Further Training and Lifelong Learning: Will Gamification
become a Game Changer? Eight Success Factors

Super Mario during Working Hours

Today Karl has to overcome obstacles and defeat various enemies in order to free Princess Peach from Bowser’s castle at the end of the level. And he mustn’t forget to collect the coins along the way. Otherwise there won’t be a new high score… You’re probably thinking that he’s already in after-work mode and pursuing his hobby of playing video games - but he’s still in the middle of working hours: as the company where Karl is employed is currently undergoing digital transformation, there’s a whole host of further training on the agenda. The company is trying out gamification as a new learning method.

Learning often has a negative Image - but wrongly so

The digital transformation is constantly bringing about new changes - one of the reasons why companies must enable lifelong learning for their employees. Sounds innovative and quite simple at first. However, when it comes to implementing this, major challenges arise: many people still associate learning primarily with face-to-face teaching at school. With lots of boredom, monotonous lessons, annoying homework and fear of failure before class tests. And, of course, nobody in the class wants to be seen as a nerd. Learning is also associated with effort.

Learning even has to be exhausting - because only then can your own performance increase. Similarly as in sport: there, too, the trainee can only progress if he or she continuously sets higher goals. Either you need to increase the number of kilometers you run or the weights you lift in the gym. If, on the other hand, you always have to make the same effort, you can only maintain your performance at the current level. And that logically stands in the way of growth and development.

So how do you get your employees to make this effort instead of making themselves comfortable in their comfort zone? The principle is quite simple: people like to learn out of curiosity, because then they learn on their own initiative - this is called intrinsic motivation. And then they don’t mind the effort - the learning effect happens almost incidentally. The task of companies is therefore to make use of this insight.

Gamification: learning through Play

This is where gamification comes into play. Gamification is considered a megatrend and offers new opportunities for the company training of your employees. What is meant by “gamification”? In technical jargon, we speak of gamification when game elements are integrated into a non-game context: learning and playing are combined, making it easier to convey unpopular or dry learning topics to employees. How exactly can you put this into practice? Here is an example from the Microsoft world.

“Ribbon Hero”: the Microsoft Office Training Course with Entertainment Factor

Ribbon Hero is a gamification application from Microsoft and - even though it has been around for a few years now - it is probably one of the best known. And it exemplifies the gamification principle quite well, so the task of companies is to make use of this insight.

The free add-on is about users getting to know the Microsoft Office products (versions 2007 and 2010) in a playful context. They have to master various tasks in order to emerge from the game as professionals in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. Ribbon Hero doesn’t just focus on the basics, but also provides users with advanced tips, e.g. on somewhat more exotic keyboard shortcuts. There are also plenty of useful key combinations for Business Central or Dynamics NAV that will make your work more efficient.

Do you remember the sometimes very annoying paperclip “Clippy”, which always appeared at the edge of the screen in older versions of Office and wanting to help you? Clippy is also back in Ribbon Hero - she gives the user clear tasks, which are divided into short learning units (“challenges”).

Once users have successfully mastered a challenge, they are immediately credited with a specific number of points. In total, users can achieve a maximum of 300 points per Office product - e.g. Excel. One challenge with regard to Word, for example, is called “Spelling & Grammar”. Here, a pre-prepared document appears in which the users have to correct all red, green or blue underlined texts using the Word tools and can earn six points for their score.

For an extra dose of motivation, users can even connect Ribbon Hero to their Facebook profile, which also activates competition mode, as they can share every success with their Facebook friends and try to outdo each other.

Please note: gamification does not necessarily have to be structured like a complex computer game. Even simpler game elements fall into this category. For example, the mere visualization of learning success through animated progress bars. And even if you collect Payback points when shopping at a drugstore or Monopoly cards when ordering a burger, these are gamification elements - here, of course, in a different context and not with the intention of building up new knowledge.

Combine Playing and Learning: Emotions ensure a higher Learning Effect

So what is the fundamental advantage of gamification? To what extent does the concept have a positive effect on learning? By linking learning and playing, learning loses its heavy, sometimes overwhelming character. This is because emotions are evoked in the learning process - but of course not exclusively positive ones. It is clear that it leads to short-term frustration and anger if, for example, you cannot complete a task at the first attempt.

