Using Gamification to Teach Complex Topics

How do you make learning about property salesand loan securitization something that your associates want to do? Youmay be thinking, well it depends who they are and what job they perform foryour company. Fair enough, so think of it this way—how do you make learningabout property sales and loan securitization interesting and enjoyable for anyassociate in your company? The answer for us was simple. Make it a game and letour associates play.

Many of us that have worked in the learning and development worldfor an extended period of time have had the opportunity to work on a variety ofprojects for one or many companies. One of the things we believe in ourorganization is that everyone is a leader, and developing strong leaders iscritical to our success financially and culturally. This can be especially truewhen you consider the impact our leaders have on the bottom line. As such, wemake a significant effort in our leadership development programs to ensure ourleaders understand how we make our money. At the end of the day, we are in thebusiness of sending people on vacation and helping to build lasting memoriesfor them and their families to share. If any part of that process is managedpoorly it can have a direct impact on our ability to make money and provideworld-class service to our owners.

For years our consumer finance division has been using awonderful live demonstration that helps our people understand the process fromthe time we market a tour to the final collection and distribution of money. Amember of our leadership development team, Jay Davenport, saw an opportunity totake this learning moment and make it accessible to our entire company. Jayasked a simple question, “What if we turned that presentation into an onlinegame?” That simple question started the wheels spinning and our voyage into theworld of gamification began.

Our game is affectionately referred to as Wynopoly (Figure1). In this game our associates learn about the processes, challenges, andcosts for establishing a resort, hiring staff to market and sell vacationownership, securitization of the loan, and ongoing collection of payments anddues. These are truly complex processes that require the learner to understanddown payments, debts owed to various internal and external parties, andfinancial concepts like advance rate, cash flow, and rescission.

Figure 1: Wynopoly is an important part of the leadershipdevelopment program at Wyndham Hotels

The game has two major sections. The first section explainshow we go about “putting a new dot on the map,” the process for generatinginterest from customers, and the concepts behind how we generate cash flow. Theprocess and groups involved in developing a resort are many. There aresignificant costs and effort required before our owners have the opportunity toenjoy a resort. We have countless people and groups involved from productdevelopment, legal, quality assurance, consumer finance, and marketing andsales to name a few. Everyone has a key role to play in the success of ourbusiness. The first section of the course explains the process so the learnerunderstands how their decisions in the game will impact their cash flow andultimately their successful creation of a resort (Figures 2 and 3).

Figure 2: Wynopoly begins with an overview of the resortdevelopment process

Figure 3: Understanding cash flow is a critical outcome of Wynopoly

After completing the first section the interactive portionof the game begins (Figure 4). Now, the associate is in charge of selecting thetype of resort they want to develop, the place where they want to market theirnew resort to customers, and the type of sales person they would like to haveselling vacation ownership interest to our customers. The choices the associatemakes have a direct impact on their ability to generate a sale. If they choosean ideal marketing location and a quality sales person they will generatemaximum cash flow for our business. If they choose a poor marketing locationand/or a poor salesperson they will generate a less than ideal sale or will failto sell vacation ownership due to one of many factors the game tracks andcalculates as they go.

Figure 4: The interactive portion of Wynopoly begins with decidingwhat type of resort to develop

Remember, the game is fun but it is also about teaching ourassociates how their decisions as leaders impact our success as a company. Atthe end of the game the associate learns how their choices impacted theirability to sell vacation ownership interest and how that impacts our bottomline as a company. If they made less than ideal choices the game providescorrective feedback so they know how they could have approached the processdifferently to get a better outcome.

This was an extremely important part of the game and thelearning. We felt the learner needed an opportunity to reflect on theirchoices. By providing specific feedback based on one of many scenarios thelearner can experience some of the nuance and challenges that face ourbusiness. If they do fail to secure a sale in their first attempt or it was notan ideal sale they can try again. The time to reflect and consider differentchoices should help them to reach a better outcome.

At this point we are really focusing on developing theircritical thinking skills. Failing to reach the optimal outcome provides alearning moment and their ability to think critically about their decision andthe impact will teach them an important skill. The ability to immediately learnfrom your mistakes and apply the learning is a critical part of what makes thegame effective as a learning tool. Once they do progress to the end of the gamethey get to see how the loan is securitized, how we make payments to internaland external parties, and what impact cash flow has on our bottom line.

This game will be a key part of our leadership developmentprogram for all of our people leaders and accessible by any associate acrossour company. We believe strongly that the best way to grow leaders is toempower them with information, build a strong understanding of all aspects ofour business, and provide opportunities for future leaders to identifythemselves through their efforts to learn about our business even when thelearning is not required for their current role.

As this was our first attempt to produce a learning solutionusing gamification we did intentionally limit the complexity of the game. Thefirst reason was to ensure the game was playable by associates at all levels ina reasonable amount of time. As it is built currently this game can becompleted inside of 20 minutes which we know is a benchmark for approximatelyhow long learners can focus and maximize retention of concepts. We do seeopportunities in the future to increase the complexity of the game, addadditional choices and variables, and potentially grow this into a game that cansupport teams or competitive group play.

Technically this game is being built in a customizedCaptivate framework and will be distributed to our associates via our learningmanagement system. The course will track completion and, as stated earlier, willserve as a significant part of our leadership development curriculum. We alsosee this as an important course for building business acumen in our current andfuture leaders. This supports our core competencies and grows our bench offuture leaders.

This game is being developed to support both computer andmobile (iPad) users. We have over 15,000 employees at Wyndham VacationOwnership and approximately 5,000 who are on an iPad every day. Making sure thecourse was accessible and working regardless of device was an important part ofthe development.

All of the design and development work on this game was doneinternally and in partnership with our consumer finance division and by anincredibly talented group of designers and developers in our Knowledge Servicesteam that support our learning and development teams across Wyndham Worldwide.