Gamification. It’s the kind of inelegant word which makes grown men weep. It is – officially – the process of augmenting a learning experience with game-like components. Of course, learning and development has often drawn on games and ‘play’ as part of the medium used to explore new concepts, processes and behaviours. From board games to outdoor treasure hunts, the games of our youth have been mined for new ways to learn and gather information. Inevitably, this trend has found space in online learning too.

The 2011 Learning and Talent Development Survey from CIPD showed an increase in the use of e-learning – 54% of respondents said they had increased their use of e-learning in the previous 12 months. Inevitably, magpie trainers – and I count myself among them – have seen the bright and shiny things in the nests of others and have sought to utilise some of the latest games functionality in these e-learning programmes.

Now there is an issue here. If we are simply trying to appeal to a younger, more tech savvy and games playing workforce then we’re probably onto a bit of a loser. The budgets used to develop the higher end games with their lifelike graphics and complicated game playing devices are more akin to the amount of money spent on a Hollywood blockbuster than they are to the average budget for an hour of e-learning. These things take years to produce. Trying to look like the latest console game may be a laudable ambition, but it’s likely to result in disappointment.

Games Based Learning

So the rise of ‘serious games’ and gamification may not go the whole hog of creating new worlds and placing our learners as first person warriors in search of new sales, better customer satisfaction or faster maintenance and repair of our products. But that doesn’t mean we can’t introduce some elements of the gaming experience into our learning online. I call this game based learning rather than a fully fledged computer game.

Think about some of the exercises you may be familiar with in a current e-learning programme. Multiple choice questions? Why not weave them together into a scenario and make the questions that are asked dependent on the previous answers given? This kind of decision tree exercise, with multiple routes through the interaction with a customer, service user or colleague uses some of the features and functions of a role playing game and provides extra interest and a broader opportunity to explore possible choices and consequences.

Drag and Drop? If you are matching tools to an activity or stages to a process, why not think about preceding the drag and drop with a quest-like scene in which the user explores an environment, selects the things he or she thinks are useful and then completes the drag and drop exercise, hoping they’ve picked up the five things which are needed? This kind of exploration makes learning designers and learners stop thinking about e-learning as a linear, ‘tell’ process and start thinking about learning online as a journey of discovery. Instead of simply replicating the presentation from the face to face course, why not replicate some of the group exercises in a games style design?

Of course, with any games based learning you need to have an element of built in redundancy. For a game to work there need to be options which are wrong or at least less than optimum. Customer or colleague interactions need to include those choices which on the balance of probability lead to an unsuccessful outcome. As well as starting a game, somewhere down the line must be the option for ‘game over’! This requires designers and developers to build in cul de sacs which some learners may never go down and mazes which they may loop around again and again. Building these occasionally used components is essential to replicate the games like sense of challenge and potential failure, but these features increase the expense and the complexity when compared to a linear route through essential presentations.

The Factors to Consider

So when might that extra expense be justified and what criteria would you consider before developing these game like elements?

The first relates to the complexity of the knowledge to be acquired. If a learner needs to apply their knowledge to a range of different situations, then a games based approach may be a much more effective solution than a series of multiple screens explaining how things work when new conditions are introduced. These used to be called range statements – the range of situations and circumstances in which a skilled person would be competent. For example, let’s take a Doctor performing a diagnosis. We can teach the medic about certain symptoms and how these symptoms would point the doctor towards a particular condition and thereafter a treatment plan.

But what if the patient is elderly, or very young, or doesn’t speak English very well, or has some other previously diagnosed condition and is already taking other medication? These and many other circumstances are the ‘range’ in which the physician would need to be able to explore a situation and apply their knowledge to come to a diagnosis.

How about an engineer going to solve a problem with a piece of machinery? Could they first of all be taken to a replica of their depot or workshop or even the back of their van and asked to select the tools they need to take with them given the scant information on the job sheet? These games based applications create opportunities to apply prior learning in new contexts or discover specific gaps in their existing knowledge when that knowledge is stretched by circumstances.

