Gamification: Recipe for Successful Learning—or Just One Ingredient?

Gamification isgetting a lot of press these days, with promises of great improvements inlearning. And while companies are citing successful employee engagement ingamifed learning, the real question is whether gamification itself is a recipefor learning success, or is it just one ingredient?

Let’s define “learningsuccess”

To answer thatquestion, you need to first define what learning success is. In a corporateenvironment, learning success is the ability for employees to operationalizetheir learning, that is, to successfully apply knowledge and skills forimproved job performance.

For years,organizations have been trying to find the perfect recipe for successfullearning. Sadly, our traditional recipes have been a bit like a soufflé: they lookgood starting out, but somewhere along the line they fall flat.

Gamification isn’t therecipe we’ve been looking for either. But it is one key ingredient to achievingcorporate learning success. And by mixing it with two other key ingredients,gamification can become an incredibly effective contributor to learning outcomesand one that should be in every learning-cook’s pantry (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Keepthis card in your recipe box!

Ingredient #1: Personalization

According to the USDepartment of Education, personalization refers to instruction that is paced tolearning needs, tailored to learning preferences, and tailored to the specificinterests of different learners. (See References at the end of this article.) Thisis in direct contrast to our traditional methods of corporate learning, whichserve up the same information to all learners.

In eLearning,personalization is often combined with adaptive learning, which modifieslearning content based on the learner’s success, always challenging and movingthe learner towards subject mastery. This combination has a substantial impacton learning, because of several key elements:

• Relevance to the job. When employees understand how the knowledge andskills apply to their job, their motivation to learn will increase.
• Relevance to the employee. If the learner expects the content to be personallyuseful, motivation to learn will be increased. Conversely, when adults areforced to learn something they believe is irrelevant, the resulting resentmentcan become a barrier to meaningful learning.
• Addresses gaps in knowledge. It’s far more effective to deliver learning thataddresses specific gaps in knowledge, especially if they’ve been identified asimportant for improved job performance.
• Meets the needs of generational and culturallydiverse employees. With asmany as four generations and multiple cultures in the workplace, learning that canaccommodate these differences will be far more effective.

Ingredient #2: Brain science

Of all the developments in brain research over the past 10years, there are three key cognitive strategies that can have the largestimpact on the way we deliver corporate learning.

The spacing effect

Also known as interval reinforcement, the drip approach, ordistributed practice, the spacing effect states that long-term retention of informationis better when it is repeatedly presented with specific time gaps between eachrepetition. This is in direct contrast to cramming, which involves studyinglarge amounts of data continuously over a short time period.

Many companies implementshort bursts of learning for as little as five minutes a day, to continuouslyreinforce prior learning, or to deliver new learning. Repetition improvesretention of the information learned, and long-term retention is strengthenedas spacing between repetitions increases over time.

Retrieval practice

Also known as the“testing effect,” retrieval practice provides aquick learning chunk followed by recall testing, a refresh of the knowledge,and another recall test. Research has proven that retrieval practice producessuperior learning over conventional study methods; and has demonstrated that the act of retrieving information frommemory—even as few as two times—actually producesa memory trace that is resistant toforgetting.

Many companies implementretrieval practice as a daily Q&A program, consisting of a short series ofquestions—often between two and five per day. When a question is successfullyanswered, the employee moves on to new material. If the answer is incorrect,the employee gets the correct answer and will be periodically asked again untilthey master the material.

Confidence-based learning

Research by Dr. JamesBruno, a professor of education at UCLA, has shown that it’s the combination ofknowledge plus confidence that leads to appropriate behavior and empowerspeople to act—critical in areas like decision-making skills, safe machineoperation, and crisis intervention.

Based on a two-dimensionalassessment model, confidence-based learning asks employees to rate theirconfidence in the correctness of their answer. This helps employees morecarefully consider their answer and confidence in their knowledge, contributingto a deeper learning experience. But it also gives the company key insight intoareas that they should focus on to help employees achieve true mastery ofknowledge and skills.

Ingredient #3: Gamification

We believe that gamificationis the “secret sauce” in the eLearning recipe: It uses all of the bestattributes of games that bring out personal qualities such as people’s naturaldesire for competition, achievement, status, self-expression, altruism, andclosure. Its most important contribution, though, is its ability to engagepeople in the learning process, and have them wanting more. There are somepretty compelling reasons for this.

• Everyoneloves games. In fact, 67 percent of American households play computer or videogames—and while 26 percent of those are over the age of 50, it’s the 74 percentunder age 50 that are moving into the workforce with their strong preferencefor games. (See References at the end of this article.)
• Gamificationboosts achievement, and encourages employees to become achievers. People enjoycompetition—whether against themselves or others—and gamified elements suchleaderboards for peer recognition, or points systems for tangible rewards feedinto the intrinsic and extrinsic motivators that drive people to participate.
• Gamificationencourages people to seek knowledge. Many of the games people routinely playrequire them to obtain knowledge, which helps condition them to the sameapproach in a gamified learning environment, especially if there are rewardsinvolved.
• Gamificationencourages perseverance. In a traditional training environment, poor testscores are often demotivating. When playing games though, people routinelyexperience failure and understand that if they keep trying, they willeventually succeed. They bring that attitude into a gamified learningenvironment, and keep persevering even if test scores are not as good as theywould like.

References

US Department ofEducation. National Education Technology Plan 2010. Found online 20 August 2014.https://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

Entertainment Software Rating Board. https://www.esrb.org/about/video-game-industry-statistics.jsp