philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Gameification: Accelerating Learning for Both Business and Education

The Core of Gameification

The heart of the gameification trend is using interactive gaming as a tool to transform training and education. Based on 25 years of research, I’ve identified five core elements that, when applied together, can dramatically accelerate learning. When you model your company’s training to include these five elements, your employees will learn more in less time and have better results.

• Self-diagnostic. In the world of gaming, as you accomplish new feats and as your character gets better, the game gives you greater challenges. When you power down, the game remembers where you left off. When you return to the game, you still have your capabilities and all the things your character has previously learned. You don’t have to start over from ground zero. ...

• Interactivity. For centuries, education and training have been, for the most part, passive experiences. ... When you learn by gaming, you’re interacting with the information and concepts. You’re moving things around, you’re manipulating items and you’re actually doing things. It’s no longer passive training. Now you are much more engaged and immersed.

• Immersion. We’ve seen 3D TVs where you have to wear special glasses to make the images pop out at you, but that’s because TVs have a lot of viewers spread throughout the room. When you’re playing a game on a small screen like a tablet or a smart phone, the viewing angle is such that you can have images appear 3D very easily without special glasses. In the recent past to the present, video games use interspatial 3D, which allows you to enter worlds. So instead of images popping out at you, you go inside to them. That’s how games on the Xbox 360 and others have been working for years, by using a regular television set or flat panel display. This sort of technology gives an immersed effect, which engages people more. To apply this to business, if you’re training salespeople on a particular manufacturing tool they need to sell, why not let them see the tool in 3D and actually manipulate the tool virtually rather than having them read spec sheets about it? The former will give them more insight into the tool, which will make selling it easier.

• Competition. Humans are naturally competitive beings. ... When you’re competing, however, as in a game, you get an adrenaline rush that keeps you engaged and focused on the task at hand. In an effort to “win,” people master concepts faster so they can be first…and certainly not last.

• Focus. When you’re playing a game, you’re forced to focus. You have to do A for B to occur. If you don’t do A, then you won’t get far in the game. Focus is the result of interactivity, competition, immersion and self-diagnosis. When you can focus, you can learn virtually anything…fast.

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