You might have heard that gamification makes learning more fun and engaging, but who has the time or knowledge to implement it into their course effectively? Well, hopefully after reading this brief intro, that would be you.
Gamification is more than badges and progress bars; it’s a complex framework of reward mechanisms designed to appease our competitive instincts. You’ll be familiar with many of gamification’s elements from board and video games, but less so in arenas not typically associated with games, like training. In Yu-Kai Chou’s book, Actionable Gamification, he lays out an 8-pointed framework that he refers to as ‘Octalysis’. Don’t worry, Octalysis is just a fancy word for the diagram he came up with to represent the eight core drives that motivate us.
There’s a lot to digest here, especially the points surrounding the main diagram. However, for now, just focus on the eight points in the central octagon. Let’s go over these main points:
At first glance, these core methods of gamification may be intimidating. In reality, you don’t need to implement all eight points into your course to add effective gamification; just pick a couple that are more relevant and go from there. Some of them fit more naturally into certain course designs than others, and it’s best not to try and force anything unnatural.
Let’s take a look at some real-world applications of Octalysis within training:
Begin your course by outlining what positive impacts your students will have on the job or in their workplace. How will the course content enhance their careers and those of their colleagues? Unite your students early on and make it clear that this is a group effort that is only as strong as its weakest link.
Incorporate opportunities for your students to use their own creativity for problem-solving, but avoid the inevitable groan at the mention of “group work” or the dreaded “presentation.” Allow them to feel in control and have some influence over the direction of the course.
Public leaderboards so everyone can see everyone else’s progress, achievements, and trophies. Create an online group (using whatever social networking tool you have available) to be a ‘water cooler’ environment to encourage student discussions. You could also divide your class into teams to encourage internal competition and avoid the shame of individuals lagging the rest of the class.
Unpredictability ties empowerment and social influence together nicely; poll your groups to find out what people are struggling with and what they would like to learn more about next. You could even allow your students to determine the path of your course by voting or through a poll. If you want to make it truly random, you could use a wheel spin, or a throw of dice, to get volunteers, select names, or choose tasks.
Courses naturally have avoidance mechanics built into them: pass or fail. However, we don’t want our gamification mechanics to resemble reality too closely—or be as harsh. Avoidance mechanics are challenging to implement in the context of training, but you can still invoke them by making your course competitive.
Scarcity is often implemented in games in the form of items and achievements, things the player can obtain to feel a sense of accomplishment and exclusivity. While your courses may not be exclusive, you could introduce an achievement system for students to reward them for excelling at something. For instance, you could hand out virtual trophies for your quizzes or even awards for something as mundane as attendance streaks.
Before the term ‘gamification’ was even coined, games contained ownership mechanics such as hoarding items or customizing avatars. This one isn’t a natural fit for training, but there are platforms out there that offer avatar customization, giving your students the chance to feel more personally invested. However, you can create methods to increase the feeling of ownership, that they have control and autonomy over their work and accomplishments.
For obvious reasons, accomplishment is a more natural fit for training than the other core drives mentioned in this list. Implementing a progress bar can make your students feel a constant sense of accomplishment as they progress through your course. Rewards, badges, leveling up, and more also produce internal motivation and increase the sense they are mastering skills and are constantly improving.
As you can see, there’s a lot more to this topic than meets the eye. When you’re ready to take gamification and the Octalysis framework to the next level, check out this YouTube channel. It has a series of videos covering the eight core drives in the context of education.
If you’re asking yourself, “How can I apply this to my job right now?” there are no quick fixes with gamification. Do your research and design planning to implement those elements that make sense for your project. If you implement gamification without adequate research and planning, your learners will be more annoyed than motivated because of the extra hoops they’ll be forced to jump through. Test one or two of the eight elements and determine what your audience will find helpful and motivational. Then, you can begin implementing more gamification elements for overall effectiveness.
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