A gamification platform can encourage eLearning engagement in surprising ways. People respond to incentives differently, and a platform like Bunchball Nitro can offer an array of incentives throughout the eLearning lifecycle, appealing to each worker’s individual learning style.
Gamification can cultivate a sense of achievement among your employees, spur their competitive streak, encourage interoffice cooperation, provide an avenue for peer recognition, and allow a wide degree of customization that will let every employee showcase their unique talents.
When incorporating gamification into your eLearning program, these five strategies can produce maximum results:
There’s No Reward Too Small: The best thing about a gamification platform is that you can spread the rewards around. In a traditional eLearning system, you might be limited to keeping a list of classes completed, perhaps posting the top test scores from each module to motivate students.
Gamification lets you track and reward progress on a more granular level. Passing tests isn’t the only thing that matters—the gamification platform allows you to reward workers for the time they spend on exercises, the consistency of their efforts, and the variety of their interests. And incremental rewards provide a steady stream of validation that will make challenging courses and ambitious goals seem more attainable.
Bunchball now teams with BI WORLDWIDE, the leading global rewards company, to give your employees access to a Global Reward Store. Using a reward marketplace allows your employees to use the points accrued in your gamification program to be redeemed for items or experiences, and you can customize your reward offerings to fit your audience.
Harness the Competitive Spirit: People love to compete. Gamification can harness your staff’s competitive spirit, engaging workers who might otherwise care little for eLearning programs. The Bunchball Nitro platform is uniquely designed to transform competition into achievement. The gamified learning environment allows workers to constantly vie for top position, quantifying every achievement from completing entire modules to simply logging in daily.
In a traditional eLearning environment, no one knows where they stand until final grades are released. Even the most innately competitive students may decide to coast along, only to be disappointed when exam grades are released. But gamification makes every day count. When workers are constantly given an opportunity to surge ahead in the rankings or risk falling behind, they will be more engaged with their eLearning courses.
Make Teamwork Work: Not everyone is driven by the promise of personal glory, but nobody wants to let the team down. Gamification can bring teamwork to the eLearning program, letting workers help one another and share accountability for the team’s success.
The platform provides valuable insights about the strengths and weaknesses of individual students, allowing managers to build teams that are designed for high achievement and engagement. You can pair up strong test takers with active discussion-board participants to encourage better communication. Teams can be built to include a mix of procrastinators and conscientious schedulers—those who finish assignments early can encourage those who wait until the last minute to stay on top of the syllabus.
Gamified eLearning also cultivates peer-instruction through the creation of study groups and quantification of contributions to online discussion. It’s said that you won’t really understand a skill until you try to teach someone else. So when teams are built to contain a diversity of learning styles and professional backgrounds, workers will naturally reinforce their lessons by helping one another. Peer study helps build engagement with the program and cements knowledge in students.
Build Avenues for Peer Recognition: The lack of a personal connection can be a huge barrier for eLearning engagement. For some people, receiving a high score on an eLearning exam can feel like a hollow achievement—it shows that they mastered the material, but the grading can feel remote, like they’re being praised by a computer. The Bunchball Nitro platform allows you to create incentives that bring the human element into eLearning.
The Nitro platform lets workers reward one another, validating their contributions to the team. Staff members will be able to give virtual MVP badges to colleagues who were most helpful on message boards, or simply award online trophies that recognize the teammates who are committed to the program’s success. When an award is coming from your peers, it feels more genuine than a remotely graded exam.
Let Workers Follow Their Passion: Let gamification unlock the inherent flexibility of eLearning. There is a vast array of potential course progressions, and the Nitro platform can help you keep track of a workforce following a self-directed path.
Gamification can automatically quantify employees’ progress, making it easy to have an “apples-to-apples” comparison across the workforce, even when everyone is on an customized curriculum. The program can also create cross-departmental study groups, linking workers pursuing similar course progressions who otherwise might not encounter one another. By building eLearning communities and rewarding individualized progress, gamification can allow workers to stay engaged with their peers while tailoring their studies to match their own professional goals.