However, the learning process is more fun overall and the associated stress is reduced - learning is no longer primarily perceived as an effort. As a result, your employees are more motivated, which means that the process becomes more effective: the newly learned knowledge manifests itself permanently, instead of being banished directly from memory again at the latest with the start of the next learning unit. And let’s be honest: isn’t it much more exciting to have to defeat a “final opponent” at the end of a training course than to face a run-of-the-mill final exam with monotonous knowledge questions?

How Gamification can take Further Training to a new Level

1. Transparency: There must be clear, transparent rules. To avoid uncertainty and confusion, because that is logically inefficient. This also includes a graphical progress indicator - for example as a bar - that is permanently visible to learners.

2. Doable tasks: The challenges within the game must be realistic. Learners must not be overchallenged - this leads to stress and thus to demotivation - nor must they be severely underchallenged. Because even then there is a lack of intrinsic motivation.

3. Levels: Games should be split into individual levels so that the overall learning effort is perceived as more feasible by the learners. In addition, the fear of a huge mountain of double work is reduced if a learning unit is not passed at the first attempt and has to be repeated.

4. Individuality: The learning offer should at best be personalizable - i.e. individually tailored to different learning types. For example, some employees process information visually and others acoustically.

5. Direct feedback: The feedback must be provided directly in real time, e.g. via multiple choice tasks with automatic evaluation. This allows learners to control their learning process themselves: when, how quickly and how much they learn at a time is at their own discretion. Because here too, of course, there are individual preferences.

6. Reward: In order for the new knowledge to manifest itself, positive reinforcement is required. There must be recognition for the learning successes. This could be learning points that you collect to fill a progress bar. Or that new game levels or bonus content are unlocked with learning successes. This gives the learning process a kind of “addictive factor”.

7. Rankings: It becomes even more motivating when competitions and interaction between individual learners are made possible. This awakens even more ambition to emerge as the winner of the game and to be at the top of the high score table.

8. Appealing visuals: The interface of the game should be consistent and as appealing as possible for the target learning group. For example, a mascot or avatar can appear in some places to provide information on the rules of the game or to praise learners when they have successfully completed a task.

Outlook: The Changing World of Work and Learning

Why is it now so important to rethink further training and focus more on concepts such as gamification? This is due to the change that our working world is undergoing. On the one hand, processes are becoming more digital. The many innovations make further training and additional qualifications unavoidable.

Another point is that the resumes of your employees will be structured increasingly differently in future than you are used to. Very few CVs will still show a perfectly straight line: instead, there will be more and more turns and new beginnings. Frequent reorientation also means frequent learning phases - work and learning phases alternate almost constantly, making it all the more important to optimize learning processes and make them more efficient.

And there will be another change for all of us: in the future, companies will no longer select their employees on the basis of their degree, but on the basis of their portfolio of “skills”, which they acquire over the course of their training and professional life. From the company’s point of view, there are two key challenges:

1. you need to equip your employees with the skills they will need in the future in the best possible way
2. you need to keep your employees with these skills within the company.

Lifelong Learning: Gamification as a Game Changer?

Gamification can under certain conditions play a part in taking lifelong learning in your company to a new level and also increase the efficiency of learning processes by activating emotions in the learning process, increasing motivation and consolidating new knowledge more strongly than with “conventional” approaches.

Gamification can also be part of effective change management. Instead of new knowledge content and technical skills, changes in company structures and processes can be learned in a playful way. Change management is also a major challenge in the context of digital transformation.

Where there are opportunities, there are also risks: if gamification is used incorrectly or too arbitrarily, this can lead to your employees only achieving short-term or even no learning effects. Problems can be that the interface is too simple and the game principle too monotonous. If, for example, the same golden trophy simply lights up again and again when learners have successfully solved a task, this can come across as rather clumsy and tend to trigger a defensive reaction.

Over time, learners can also get used to it: the rewards they receive for their achievements no longer motivate them enough to learn as successfully as they did at the start of the game. And you also have to remember that there are employees who do not follow the rules and “cheat” to get the rewards.

Because of these difficulties, it happens more often in practice that gamification projects are discontinued. You should therefore always be guided by the success factors mentioned if you want to use gamification in further training.

Larger companies also use gamification in other fields, such as marketing or in the recruitment process. If it is used correctly, it is also a useful employer branding tool: companies that offer this learning concept make it more attractive to applicants as well as existing employees, because it sounds much cooler to acquire new knowledge while collecting coins and jumping over canyons in invincible mode than while summarizing 300-page lesson scripts. In Super Mario, the display would simply show “Game over” at some point.