“Hey honey, how was your day at school?”
My mother used to ask me everyday, and my reply was … ‘boring’.
These days, my wife asks, “Hey honey, how was your day at work?”
And my answer is usually “pretty good”.
Truth is, I’m a lot more motivated at my current job than I ever was at school. It feels like I’m actually learning more at work than I did in formal education…and I believe gamification is the reason for this.
If you’re currently an educator in an after-tutoring school business, or a learning and development manager in a corporate enterprise setting, it’s in everyone's best interests to be in a loop of continuous learning.
Proper gamification strategy makes sure your learning efforts are effective and worth your while. Thankfully, there’s always something new to learn, and with Enterprise LMS systems, learning at scale is as efficient as ever.
What are the benefits of implementing gamification strategy?
There’s massive potential here for me to drop about twenty pages worth of notable gamification statistics, but that’d be unfair. In order to play fair, here’s just a few of the biggies.
For corporate training 90% of employees reported that gamification made them more productive at work, while 60% of employees noticed an increase in workplace engagement.
Businesses have noticed that employee turnover rates have dropped and they’ve also managed to reduce day-to-day task lag which led to increased efficiency and, consequently, revenue.
For educational enterprises, gamification strategy is usually a holistic approach to learning that not only makes education more engaging, motivating, and enjoyable but also promotes essential soft skills and cognitive development, critical thinking, collaboration, and a lifelong love of learning.
All of the above directly promote student achievement and have a positive effect on student enrollments, student referrals, while reducing student churn.
If you’re using an Enterprise LMS to manage your learning operations, then you could benefit massively from the gamification features that modern LMS systems like LearningOS have to offer.
Top Gamification Features for the Tutoring Industry
"You can’t design a gamified experience only by adding points, badges, and leaderboards to it. Gamification is an art.” -Ali Akhtari
Educational enterprises know that delivering fun engaging learning experiences is paramount to student success, but it’s not easy.
Luckily, the best LMS systems intuitively integrate gamification features that promote best teaching practices.
Below, you’ll find four gamification features that your LMS should have. As a former educator, I’ve learnt that the first one is the most important and the most subtle.
Feedback Channels
Feedback is absolutely essential when it comes to monitoring, guiding, and encouraging when it comes making sure your gamification strategies are working.
Feedback can come in the form of immediate responses to a user's actions, highlighted by the final scores of quizzes, or the progress bar of an activity, but sometimes it comes in the form of constructive feedback after a piece of personalized homework, assignment, or formal assessment.
Systems like LearningOS can promote continuous and direct communication with opportunities for regular feedback for every learner. This ensures your gamification goals are as effective as possible.
Customizable Rewards Shop and Currency
LMS like LearningOS allow enterprises to set up an online shop accessible on mobile so students can spend their hard-earned currency. Fill it with educational items or enterprise merchandise. Likewise, the currency in which they earn for fun activities can be customized. Choose from coins, stars, or gold and allocate upon completion of activities, homework, assessments, or class participation.
Tracking Activity and Reward Data
If educators and administrators aren’t tracking who won what, why, and how much all of your hard work is for nought! An LMS system can effortlessly track thousands of students' reward data. Integral if your admin needs to check which gamification strategies are working, and which aren’t. However, the best thing is this data is that it can be illustrated on the learner portal of the students LMS. Giving students access to their own learning analytics is key to empower them even more.
Advertising Banners
LMS systems like LearningOS give educators the chance to upload advertising banners that learners can see every time they log in to their learning platform. These banners are really multi-functional, but in terms of gamification they can effectively be used to notify learners of special time sensitive challenges. The clickable banners can direct students straight to an activity or open up an instructional video, resulting in personalized fun outside the classroom.
Top Gamification Features for Corporate Training
"Educational games can increase retention rates by 30-60%" (elearningindustry.com)
In a business environment, gamification often transcends those quirky playful elements associated with K-12, but the strategy is the same, to encourage professional growth and continuous engagement.
Modern LMS systems give business the chance to create an entire learning ecosystem that incorporates all the essential gamification strategies.
Below you’ll find 1 big, and 3 small gamification features that are pivotal for corporate training and professional development.
Self-Paced eLearning
As you know, a lot of corporate training is often delivered in-house, under the watchful eye of managers, and CEOs. Proven to be expensive, and often ineffective, companies are switching to mobile compatible eLearning to meet their onboarding, compliance training, and upskilling demands.
Corporations that are offering their team self-paced eLearning opportunities empower autonomous learning that has a proven track record of success. Integrate micro-learning and gamification techniques into your self-study modules and you’ve got yourself a winning formula.
Study at their own pace, anytime and on any device leads to mastery of the subject matter and increases corporate growth.
e-Learning courses are known for their interactive and gamification features like progress bars, badges, leaderboards, and quizzes, but what’s new are features on the LMS that enable administrators to tailor learning paths to each department, primarily focusing on skills companies need to develop.
Personalization is a key factor in gamification, it allows companies to create fun motivating microlearning journeys for every employee, using analytics to focus on their strengths and weaknesses.
Rewards Catalog
Unlike the rewards shop on K-12 LMS, in the workplace, having a rewards catalog makes earning for learning fun for employees. They accrue points by reaching various goals over a longer period of time, and sometimes the rewards are immaterial like time off work, or even cash rewards. Designing a rewards catalog motivates employees making everyone more eager and productive.
