Everyone sees the power of gamification—a trending concept in the learning and development industry—in the workplace, but is either too expensive or no one knows how to implement it. Learning professionals are being asked to do more with less every day. So if you have already created a catalog of eLearning courses for your organization in Articulate Storyline, how can you make these more engaging? How can you save thousands of dollars by adding basic gamification elements to your existing and new courseware?

Gamification is a hot topic, but where is the research to back up the use of gamification? Anyone interested in gamification for learning will be interested in seeing empirical results to be better informed about whether or not gamification is appropriate for their learning environment.

What are some creative ways to develop leaders? Business acumen is typically obtained through experience. Developing learning solutions that grow business acumen in an effective way is difficult to produce. Especially when the content is nuanced or complex. Gamification is one of the topics buzzing around the industry, but if you speak to many people, there is little application beyond putting badges on existing content.

The use of badges, points, leaderboards, and other concepts that are commonly found in games have enthusiastically been incorporated into online training by instructional specialists hoping to create a more engaging and motivational learning experience for end users. But is the gamification of learning actually yielding the results that warrant the hype?

Taking the plunge and deciding to create a serious game is an exciting and daunting task. Critical for Checkers and Rally’s was to find the right partner to help the company realize the benefits of this learning method. Other companies had tried, failed, or abandoned their investment. The mission was to realize the significant benefits by developing a serious game that could drive results by reducing costs, improve proficiency, encourage engagement, and deliver effective learning.

Over the last decade, there has been an industry-wide emphasis on developing learning objects with embedded gamification elements. However, taking the concept of gamification past the singular learning objects to the more global, overall learner experience is more of a rarity.

Many eLearning professionals are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention; it seems everyone is working to make the best serious game that will enhance learning objectives and retention. The biggest setbacks for some have been little-to-no planning, tough-to-pinpoint metrics, little-to-no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support.