater neuroplasticity that generates greater creativity, innovation, and problem-solving capabilities.
  • Exemplifying transformational play, seamlessly shifting participants to be more alert and receptive to useful information, thus accelerating the learning curve.
  • Facilitating better memory by increasing accessible intelligence. This is accomplished by exercising memory recall systems in the brain.
  • Building community through the sharing of common knowledge, serving as a unique social interaction and communication model.
  • Assisting in concept formation by providing targeted streams of information in a question and answer format, thereby dramatizing concepts by connecting the previously unconnected relationships between events and ideas. This leads to greater understanding of targeted subjects.

In the past it was difficult and expensive for many companies to invest in designing and developing a solution to serve as a corporate training tool. But now, thanks to cloud computing companies can subscribe -with a small monthly fee- to a bundle of eLearning services including:

  • A social Learning Management System.
  • An online library of bite-size soft-skills training material and video courses.
  • eLearning authoring tools to create custom videos and learning scenarios.

All of which can integrate together using an API and feed into a single report! furthermore, edTech companies are constantly growing and supplying the market with intelligent solutions for complex corporate training problems.

Corporate Trivia is one of these promising solutions that -we hope- can serve corporate training teams in reaching their goals with a minimal investment.

Do you think corporate training using games is effective? Tell us your opinion in the comments.