Gamification & Engagement
Recently much has been written about the integration of gamification in instructional design including posts I have done myself, but today I wanted to discuss in more detail why this has become so important.
Gamification is defined as the “application of common elements of game playing as a means to encourage engagement with a product or service” and as I have written in the past, the element of game playing has mass appeal, but why is engagement so important?
Consider the following…millennials (persons born between 1982 – 2004) are now the largest generation in the workforce. Think about that for a moment. Tens of Millions of employees who have grown up empowered by technology and pushing the demand of instant gratification. This group is connected, they operate in the “now” and want to feel valued by those they work for…. they want to be engaged.
There have been countless studies on the significant increase in employee retention when employees feel engaged but I will leave that discussion for another day. The point is this… employees want to be engaged, engagement is a good thing and one way to get an employee engaged is to use gamification.
In the upcoming weeks I will continue the discussion on gamification and discuss in more detail how instructional designers and programmers are partnering to create eLearning modules that are using gamification in many creative and exciting ways.
To learn more about gamification and other eLearning training solutions offered by Pathways please visit our website at www.pathwaystrainingandeLearning.com
