This month, the Learning Circuits Blog is back with its first “real” big question since Tony Karrer took a break from managing the blog. In the new format of a different industry thought leader managing the blog each month, Ben Betts is up to bat for October. Mr. Betts is the Managing Director for HT2 and his big question for this month is “Does Gamification Have a Role in Workplace Learning?”
Let’s start with the simple answer. Yes, it does. Gamification definitely has a role in workplace learning. Too bad this topic is not nearly as simple as yes or no…but the interesting stuff never is.
So now for the more complicated answer. It stil
l starts with yes, but only if the gamification serves a purpose other than “all the cool kids are doing it.” I’ve been thinking about this question since it was posted a couple of weeks ago. It quickly dawned on me that I have been using “gamification” in workplace learning for most of my career, just not in the digital, video game type format you might think of when it comes to this buzzword. Let me give you a couple of examples:
- In classroom ERP software training sessions I’ve designed and used various individual and team based games to review material, cement concepts and break the monotony of lecture and exercises. In some cases, students in these courses could win and collect tokens redeemable for some pretty neat prizes at the end of course. There was an incentive to actively participate, an element of competition with fellow students, and the excitement of watching your token count go up and become eligible for better prizes. This basic model has been used by organizations for many years to provide incentive for everything from girl scouts selling cookies to meeting goals in a weight loss program. The difference now is that things have gone virtual.
- For several projects where it was imperative that users practice and become comfortable with SAP prior to the system going live, I designed a kind of sweepstakes program to help the process along. During certain hours, users could be “caught” using the practice system. Each time you were caught, your name went into the hat for a daily prize drawing for a $25 gift card and a grandprize drawing for a $250 gift card. Surveys indicated that many users wouldn’t have put in the amount of practice time that they should have without the added incentive of the sweepstakes.
The other point I want to make about these non-digital workplace learning games is that for every client that has been willing to incorporate games into training programs, there has been another client who could not see the value of any type of “play” in the workplace. In my experience, the clients who embraced the role of play in workplace learning had happier, less stressed and more engaged workers, and consequently less disruptive and painful system implementations…just saying.
So, that brings me around to the more recent trend of gamification in eLearning environments. In many ways, I think this is a natural extension of the games we can play in the classroom, particularly if the eLearning allows the users to see how others are doing in comparison and provides incentives to keep trying to master the game, and thereby, the content. But we have to careful of gamification for gamification’s sake. I think it’s imperative that gamification be used strategically. I also think that when we choose to gamify content, we really need to provide an alternate means for users who just don’t want to play to access that content.
In my opinion, Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan’s (Thaigi for short) 4-Door approach to eLearning is the best example I have seen of this. If you are not familiar with Thaigi or the 4-Door approach to eLearning, I encourage you to check it out. In a nutshell, this approach gives users of an eLearning module 4 options, or doors, to choose from and these doors can be utilized as much or as little as the user deems necessary. Here’s what’s behind each door:
- The Library – This door houses all the course content in whatever form it may be, including documents, video, audio, photos, info-graphics, and other media. Learners can consume this content in small bites or large gulps as they choose. All the knowledge they need to pass an evaluation is contained in the Library.
- The Playground – This door contains “gamified” content in the form of fairly simple web based games that help the user to recall and apply content. Games can be played over and over or skipped entirely as the user chooses.
- The Cafe – The door houses the social learning hub for the content. For example, users can post and respond to questions, allowing them to reflect on content with others or browse expert responses.
- The Torture Chamber – This door houses the dreaded “final exam.” Some users may choose to try the exam before accessing any other door and then just pick and choose content to fill in knowledge gaps. Others may choose to wait until they are sure they are comfortable with the content before accessing this door.
What I like about this approach is choice, and the validation of play as a learning tool. Users have almost unlimited choices as to how they access and interact with the course content, and games are one aspect of that. Of course, gamification can be taken to much more extreme levels. However, I think starting small with something like Thaigi’s 4-Door approach is a good way to see how your organization may be willing to embrace the role of gamification in the workplace.
I agree that choice is a key element of all adult education. So allowing different pathways through the content is generally a good idea.
Yet, I am not sure if the 4-door-approach is that smart after-all. In my opinion gamification should make the content itself more attractive. But by separating learning and playing it becomes even less favorable. So the library-door could also be called the boring door. An alternative could be to offer a gamified content walkthrough and an optional plane documentation.
Thanks for your comment. I understand your point and agree that the library door could definitely be classified as boring. But for me, it comes back to choice. The learner is not required to spend time in the library. It can be used as the primary content resource for some users, but others may choose to learn through playing the games and visiting the cafe to get questions answered before tackling the “torture chamber.” The choice is in the hands of the user.
