Gamification is more than just a buzzword. Far from being child’s play, HR and L&D professionals should not underestimate the benefits of gamification in corporate training. Infusing gameplay and leveraging competitiveness not only makes your corporate training more dynamic, but it can also significantly increase learner engagement.
Why Does Gamification Motivate Students?
Why would 22 people gather on a muddy, cold field on a rainy February day to kick a ball around? Football is one of the world’s greatest pastimes for several reasons. First, because of its simplicity, it is accessible to almost anyone; second, it contains a powerful motivator: the desire to win.
If that goal were removed—pardon the pun—the game would become instantly obsolete. Football, rugby, hockey, baseball, and other competitive sports rely on a competitive spirit to attract a large audience.
Take this motivating factor’ and apply it to learning; the result is gamification. A simple concept that fosters learner engagement, aids in the transformation of perceptions and attitudes, and fosters the development of skills through a practical, applied, and thoroughly hands-on approach to learning.
Although the full list is much longer, we’ve compiled the five most compelling gamification benefits.
It Makes Education Enjoyable And Engaging
No matter who your target audience is or what your subject is, the gamification of learning may assist you in producing engaging, instructive, and entertaining content. Despite its best efforts, it does make use of the psychological factors that influence how motivated people are to engage in their task.
Each of us has felt the want to compete, advance, and do better than others and even ourselves.
The benefits can be extremely motivating and gratifying.
Because of its interaction, one of the main advantages of gamification is that it makes learning interesting and informative. Role-playing and competitive aspects provide an immersive element that, when well implemented, may merely make studying enjoyable.
Creates An Addiction To Learning
Instilling new knowledge in your students must be the single most significant goal of learning, if you had to define it. What use is knowledge, though, if it cannot be retained?
The natural high it can provide us and the impact that “high” has on memory retention are two additional, perhaps unanticipated benefits of gamification in education. When we succeed at something important to us, such as winning a game, our brain releases dopamine to reward us.
Dopamine is released when we learn something new, which is rewarding for many people. The rather fortunate side effect of this natural drug “fix” is that the rise in dopamine levels aids in the retention of the newly learned material.
Provides Students With The Chance To See Real-World Applications
Getting your hands “dirty” is the third benefit of gamification. While learning on the job, applying new skills to practical circumstances might help them stick.
The gamification of learning enables students to see the benefits and applicability of the subject matter in the real world. They can observe first hand how the decisions they make in the game have effects or yield rewards.
Provides Immediate Feedback
Imagine if we only evaluated our progress in life once a year. Lack of self-review might have negative effects on our work, relationships, and whatever else we did on a daily basis.
It’s a little strange that many companies just do performance assessments once a year rather than more frequently or even on an ongoing basis.
Employees can work towards current, measurable, and significant goals and receive superior feedback when they are met thanks to the gamification of learning.
Gamification Improves The Educational Process
Since it is difficult to include all the top advantages of gamification in a list of the “Top 5,” we will, to use a term frequently used in the context of games, “cheat” and provide you with a list within a list.
Here are five additional advantages of gamification in education.
More Interaction With The Information
Gamification in e-learning gives students the chance to interact with the material in a productive, relaxed setting. Learners are more likely to remember material if they are enthusiastic about their studies.
Learning That’s More Enjoyable And Effective
Gamification makes learning pleasurable, and as a result, learners are much more likely to engage with a fun learning programme than they are with a dull one.
Competition Is A Driving Force.
Competition inspires motivation in a lot of people. Competition with others for high scores, prizes, and leaderboard positions is made possible via gamification.
Increased Cooperation
In competitive environments, learners can collaborate with a team to accomplish group goals in gamified learning systems. This promotes discussion, debate, analytical thinking, and strategic planning.
Prizes Come With Points.
Use of leaderboards, badges, and other gamified markers of achievement is one of the “carrots” used to promote learner engagement in gamification.
Final Words
You can notice the addictive qualities of being involved in a virtual environment, pursuing goals, and receiving virtual rewards if you’ve ever observed an electronic gamer at work.
The worlds available for exploration in many console games are “open” and essentially limitless.
Additionally, gamification makes the imaginative world that gaming components can bring to learning accessible. Our imaginations are limitless when employed appropriately, and there are countless opportunities to include gamified components into your corporate learning programmes.
Gamification improves the success of your organization since it raises learner engagement, awareness, and productivity. Finally, we can assert with confidence that playing is beneficial to business.
