At present, gamification is one of the hottest trends in eLearning and corporate learning. While implementing employee learning and development (EL&D) strategies, most organizations leverage gamification to keep learners interested, engaged, and motivated. They include gamified elements in the lessons and microlearning nuggets to encourage employees to spend more time on the learning management system (LMS) solution.
According to BIWorldwide.com,
“Gamification is adding game mechanics into nongame environments, like a website, online community, learning management system or business’ intranet to increase participation. The goal of gamification is to engage with consumers, employees and partners to inspire collaborate, share and interact.”
The new-age learning management systems come with native features to facilitate gamification in corporate training. The learning and development (L&D) managers can leverage these native features to improve the learning experience and increase the course completion rate. Several studies have highlighted how LMS gamification helps organizations to persuade and motivate employees to acquire knowledge and skills.
According to a survey conducted by eLearningIndustry.com,
“89% of survey respondents claim that if a task is gamified, they feel eager to complete it and are in a competitive mood. Also, only 3% of people remain unproductive during a gamified training.”
That is why; you can leverage a slew of benefits by implementing LMS gamification. In addition to making corporate learning a continuous process, LMS gamification will help your organization to make employees retain knowledge and facilitate the transfer of learning. But your EL&D strategies must implement the right LMS gamification elements to keep the working professionals engaged.
Why Your EL&D Strategy Must Focus on LMS Gamification?
Enhance Learning Experience
No organization can implement EL&D successfully without improving the learning experience. The employees often do not access the LMS regularly or complete the training programs due to poor learning experience. LMS gamification makes it easier for L&D managers to boost the learning experience making corporate learning fun. The superior learning experience encourages employees to acquire, retain, and transfer knowledge regularly.
Increase Course Completion Rate
Often corporate training programs fail due to a lack of interest and motivation. No organization can persuade employees to complete courses or training programs without making them experience fun throughout the learning process. In addition to keeping learners interested and engaged, LMS gamification keeps employees excited and motivates them to complete training programs successfully.
Facilitate Knowledge Transfer
Along with motivating employees to complete training programs, LMS gamification is effective in promoting knowledge retention and transfer.
According to TechnologyAdvice.com,
“The basis of gamification, or making the learning process fun, has been proven to have a positive impact on retention.”
At the same time, the knowledge transfer facilitated by gamification contributes hugely towards improving employee’s performance, efficiency, and productivity.
While implementing LMS gamification, the managers and administrators can provide feedback to learners immediately and automatically. They can configure the LMS to appreciate the specific achievement of learners by giving scores, points, or badges. Likewise, they can encourage and motivate underperformers by showing appropriate massage. At the same time, the instructors can train and upskill the underperformers by recommending supplementary activities.
Set up an Informal Learning Environment
Unlike formal learning environments, informal learning environments motivate learners to acquire skills and knowledge by satisfying their curiosity. The LMS gamification helps your organization to set up an informal learning environment that keeps the learners excited, curious, and interested. The L&D managers can further finetune the informal learning environment by making the learners solve real-time problems and handle real-life situations.
Drive Behavioural Change
According to the World Academy of Research in Science and Engineering (WARSE),
“Gamification is not directly associated with knowledge and skills. Gamification affects students’ behaviour, commitment and motivation, which can lead to improvement of knowledge and skills.”
The behavioral change created through LMS gamification helps your organization to improve employee satisfaction and reduce employee turnover. Also, the behavioral changes will help your organization to improve productivity and operational efficiency.
Transform EL&D
As mentioned earlier, gamification is currently one of the key trends in corporate learning. Many organizations these days make employees acquire, retain, and apply knowledge by gamifying a variety of training programs – onboarding, induction, compliance, customer support, product sales, soft skill development, and awareness creation.
How to Gamify Your LMS Successfully to Increase Course Completion Rate?
You can easily gamify corporate training by leveraging the gamification options provided by sophisticated LMSs. But you must consider and implement some simple ideas to leverage the benefits of LMS gamification fully.
Motivate Employees to Learn
No organization can make EL&D programs successful by forcing or compelling the employees to learn. While gamifying an LMS, you need to ensure that every employee can acquire knowledge and skill at her own pace and convenience. Instead of setting guidelines, you must focus on encouraging and motivating the employees to learn after working hours. The primary goal of your LMS gamification strategy must be to make corporate learning fun and engaging.
Provide Something Useful
Most employees will acquire knowledge and skills without affecting their work schedules. Hence, you cannot keep them motivated and interested only by improving the learning experience. In addition to the improving learning experience, your LMS gamification strategy must focus on something useful to the employees. You must focus on providing the information or content that will help the learner to improve their efficiency or solve work-related problems.
Appreciate and Showcase Competence
An employee will feel motivated to return to the LMS only when her performance or achievements are highlighted and appreciated. You can boost LMS gamification by keeping the informal learning environment both exciting and competitive. It is always important to showcase competence by including interactive quizzes in lessons, foster friendly competition using leaderboards, and reward achievements by giving points, scores, or badges.
Implement the Right Gamification Strategies
You cannot gamify an LMS successfully without implementing some of the popular most preferred gamification strategies for adult learners. According to FinancesOnline.com, some of the preferred gamification strategies for adult learners are – progressing to different levels, getting scores or points, receiving real-time performance feedback, tracking progress through a progress bar, competing with friends, and earning virtual currencies.
The gamification elements chosen for use in Mintbook LMS tend to be fairly simple. The most common elements in Mintbook LMS include Coins, Badges, Levels, Rank, Score. Gamification drives results like a 5.5x increase in course completions and nearly a 2x increase in learning engagements. Also, incentives like coins, leaderboards, badges, and levels motivate users to engage with LMS and increase their social capital. They also create friendly competition. At the same time, its customizable nature makes it easier for you to gamify the LMS in the context of EL&D programs. Your organization can invest in the LMS to leverage the benefits of gamification without increasing ongoing overheads.
