In this article, we'll explore the world of gamification and provide you with practical ideas for incorporating gamification into your Promote programs. We'll discuss how Promote features can be used for gamification and provide tips for designing effective gamification experiences.
Content
Introduction
Are you looking for new ways to engage your learners and make your training programs more effective? Have you considered using some elements of gamification for your programs? Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts to make activities more fun, engaging, and motivating. It has been proven to increase learner engagement, improve knowledge retention, and enhance the overall learning experience.
Use Promote Features for Gamification
There are actually several features in Promote that you can use to design gamification experiences for your learners. In this section, we'll dive into some of the features you can use.
Progress bar for motivation
The progress bar that reflects each learner's completion of the program's tasks can be a great tool for gamification, as it can provide a sense of achievement and progress, which are key elements of game mechanics. The facilitators can use the progress bar to provide learners with feedback and encouragement as they complete tasks and make progress through the program. For example, you could use the progress bar to display motivational messages, and tips for learners or to provide feedback on their performance and progress.
You can use the Members tab as a 'Leaderboard' for creating competition among Learners, as they will want to see their name on top and work harder as a result. Facilitators can write a motivational announcement to the Learners and, for example, highlight the top three Learners on the 'leaderboard'.
By setting goals, showing rewards, providing feedback and encouragement, and creating competition and collaboration, you can use the progress bar to make the learning experience more engaging, fun, and effective.
You can even create separate 'leaderboards' based on different groups, dividing the individuals into smaller groups for better competition.
Milestones for accomplishment
You can add milestones for learners to reach throughout the program. This can help to break the program down into manageable chunks and give learners a sense of progress and accomplishment as they complete each task and move closer to the next milestone. Name the milestones to reflect what the Learners will achieve at this point, or simply indicate what level they have reached.
Goals for challenges
Experiment with the Goals and combine your tasks into different challenges. Let's say that the goal of your training program is to teach sales techniques to a group of sales representatives. You can create a goal that tracks the sales performance of each learner over a certain period of time (e.g. a week, a month, a quarter).
To make this more engaging, you can break down the overall program objective into smaller challenges that are easier to achieve. Add the challenges as goals and connect certain tasks to each goal. For example, you can create a challenge to close a certain number of deals in a week, each deal reported in a task in the program. This means each task completed earns progress, and these can be tracked on the goal.
By gamifying the sales training program, you can make it more engaging, motivating, and effective, while also fostering a competitive and fun learning environment.
To further gamify the training program, you can also incorporate social elements such as team challenges, where teams compete against each other to achieve certain goals. This can create a sense of friendly competition and encourage teamwork and collaboration.
Lock tasks for rewards
You can use the element of surprise as a gamification technique and keep your assignments exciting by allowing Learners to "unlock" the next step by completing a task. For example, you can add a reward to the locked task, like adding a link to a motivational video or a badge.
Here's an example of how you can lock tasks
Let's say that you're conducting a training program on effective communication and you want to gamify the assignments to make them more engaging and motivating for your Learners. The assignment includes a series of tasks that focuses on developing specific communication skills, such as active listening, empathy, and conflict resolution.
To gamify the tasks, you can also introduce challenges or obstacles within each task that require learners to think creatively and critically to solve, for example:
- In the first task, you can ask learners to practice active listening by interviewing a co-worker or fellow learner and summarizing their responses in a comment task. Upon successful completion, they earn progress and unlock the next task, which focuses on developing empathy skills.
- In the empathy task, you can ask learners to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes and write a short reflection on what they learned. Upon successful completion, they earn progress and unlock the next task, which focuses on conflict resolution.
- To gamify the conflict resolution task, you can introduce a scenario where learners must resolve a conflict between two hypothetical team members. Set a due date when to complete the task, and ask them to submit a short reflection on what they learned.
By gamifying the soft skills and behavioural change assignments, you can make the learning process more engaging and motivating for your learners while challenging them to think creatively and critically to develop their communication skills.
Team tasks for Role-play
This type of assignment allows learners to take on the roles of different characters and make decisions based on their assigned roles. Role-playing games can be used to teach empathy, communication, and collaboration skills. Introduce the learners to a fictional scenario in the assignment, and divide the learners into teams so they can use the team task to take on roles and collaborate with each other in the given scenario.
An example of how to make a role-playing team task
Let's say that the goal of your training program is to teach communication and collaboration skills to a group of customer service representatives. You can gamify this goal by creating a role-playing scenario where each representative takes on the role of a customer service representative and interacts with other members of the team in a team chat.
To make it more engaging, you can create a fictional scenario where the team is facing a customer service crisis and needs to work together to resolve it. Each representative is given a specific role (e.g. team leader, customer service representative, IT support) and has to communicate with the other team members to solve the problem.
To further gamify the role play, you can also introduce challenges or obstacles that the team has to overcome. For example, you can introduce a time limit for the team to solve the problem, where the fastest team wins or you can create a scenario where the team has to communicate with a difficult or angry customer.
By gamifying the role-play through a team chat, you can make the training program more engaging and effective, while also fostering teamwork and collaboration among the customer service representatives.
Third-party Tools
Here are some examples of third-party tools that you can use in Promote for creating engaging and interactive learning experiences:
E-learnings
Use an authoring tool for creating e-learning courses and add them to Promote as tasks or resources. This allows you to add gamification elements, such as quizzes, points, and badges. Learn more about e-learnings >
Genially
Have you been looking for a tool to make the content in your programs more interactive and fun? Genially is a third-party tool that you can use to create engaging, interactive content and embed it directly in your assignments in Promote. Learn more about Genially >
Mentimeter
Mentimeter is an easy-to-use presentation software that can help you create engagement and make your presentations interactive and fun. You can for example create live polls, quizzes, word clouds and much more. And of course, you can spice up your Promote program by embedding it into your assignments and sessions! Learn more about Mentimeter >
These are just a few examples of gamification tools that you can use to create engaging and interactive learning experiences.