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6 Easy Ways to Add Gamification to Your Learning Structure

February 16, 2022
Engage Employees with Learning Gamification One of the biggest challenges of administering effective learning is assuring that it is interactive and engaging for users. In this article, you will learn the scientific and tangible reasons why adding gamification elements to your learning boosts employee engagement and enhances the comprehension of your learning content. Gamification and […]

Engage Employees with Learning Gamification

One of the biggest challenges of administering effective learning is assuring that it is interactive and engaging for users. In this article, you will learn the scientific and tangible reasons why adding gamification elements to your learning boosts employee engagement and enhances the comprehension of your learning content.

Gamification and the Brain

When it comes to learning, you might not immediately think of “fun and games”, but that’s exactly what learning can be by incorporating a few gamification elements into educational content. And though some might worry this will take away from the efficiency of learning or training, the opposite is actually true.

In short, gamification is an approach to learning and training that adds game elements to your typical content. Adding these types of interactive and entertaining aspects to learning and training is shown to create a more enjoyable and rewarding experience for learners.

The Science Behind Games

Besides the simple fact that games are fun, the act of participating in these amusing activities has a lot to do with how our brain processes information. Games activate the brain in a variety of ways:

  • Playing games releases dopamine, a pleasure neurotransmitter that boosts our capacity for attention and learning
  • Gameful activities stimulate the hippocampus, which contributes to how we acquire and store new skills and information
  • Receiving rewards from games triggers the release of serotonin, a mood-boosting neurotransmitter that decreases stress and anxiety
  • When getting the sense of winning a game, endorphins are released which are the brain’s natural painkillers, which are also critical for focused learning and developing a sense of achievement

Cognition Meets Collaboration

Games are also often associated with more collaborative and social learning, which has been shown to decrease inflammation and oxidative stress on the brain, allowing the mind to stay more engaged and focused

Aside from the wealth of biological and neurological rewards from games, there are even more tangible benefits that gamified learning has on individual development.

The Benefits of Gamifying Learning

Based on the information above, you can begin to see the various benefits that can come from incorporating more gamified content into your learning programs.

Aside from offering learners increased “good-feeling” brain chemicals, using gamification to build your learning content can have a host of workplace benefits:

  • Adds fun and interaction to increase engagement
  • Supports healthy stream of learning motivation
  • Offers real-time feedback for learners to improve
  • Boosts overall learning effectiveness
  • Enhances memory and retention of information

For these reasons and more, companies are looking to incorporate more engaging, gamified content into their learning and training programs. And naturally, learning managers have begun to investigate exactly how this can be done.

6 Easy Gamification Elements to Add to Your Learning

Adding gamification elements to your learning structure doesn’t have to be cumbersome of complicated. With the right tools, you can easily add a few aspects of gaming that can liven up your content and help you secure the many benefits mentioned above.

Here are a few key gamification elements that you can add to your learning or training structure today:

  • Challenge – Adding a sense of challenge is simple and is often defined as making an easier task less trivial. This makes the game more engaging and interesting for the learner as they are encouraged to use more than their basic skills. Try mixing levels of content to make it more challenging to complete.
  • Competition – Humans are hardwired to compete and play to win. Mostly because it releases those feel-good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. Having a space for learners to interact with content in a competitive way can improve focus, engagement, collaboration, and the release of those happy hormones.
  • Instant Feedback – Providing learner with instant feedback can be as easy as giving an indication of “Correct” or “Incorrect” immediately following a quiz question. This instantaneous response allows learners to quickly discover their mistakes and apply that knowledge to future questions or development opportunities. When learners receive evaluation in the flow of learning, their brain reward system is activated keeping them more engaged and motivated.
  • Leaderboards & Scoring – Going along with competition, adding a leaderboard or scoring system are simple gamified elements that enable learners to see how they are performing against others. This not only makes learning more social, but it also replicates the structure of most leisurely games, meaning learners can relate learning to something more playful than serious or even unengaging.
  • Rewarding Systems – Adding an element of reward can come in the form of an actual prize or award, or even a piece of helpful feedback. It can also be that the challenge or game itself acts as a reward. In any situation, adding a sense of reward and achievement can easily boost learner motivation and developmental resilience.
  • Mirroring & Collaboration – Mirroring means that a person or player gets to see how their progress compares to others. This is different than competition because it doesn’t necessarily mean the learners are trying to do better than the other. Mirroring can be another way of encouraging motivation and social learning because it can be done together rather than individually. Adding a mirroring element can look like putting learners in pairs to go over course content and provide each other with feedback on their results.

