3 Easy Ways to Use Gamification in Your eLearning Course

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Gamification is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing aspects of eLearning this year. Zan Gilani at Duolingo credited it as one of the significant factors behind the success of his app and with over 200 million subscribers they must be doing something right. So, what’s Gamification? In short, it is the process of adding game mechanics such as point scoring, competition with peers, and levelling-up to other areas of activity. In the eLearning context, it is attached to courses to boost learner retention and engagement. In 2011 Traci Sitzmann conducted a study into the effectiveness of simulation games in learning compared to other methods. She found that users of gamified learning had:

• 20% more confidence in their abilities post-training
• 11% higher descriptive knowledge
• 14% higher procedural knowledge
• 9% higher knowledge retention

These stats show the effectiveness of the gamification process, and its ability to boost learner engagement and knowledge retention. The great thing about Gamification is that it doesn’t have to be too complicated. Not everyone can implement a Virtual Reality learning experience, so here are three easy ways to implement gamification in your eLearning course straight away.

Progress tracking

Progress tracking, while a simple concept, is incredibly useful in encouraging user engagement. Most people feel motivated when they can view their achievements, and how far they have come before they reach the final goal. The feeling of accomplishment is real even if the successes are minor. You can implement this by adding a simple progress bar to your course, that shows how far through the learner is. Alternatively, you can take it a step further and let learners set their own goals, and track their progress on different factors in their very own dashboard.

Points and Level Up

Give your learners the ability to gain points by completing courses, modules or tests. You can even implement a “levelling up” system, where once a learner has a certain amount of points they will reach a new level. The higher the learners level, the more they can unlock – including extra course materials or more advanced stages of the courses, allowing them to gain a higher level of certification. This feature instils a sense in the learner that they are “winning” by completing work, highly boosting engagement.

Leaderboards & Social Sharing

By adding a leaderboard to your course, and ranking each member against each other, a competitive spirit is encouraged. Friendly competition becomes just another incentive for learners to become engaged with your content. This feature can be used in conjunction with the point scoring and progress tracking, or by itself. At eCreators, we use our partner’s product Motrain to help organisations achieve this result. Another way to invoke competition is to allow social sharing. Social media integrations enable users to share their progress with their friends and brag about their achievements. Making their results public not only adds an incentive for the person sharing but also motivates their friends and colleagues by making them want to catch up. Overall there are many ways to add gamification elements to your eLearning content. The good news? At eCreators we have plugins available in your Learnbook LMS that add the functions listed above. So if you’re looking to boost your learner engagement, and work with a partner that cares about your learner’s success, why not give us a call at 1300 913 112.