A growing trend in the learning industry these days is the use of gamification to enhance the learning experience. Without further ado here are my five tips to implement a successful gamification strategy:
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Understand your targeted audience
This implies more than just knowing the demographic profile of your learners. You need to understand their behavioral patterns and the reasons behind their motivation to be rewarded and be recognized by their peers.
The best way to achieve this is by conducting focus groups and mapping the information in a grid.
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Define a learning path and rules
Now that you have the above data, the next step would be to link the rewards to the learning objectives. A common practice in the learning industry is to tie a quiz to a badge, as it brings a sense of achievement and prepares the learners to move to the next challenge.
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Vary the experiences and rewards
It’s no secret that your grid will group an array of learners. From the enjoyer to the top achiever, your design plan should consider rewarding all of them to keep the motivational level up and accommodate the learning pace of everyone.
Consider creating different types of badges for the same activity—gold, silver, and bronze. Make sure your leaderboard reflects that and can be customized by the learner.
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Storyboarding is crucial
Successful gamification will require a team effort. Programmers will have to build solid game mechanics, designers should be given clear instructions about badges types and styles, and integrators and the quality assurance team must know about rewards attribution and the process of unlocking the game levels.
A solid storyboard will be the reference document during production that contains all the specifications needed for the whole team.
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Monitor and iterate
Be prepared! You will continually learn from your learners. Conducting a survey or interviewing your learners before building a gamified course will help you launch a good product, but if you want it to be successful over time, you must adopt an agile approach.
Make sure you have an analytic platform attached to the course and have a dedicated person collecting and analyzing data. Consider in your analysis among others, the time spent, quiz attempts, and leaderboard page visits. This valuable information will help you make adjustments, resulting in a more engaging product.
