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When Gamification Goes Wrong: Avoid These Hazards When Gamifying eLearning Content
In a headlong rush to embrace gamification, eLearningcreators can lose sight of their goals. When implemented poorly, gamificationcan undermine learning and engagement. Avoiding the hazards described here canensure that gamification serves learning objectives.
Eyes on the (wrong) goal
It sounds obvious: Well-designed corporate eLearning must teachskills or information that is clearly connected to learners’ on-the-jobperformance. But when structuralgamification—applying game mechanics to learning content—enters thepicture, designers often forget this fact.
Players—uh, learners—might also lose sight of the real goalsof eLearning if they become focused on earning rewards, whether points, badges,and status, or more concrete prizes: The content becomes simply a means to anend. And that “end” has nothing to do with job skills or performance. Employeesmight keep playing to earn a prize, maintain their lead, or increase theirstatus, but this type of game play won’t help them master and retainjob-related knowledge or improve needed skills.
Another problem with extrinsic rewards like points andprizes is that they devalue the content or actual learning objectives. SebastianDeterding, in his talk “Meaningful Play: Getting Gamification Right,” offers the example of a game in whichplayers progressed by performing acts of kindness. But people on the receivingend of these gifts were offended that the person did something “nice” not outof caring but to earn points. No “kindness” was involved, making the encountersfake and devoid of value. Gamification is not appropriate for all types ofcontent, and instructional designers should consider both the content and thelearning goals when weighing the option of gamification.
Mandatory “play” is not engaging
Managers and instructional designers often turn to learninggames or gamification of eLearning content to improve learner engagement withcontent. That can certainly work, when the gamified content and associatedrewards are meaningful and relevant to the learners. But requiring employees toplay—forcing engagement—doesn’t enhance learning or improve performance. AsDeterding emphasizes in “Meaningful Play,” work is what you have to doand play is what you want to do—even if they are the same activity.
Even attaching extrinsic rewards, such as points and badges,to an activity can make it seem less voluntary, thereby damaging motivation andperformance, depending on how the reward is framed.
Proponents of gamification cite the motivational aspect ofrewards. In fact, behavioral science states that rewarding behavior should leadto more of that behavior. That is sometimes true: Many individuals aremotivated by the chance to earn rewards that are given as a marker ofcompetence or achievement. But this type of motivation tends to be short-lived.“What the studies keep telling us is that rewards, like punishments, tend notonly to be ineffective—particularly over the long haul—but often to underminethe very thing we’re trying to promote,” Alfie Kohn, a writer and lecturer on human behavior, education, and parenting, writes ina blog post, “The Bonus Effect.”
The flip side of that argument views rewards as a method ofcontrolling behavior by conflicting with learners’ need for autonomy.Participation rewards, which are given when learners engage in a particularactivity, regardless of performance or progress, are regarded as a way toinfluence or even control learners’ behavior. This type of reward can actuallyharm those learners’ motivation to engage in the activity, even if the activityis inherently enjoyable: “Extrinsic motivators (rewards) tend to reduce intrinsicmotivation (people’s interest in, or commitment to, what they’re doing),” Kohnwrites.
Gamification can’t fix poor content
A fundamental problem with structural gamification is thatit often seeks to drive engagement by attaching superficial game mechanics tocontent that is boring. “Read five articles to get 10 points” is no moreappealing than just plain “read five articles” if the articles are poorlywritten, dull, or irrelevant to a learner’s job. And if the 10 points just getthe learner’s name bumped up on a work-group scorecard, well, who cares? Wrappinggame mechanics—adding points or manufacturing a competition—around bad content doesn’timprove the underlying content.
Done well, though, gamification can make otherwise dull topicsengaging. How? Through contentgamification—transforming content to make it more game-like. It might mean addingelements of storytelling to eLearning content or creating characters thatlearners can engage with or even become. Content gamification builds acompelling story or challenge around required informational content, mathproblems, or procedural steps. It might set out a series of connected goalsthat build into something worth achieving.
Some games reward the wrong behavior
Losing the focus on learning goals can, in the worst case,lead to reinforcing behaviors that don’t support those goals or might even beoppositional to them. An example cited by Deterding in his talk is Tumblarity,a tool introduced in 2009.
This tool, on the Tumblr microblogging platform, provided a “Tumblarityscore,” which was essentially a popularity score—how many followers a Tumblr accounthad, how often content was shared. Users quickly found that they could increasetheir scores by posting incessantly, regardless of content quality. But Tumblrwas all about posting creative and thoughtful original or curated content; Tumblarityencouraged behavior that was antithetical to the goals of the community. Usersobjected and the tool was removed.
Just as rewards can sap motivation and harm performance,rewarding competitive or status-seeking behavior can undermine team performanceor collaboration; if a company is seeking to enhance soft skills like empathyor collaborative problem-solving, ramping up the competition might do more harmthan good. Instructional designers need to test a game concept carefully toensure that the rewards are appropriate, that players cannot easily “game thesystem” to inflate their point totals, and that the rewarded behaviors actuallyserve learning goals.