These are just a few examples of gamification methods that can be added to your learning content or training structure. Now, let’s look at how companies gamify their learning content with a learning management solution, such as LMS365.

Gamify Your Learning with LMS365

The LMS365 learning platform comes with a wealth of tools that enable more engaging and streamlined learning. The modern learning solution has gamification features such as leaderboards, progress dashboards, competency levels and point systems to drive learning and boost motivation.

One of the most multifaceted gamification tools within the platform is the LMS365 Course Creator, which gives administrators and educators a variety of options when creating custom quizzes that help engage learners as they’re tested on their understanding of the content.

The LMS365 Quiz Builder allows administrators to use an assortment of quiz question types, including:

True or False

A question type with a true or false answer choice

Ordering

A question that requires learners to place answers in a predefined correct order

Matching

A question format that has learners match items that correctly correspond to each other

Hot Spot

A question type where the learner must select a certain area of an image to answer the question accurately

Gap Fill

A question that asks the learner to type in a key word that has been omitted from a sentence or statement

By using a variety of question types that provide more challenge and novel answering styles, you can easily bring a more gamified spirit to your learning content. You can check out this video to see exactly how learning managers can build these types of engaging quizzes in LMS365.

Plus, as LMS365 is integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of tools, learner progress can be tracked and displayed via Power BI visual dashboards and shared with groups via the Microsoft Teams collaborative platform. This makes learning social, collaborative, and gamified.

Transform Your Learning Through Gamification

Adding elements of fun and games into your learning structure comes with a host of benefits for your brain and your business. Using a learning management solution like LMS365 can make the gamification process simple and intuitive, while giving your organization the necessary boost to enhance learning and training efficacy.

If you’re looking for more specific examples of how the learning solution, LMS365 enables companies to gamify their learning content, you can check out this Help Center Gamification article to see all the features and capabilities available to make your content more engaging and down-right fun!

February 16, 2022

6 Easy Ways to Add Gamification to Your Learning Structure

article

Est. Reading: 5 minutes

Engage Employees with Learning Gamification

One of the biggest challenges of administering effective learning is assuring that it is interactive and engaging for users. In this article, you will learn the scientific and tangible reasons why adding gamification elements to your learning boosts employee engagement and enhances the comprehension of your learning content.

Gamification and the Brain

When it comes to learning, you might not immediately think of “fun and games”, but that’s exactly what learning can be by incorporating a few gamification elements into educational content. And though some might worry this will take away from the efficiency of learning or training, the opposite is actually true.

In short, gamification is an approach to learning and training that adds game elements to your typical content. Adding these types of interactive and entertaining aspects to learning and training is shown to create a more enjoyable and rewarding experience for learners.

The Science Behind Games

Besides the simple fact that games are fun, the act of participating in these amusing activities has a lot to do with how our brain processes information. Games activate the brain in a variety of ways:

  • Playing games releases dopamine, a pleasure neurotransmitter that boosts our capacity for attention and learning
  • Gameful activities stimulate the hippocampus, which contributes to how we acquire and store new skills and information
  • Receiving rewards from games triggers the release of serotonin, a mood-boosting neurotransmitter that decreases stress and anxiety
  • When getting the sense of winning a game, endorphins are released which are the brain’s natural painkillers, which are also critical for focused learning and developing a sense of achievement

Cognition Meets Collaboration

Games are also often associated with more collaborative and social learning, which has been shown to decrease inflammation and oxidative stress on the brain, allowing the mind to stay more engaged and focused

Aside from the wealth of biological and neurological rewards from games, there are even more tangible benefits that gamified learning has on individual development.

The Benefits of Gamifying Learning

Based on the information above, you can begin to see the various benefits that can come from incorporating more gamified content into your learning programs.

