Last week I talked about gamification – and whether it could be used to help improve productivity

If you weren’t thinking about it then, I hope you are now – Ambient research suggests that game-based learning will grow from $1.5 billion in 2012 to $2.3 billion in 2017.  This is important.  I am regularly int  touch with productivity centres around the globe who want to educate youngsters about productivity issues – whilst they are still young enough to be positively influenced.  This is part of many national productivity campaigns.

Adding gaming elements to such education might work.

Let’s remind ourselves about what gamification means – and what it doesn’t. 

Asking the learner a series of questions, along with multiple options, is NOT game-based learning. 

Game-based learning is the application of gaming elements to a non-gaming context – such as learning or training … and by gaming elements, we mean such things as:

  1. Challenge
  1. Motivation
  1. Rewards
  1. Feedback

– the elements that ‘hook’ gamers and keep them coming back for more.  Build these elements into your learning and you might just ‘hook’ learners into your learning and their progression … and you might stand a chance of creating a generation informed about productivity before they enter the workplace.