One thing is to make education as less painful as possible; a completely different one is to make education a game. Play is play and education is education. They are different things for a reason. Gamification of education sends the wrong message that learning has to be fun all the time, and that it’s the educator’s job to become the students’ jester. Without showing the value of what they are learning, we don’t do a good job no matter how much fun students have.
@um. “gamification sends the wrong message that learning has to be fun all the time…”. I believe the research shows a near-opposite effect (but even worse): that gamification sends the message that learning is NOT fun/interesting, and therefore needs extrinsic rewards to justify spending the time. This is deadly to nearly any form of learning other than rote memorization tasks.
@Andrea — the use of incentives (in the form of extrinsic rewards) carries a huge risk *even when engagement/participation spikes. It is nearly impossible to design a gamified learning system that avoids the nasty de-motivating side-effects outside of a well-designed actual game (like a full-blown simulation). There are now more than a thousand studies discussing some aspect of this problem, and many of these are found under the Self-Determination Theory label, now the prevailing theory around distinctions in motivation including — and especially — for learning, studying, and long-term success in school and performance.
There is no meaningful way to compare a Girl Scout cookie drive with workplace learning when discussing incentives. Same with weight loss. And the problem you are trying to solve is already embedded in your scenario: “to break up the monotony of lectures and exercises…”
Anyone who is enabling workplace learning that has “monotonous lectures and exercises” has already failed on the learning design, and while gamification/incentives can help mask that with high-fructose corn syrup engagement, it does nothing to further the REAL goal of the learning in the first place.
I agree that this is a tricky and nuanced topic, though. Not easily discussed in a post or comments. I do understand the overwhelming desire to (basically) “sex up” otherwise tedious workplace learning with incentives for participation. But it is a seductive path that is extremely difficult to pull off *without damaging the thing you were hoping to get in the first place*. If the learning itself is not compelling, it must be re-designed. Cognitive scientists have long been highlighting the fact that we cannot TELL anyone anything and expect it to matter to them. And incentivizing it only tends to make it worse (with some exceptions, of course… See Dan Pink’s “Drive” for an intro to those exceptions).
There are fabulous places to use what we have learned from game design, but rarely are those the things used in gamification (namely, extrinsic rewards — something virtually ALL game designers and game scholars agree is NOT the reason good games are compelling, and NEVER the reason players are playing the game). And actual games themselves, such as those labeled “serious games” (especially simulations) are also known to be extremely effective when done well (though difficult and expensive to create in many cases).
Gamification today is hot/popular because it is fairly simple to implement and yields near-instant results that LOOK good. Engagement! Energy! Participation! But at what cost? Gamification using extrinsic rewards is pure operant conditioning, and decades of research have shown us that while Skinner can get pigeons — or people — to pull the lever for a treat (the basis of all slot machines), no matter how complex the behavior, it is nothing more than a series of simple behaviors chained together driven by the rewards. A pigeon guiding a missle system was never mistaken for a creative, innovative, intelligent pigeon.
Gamification via extrinsic rewards risks creating engagement around a reward structure while simultaneously leading to LESS motivation for the actual underlying thing you were trying to incentivize. While I believe dull, tedious learning is a massive problem in itself, it is still better than a gamified version. There is evidence that even just *mentioning* the possibility of extrinsic rewards can lead to less motivation for the actual thing being learned (Amabile, “Progress Principle”).
I was a training director, teacher, and game developer for many years. I have made every mistake I now push back on, simply because I either refused to consider the evidence/research or was seduced by the enthusiasm around the activities I gamified.
Sorry for the rant, but this is a topic I care about quite a lot. I applaud anyone trying to improve learning, and I was personally disappointed to discover the dark side of incentives for learning and performance. But the research on motivation (including games) points the way to something better, and richer, and deeper.
Kathy,
Thanks so much for your comments. This is obviously a subject you are passionate about and you bring up some great points to keep in mind about “gamification” and learner motivation in general. First, I have to say that I agree with your assertions and the research behind them in a global view of learning and education. In particular, I find the studies and experiments related to Self-Determination Theory especially fascinating.
However, with that said, it may be helpful to provide some additional context for the points in my post. First, my perspective on this comes from years of developing corporate end-user training programs for SAP and other ERP system implementations…a very small corner of the learning and education universe. Attending training for these systems is burdensome for end users as their daily jobs do not just go away while they are in training. In fact, typically workloads actually increase prior to these implementations as users are required to cleanse data in legacy systems and create back ups of near term work in case something goes wrong. In addition, end users in these situations may face reductions in headcount after go live, not to mention that their daily job tasks can change by 60-70% when the leave the office the day before go live and come back the next morning to a brand new ERP system.
With all of these external factors at work, intrinsic motiviation to attend training because it is interesting or will further career growth is practically non-existent. In addition, the subject matter is DRY, no matter how well designed the content. It has been my experience that providing modest extrinsic motivations can help reduce end-user stress in highly volitile pre-go live environments when people just want to get through it.