Aside from offering learners increased “good-feeling” brain chemicals, using gamification to build your learning content can have a host of workplace benefits:

  • Adds fun and interaction to increase engagement
  • Supports healthy stream of learning motivation
  • Offers real-time feedback for learners to improve
  • Boosts overall learning effectiveness
  • Enhances memory and retention of information

For these reasons and more, companies are looking to incorporate more engaging, gamified content into their learning and training programs. And naturally, learning managers have begun to investigate exactly how this can be done.

6 Easy Gamification Elements to Add to Your Learning

Adding gamification elements to your learning structure doesn’t have to be cumbersome of complicated. With the right tools, you can easily add a few aspects of gaming that can liven up your content and help you secure the many benefits mentioned above.

Here are a few key gamification elements that you can add to your learning or training structure today:

  • Challenge – Adding a sense of challenge is simple and is often defined as making an easier task less trivial. This makes the game more engaging and interesting for the learner as they are encouraged to use more than their basic skills. Try mixing levels of content to make it more challenging to complete.
  • Competition – Humans are hardwired to compete and play to win. Mostly because it releases those feel-good hormones like serotonin and dopamine. Having a space for learners to interact with content in a competitive way can improve focus, engagement, collaboration, and the release of those happy hormones.
  • Instant Feedback – Providing learner with instant feedback can be as easy as giving an indication of “Correct” or “Incorrect” immediately following a quiz question. This instantaneous response allows learners to quickly discover their mistakes and apply that knowledge to future questions or development opportunities. When learners receive evaluation in the flow of learning, their brain reward system is activated keeping them more engaged and motivated.
  • Leaderboards & Scoring – Going along with competition, adding a leaderboard or scoring system are simple gamified elements that enable learners to see how they are performing against others. This not only makes learning more social, but it also replicates the structure of most leisurely games, meaning learners can relate learning to something more playful than serious or even unengaging.
  • Rewarding Systems – Adding an element of reward can come in the form of an actual prize or award, or even a piece of helpful feedback. It can also be that the challenge or game itself acts as a reward. In any situation, adding a sense of reward and achievement can easily boost learner motivation and developmental resilience.
  • Mirroring & Collaboration – Mirroring means that a person or player gets to see how their progress compares to others. This is different than competition because it doesn’t necessarily mean the learners are trying to do better than the other. Mirroring can be another way of encouraging motivation and social learning because it can be done together rather than individually. Adding a mirroring element can look like putting learners in pairs to go over course content and provide each other with feedback on their results.

These are just a few examples of gamification methods that can be added to your learning content or training structure. Now, let’s look at how companies gamify their learning content with a learning management solution, such as LMS365.

Gamify Your Learning with LMS365

The LMS365 learning platform comes with a wealth of tools that enable more engaging and streamlined learning. The modern learning solution has gamification features such as leaderboards, progress dashboards, competency levels and point systems to drive learning and boost motivation.

One of the most multifaceted gamification tools within the platform is the LMS365 Course Creator, which gives administrators and educators a variety of options when creating custom quizzes that help engage learners as they’re tested on their understanding of the content.

The LMS365 Quiz Builder allows administrators to use an assortment of quiz question types, including:

True or False

A question type with a true or false answer choice

Ordering

A question that requires learners to place answers in a predefined correct order

Matching

A question format that has learners match items that correctly correspond to each other

Hot Spot

A question type where the learner must select a certain area of an image to answer the question accurately

Gap Fill

A question that asks the learner to type in a key word that has been omitted from a sentence or statement

By using a variety of question types that provide more challenge and novel answering styles, you can easily bring a more gamified spirit to your learning content. You can check out this video to see exactly how learning managers can build these types of engaging quizzes in LMS365.

Plus, as LMS365 is integrated with the Microsoft 365 suite of tools, learner progress can be tracked and displayed via Power BI visual dashboards and shared with groups via the Microsoft Teams collaborative platform. This makes learning social, collaborative, and gamified.

Transform Your Learning Through Gamification

Adding elements of fun and games into your learning structure comes with a host of benefits for your brain and your business. Using a learning management solution like LMS365 can make the gamification process simple and intuitive, while giving your organization the necessary boost to enhance learning and training efficacy.

If you’re looking for more specific examples of how the learning solution, LMS365 enables companies to gamify their learning content, you can check out this Help Center Gamification article to see all the features and capabilities available to make your content more engaging and down-right fun!

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