For the second, think about compliance. There are rules and there are consequences for breaking those rules – maybe an issue with the safety of individuals or the threat of large fines or jail terms for those who act outside the law. As soon as you have a set of rules and a set of consequences you can set up scenarios similar to the one I described earlier – a decision tree where the consequences of your choices are revealed as you dig yourself deeper and deeper into a hole or manage to claw your way out of a problem of your own creating. There are great consequences – ‘go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect £200’ as one famous game we might want to turn to for inspiration would have it.

In fact, using board games – from the humble snakes and ladders as the scoring mechanism for a quiz, to something more complicated like Monopoly – can be an inspiration for creating a games-like experience for learners. This is particularly true when the alternative is for them to click ‘next’ on screen after screen of legalese and dire warnings. There is a ‘watch out’ here, however, and this is about perceptions that we are trivialising serious matters. If people could lose their liberty, limbs or their life, perhaps a game might not be the most sensitive way of tackling the training required to ensure compliance.

The third area in my far from exhaustive list for utilising games is where some kind of repetitive practice in a safe environment is required prior to trying something for real. These first person scenario type games, where an individual chooses from a series of options and then participates in the resulting conversation is not dissimilar to the medical decision tree I described above. One crucial difference is the degree to which the scenario develops and needs to be believable – perhaps using a talking avatar or series of video clips. In our first example above, a series of data which could easily be derived from a facsimile of hospital notes is enough. Here, we need the user to suspend their disbelief for a prolonged period as they follow our desired sales process or interview checklist. These are particularly effective – and may not be too expensive to create – for people whose role involves interacting with customers over the phone. The scripts need to be believable – the environment recognised by those who will transfer the knowledge gained to the real world. If everything happens in a world which is unrecognisable to those who will use it and if the comments from the non-player characters feel like copybook quotes from dream clients, then they will be rejected by learners.

In creating a realistic world, we also need to think creatively about surprise and instant reward. Getting to the next level should have some recognition; non-player characters should do things which are believable but unexpected. Most importantly, we must be able to lose as well as win the game.

Watch Outs

The example of the customer interaction game leads me to a real ‘watch out’. It’s not the same as the real thing! I know that may seem blindingly obvious but it bears repeating that your customers and colleagues and service users do not come to a meeting with a four option multiple choice question pinned to their chest. It is useful to reinforce the kind of thinking required and the mental process which supports this interaction, but it isn’t the same as doing it in real life where real people have the unfortunate habit of not following our script.

A few years ago golf games were all the rage. You could play 18 holes at Augusta National against an array of players from the current to the golden past. I could easily develop my club choice and mastery of my virtual swing to beat Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus. But only on a cyber golf course. In the real world, I have developed my knowledge. After playing I may know more about the rules of the game. I may know about the pros and cons of different clubs and which ones to choose in different positions on the fairway, I may even know how the 7th green slopes through several undulations. But could I play the course? Could I outperform Tiger Woods? Even after his recent dip in form I know full well that I couldn’t and the game never claimed I could. Unfortunately some serious games make exactly that kind of claim.

Of course there are examples of simulators which do deliver skills improvement – the most famous being flight simulators. When the cost of actually flying and the potential downside of actually crashing are so high, then it does make sense to go to the expense of building an absolutely accurate but safe learning experience. These examples are rare in the more day to day world of learning and development and there the journey from learning to game was the other way round. Rather than learning designers borrowing from the games industry, the games industry borrowed from the learning tools.

And finally…

Before embarking on a business game be clear about what you’re trying to achieve from the outset. If ‘success’ is engagement where learners repeatedly play the game to improve their score or status then be sure that 10+ hours of game play is acceptable to the business? If however, the purpose of the business game is to provide a discovery learning tool then ensure that dead ends are just that and don’t detract from the learning for which only an hour is allocated!