Games in the form of mobile applications or desktop games have successfully merged into the adult learning environment. While eLearning games received a considerable amount of resistance, they have proven their worth through superior learning achievement results.
In this article, we will explain how to boost your educational games and deeply engage your eLearners.
No one who uses a computer can be unfamiliar with games.
This is not a broad claim at all. Have you ever been in a game in which you compete with yourself? No?
What about those phone messages that require you to message back to win extra minutes or mobile data? Your car’s GPS trying to get you to become a registered member of the application through badges and icons? What about your Facebook account sharing your last year, same date memories so that you continue to create more memories on the service?
These are games in disguise. Did we mention your credit card company giving you incentives to “spend more to save more”?
Let’s create such games for your eLearning environment to motivate and engage your learners and to improve learning achievement. Let’s get the managers happy with your learners’ job performance!
Start Small
Choose a theme, for example “Safety at the Workplace”. Ask questions in a fun drag and drop exercise like, “Susan needs these five items in her first aid box”. Have the learners drag the correct items in the image of the first aid box!
So, start small. No need to sweat over pages and pages of games. Short bursts of excitement are motivating and engaging at the same time.
Interact with Games
ELearning courses can easily double as interactions with the help of the right course authoring tools. For example, you can build interactions from scratch using actions and variables, or you can customize a pre-built interaction from many eLearning templates available for free!
Some templates are especially built for particular tools. Take your time to explore and download templates (if needed) to create an interaction for your content.
Reward Your Learners
If there is one thing adult learners love, it’s recognition. If your learners make it all the way to the end of “Safety at the Workplace” game and succeed at the final challenge, award them a “Safety Star” badge of victory!
Badges and points are great because an employee can put them in his or her email signature or brag about their accomplishments to colleagues on LinkedIn. Badges can also be awarded for contributing to the online community of practice for a particular eLearning course.
Congrats! You just gamified your eLearning with these techniques!
Games have taken over learning. Did you also realize that the status bar displayed on your course telling the learner their location on the eLearning course pathway, is also a game itself? It motivates the learner to complete the course 100%.
We seriously believe that a 90% course completion status incites learners to move towards completion more than “the last chapter” remaining!
What do you say?
