Ask an Expert: Gamification has become a buzz word within training development, but how can you implement it in a professional setting without diminishing the important message behind your training?

Gamification can take on many forms within online training, and can often be a great way to incentivize your audience to complete a course. While “gaming” can evoke images of a complex video game that would detract from the training subject matter, gamification has actually proven to create more engagement for learners.
Gamification uses strategic elements of a game to draw a learner to want to interact with training content, but does not necessarily require that a full revamp of all training courses to include gaming features. Simple steps like creating a rewards system for completing tasks or courses is enough to draw interest to training.
Consider these “easy” steps to start your journey into gamification, which you can offer within the TRACE LMS platform, and likely most training platforms currently available:
Design custom social media badges that learners earn when completing a course, and can share their accomplishments online
Create friendly contests among learners to see who can complete the most courses
Develop a Leaderboard in which your top scorers for training are listed within the training homepage whenever logging into the site
A few other things to consider, if access to online gamification functionality is limited, could be creating competitions between departments to see who can complete all of their training in the least amount of time. Winners can receive small prizes, like free coffee, or a company t-shirt or water bottle.
Simple elements like these can draw attention to learning, and keep learners interested in completing their required training. Creating competitions around scoring will keep your learning audience focused on the information they are consuming to be sure that they answer questions around the content correctly and appropriately.
It is also proven that social interaction while learning increases retention of that learning by 50%. Allowing your learners to engage in a friendly competition, or even a simple discussion and communication about the training that they all must complete helps them to learn together and reinforce your message.
Ready to get started? Please reach out to training@TRACEinternational.org and we can help you develop gamification through badges, and even content development! Happy gaming!
Associate Director, Compliance Training, TRACE
This post is part of our “Ask an Expert” series where we take questions submitted by readers and ask an expert in the compliance field to provide insight. If you have a question you would like answered, please submit here. |