Certificates
Certificates don’t mean much for children at school, but getting certificates for completing courses is a big boost for employees working on professional growth. LMS systems allow companies to upload branded certificates that unlock when employees have completed a training course. Usually in digital form, but employees can print them off if they’ve got a printer handy. Certificates are a fun way to recognize effort and they are still playing a key role in training programs.
KPI Customization
Best gamification strategies are measured thoroughly. Being able to set your own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) shows how advanced today's corporate training systems are. Managers can use a dashboard to adjust these KPIs to match what the company wants to achieve. This approach helps fine-tune the training games and activities, making sure they're really helping reach company goals and making the training successful.
Uploading Existing Resources
Integrating gamification into company training has shown great results. With a modern Learning Management System (LMS), adding external resources is easy. You can turn paper materials into digital formats or upload different types of files. This means that if something was fun and worked well in the past, you can bring it into your LMS today to keep training engaging and effective.
Incorporating these gamification features into corporate training not only makes learning more engaging and rewarding for professionals but also aligns employee development with organizational objectives, ultimately leading to improved performance and productivity.
LMS Content Authoring Tools
Unique LMS systems integrate content authoring tools so that educational or corporate enterprises can take learning into their own hands.
Fully integrated into LearningOS, our H5P course creator enables educators to integrate interactive content directly into their courses. Make learning more engaging and effective by creating quizzes, games, and class presentations filled with multimedia.
There are over 50+ activity types for H5P, some you never knew existed, and classic activity types all learners have become used to using.
Integrate Third-Party Tools (LTI’s)
LearningOS allows you to embed your favorite third-party tools. Whether you’re enterprise is using Kahoot, Wordwall, Bamboozle, or Quizziz. With an LTI, educators can seamlessly switch between professionally built games, without the learner being aware they’ve even left the LMS.
Custom-Built Content with Gamification
Apollo English Vietnam, a pioneer in children’s education knew a thing or two about motivating young learners.
Carefully navigating existing licensing commitments with National Geographical Learning, OOOLAB’s instructional design team made sure all learning activities were centered around igniting curiosity and aligned a solid gamification strategy.
They developed 10,000 hours' worth of original, interactive, and fun content for primary and secondary students.
Logibrothers, have developed an absolutely incredible app called Codmos. Helping children in the US, and globally learn how to code by controlling a loveable character named Cody.
The custom-built content for the app has been developed by OOOLAB, expert eLearning providers who started out creating K-12 language learning content and has become highly skilled in developing curriculums for STEM subjects.
Use LearningOS to create mobile compatible, multi-language content and assessments that follow your organization's goals and objectives and execute your perfect gamification plan. It shows that the future of gamification doesn't have to be restricted to one dimensional drag and drop and Jeopardy games.
What is Immersive Gamification? (Honorable Mentions)
As Meta and Apple release their mixed reality headsets, it is becoming increasingly difficult for educators to envision a future in which immersive learning isn't standard practice.
Headspace recently partnering with Meta, Nexus Studios have released Headspace XR, a first-of-its-kind immersive playground for the mind. You’ll need a Quest headset to use it, but as the top commenter @Dr.Drastic_ says: Actually seems super dope! And I have to agree.
The creators of Koala GO, winner of best virtual classroom 2023 by Edtech Impact have created an immersive minecraft style environment kids can explore and learn by actively and I’ve heard from the grapevine that some of the educators in our team love it!
Or take a look at the Minecraft for Education’s new AI prompt lab, which allows you to create engaging lessons and authentic assessments using AI.
Fun, gamified educational software is being developed all the time. It’s worth checking if there’s an LTI / API version you could integrate with your LMS.
What is LearningOS? - An Epic Conclusion
LearningOS is designed to the core to support gamification and help enterprises deliver delightful learning.
Having proven benefits for both corporate training and educational enterprises. It can increase employee productivity, engagement, and retention in the workplace, while promoting soft skills, critical thinking, collaboration, and most importantly a lifelong love of learning.
LearningOS offers a range of rewarding gamification features including customizable rewards shops and currencies, activity and reward tracking, advertising banners for challenges, self-paced learning, personalized learning paths, certificates, and KPI customization.
The platform also integrates powerful content authoring tools like H5P and allows embedding of popular third-party gamification apps.
Combining an intuitive LMS with gamification best practices is a win-win for your learners and your business.
FAQ
How do you measure the long-term impact of gamification on learning outcomes and retention?
To measure the long-term impact of gamification on learning outcomes and retention, educators and organizations often employ a combination of performance tracking and feedback mechanisms. It's possible to assess the effectiveness of gamification by analyzing data such as quiz scores, course completion rates, and the application of learned skills over time, along with learner feedback. This approach helps refine gamification elements to better support learning.
Can gamification be adapted to suit special needs learning?
Sure. Gamification can offer an inclusive experience for all special needs learning. There are many examples, but one example OOOLAB have worked on recently is incorporating interactive story-based games that cater to learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These games can focus on social skills, using characters and scenarios to teach understanding of emotions, facial expressions, and social interactions in a controlled, engaging manner.
What are the challenges or downsides of implementing gamification in learning management systems?
The biggest and most obvious challenge implementing gamification in learning management systems is making sure gamification elements align with learning objectives and do NOT distract from the educational content. Additionally, the development and maintenance of a gamified LMS require significant resources, which may be a barrier for some organizations.
