Getting from A to G: learning design for effective gamification

Editor's Notes

• #2: I have… and I’m here to talk to you about… Cool stuff and tips Hi. My name’s Megan and I’m the Lead Learning Designer at Mind Click. I’ve been involved in developing a lot of really creative solutions in my time with the company and over the past couple of years we’ve really been focusing on gamification in learning, and that’s what I’m here to talk to you about today. I don’t just want to show you some cool stuff we’ve created - although I will do that. I also want to share with you some of the learning design tips that help us come up with our ideas, and develop gamified solutions that genuinely help to achieve the objectives of the organisations we work with.
• #3: Look familiar? Content covering… Part of wider requirement Here’s some content supplied to us by a client. Does this sort of thing look familiar to you? No need to read it all, but there’s a lot of text there, explaining the advantages and disadvantages of both qualitative and quantitative data. Bit of a mouthful! It’s part of a wider requirement for training on data analysis techniques.
• #4: Typical e-learning treatment That’s what we could have done… So here’s an example of how a learning designer might typically treat the content when converting it into an e-learning format. I’m guessing this kind of format is pretty familiar to anyone who works with e-learning. There’s nothing wrong with this, but all it does it present content. So that’s what we could have done... 
• #5: I’m sure you’re all familiar with… Let’s press continue... But here’s another approach to that same content. I’m sure you’re all familiar with Family Fortunes. Welcome to Factual Fortunes! Our take on the classic gameshow, with a data twist. Okay, so let’s press continue to get started… 
• #6: There are four rounds How to play Need to pick top 3 answers that belong Use arrow Let’s watch someone playing This is round 1 - there’s four rounds, one each for the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative data. [When video ends] So now I can play. I need to pick the ‘top three’ answers that belong on the board - so the three answers that are advantages of qualitative data. I can use this arrow to scroll across and see more options. Let’s watch a video of someone playing to give you a better idea of how the activity feels.
• #7: [at end] Let’s skip to feedback [When video ends] Okay, so I’m onto the next round. I’m going to skip past the next three rounds because I want to show you the feedback to the activity.
• #8: Feedback if pass Won coins - ties into wider game Here’s the feedback if you pass. [Pause to allow audience to skim] You can see that you’ve won coins, which links into the wider game - which I’m going to talk about in a minute. Or if you fail the activity…
• #9: Fail feedback - booby prize Advantages of activities: Chuck learners in Content in feedback Wider game context & client requirement …This is the feedback you see. You can see that you’ve won the comedy booby prize. The feedback also directs you to further training that they can take to improve your knowledge. The advantage of this activity based approach is that it chucks learners right in. There’s no content presentation here at all – we are leaving learners to learn from their mistakes. As long as you explain things fully in the feedback - or in this case direct learners to external resources - they’re getting the information that they need, and they’re much more likely to pay attention to it because they want to know where they went wrong. Now I want to take a step back and show you the wider context that this activity sits in. It’s one of ten activities that make up a game which we’ve called Call of Data. The client for this solution was Santander, who wanted a fun and engaging way to teach HR managers how to use data more effectively.  
• #10: Enter name and choose avatar So at the start of the game, you get the chance to enter your name and choose the avatar that you’ll play as in the game. Just a little touch that makes the game feel more personal to the learner. Let’s do that now.
• #11: Fun approach to menu Roll die Activities and other gameplay [Once video has finished] And then you go on to the game board. You can see that your character personalisation has been carried through. The gameboard acts as a more fun approach to a menu – you roll the die to move around, taking activities and engaging in other gameplay features – such as chance questions and bonus boosts – as you go. Let’s roll the die and see our avatar move.
• #12: Activity tile - 10 activities Win coins, other mechanisms Leaderboard [Once activity panel open] Our avatar has passed an activity tile which means that we can pick an activity to take. As you can see, there are 10 activities to complete and each activity is based around a different aspect of data analysis. Every activity gives the learner the opportunity to win coins and the aim of the game is to collect as many coins as possible. There’s also built in a built in gambling mechanism and bonus multiple choice questions to collect extra coins. There’s also a leaderboard on LMS that allows learners to compete against their colleagues. 
• #13: How did you come up with it? Creative process - 3 steps You might be thinking that’s all well and good but how did you come up with that idea? What made you think that this approach would work for this content? Well, that’s what I’m here to talk to you about. I want to show you the creative process that we find works. There are three key steps that I’ll focus on, and I’ll introduce them as I go along. 
• #14: What’s your measurable outcome? Action mapping Cathy Moore Firstly, consider - what are your objectives for your training solution? And by that I mean what’s the measurable outcome that you need to achieve for your organisation? I’m a big advocate of Cathy Moore’s action mapping technique, which I’m sure some of you have heard of. Let’s go through that technique now…
• #16: How to apply gamification? No gamification for gamifications sake Think about your objectives Sit down and brainstorm Once you know what you need to teach and why, it’s time to start thinking about how you can apply gamification. Now, gamification won’t work in every context, and I’m really against using ‘gamification for the sake of it’. It’s a bad idea to shoehorn content into a game just for the sake of having the game in there. It can distract from the content, it can trivialise important content, and if there’s an easy workaround to accumulate scores, it can even be misleading about learners’ performance. It’s crucial that you know your objectives and content, so that you can design your approach around what will best teach your audience what they need to know. Games should be more than an attention grabber. So the next step is to sit down, think and brainstorm the best approach. 
• #17: Get everyone involved. At Mind Click… Play games – Tetris, Candy Crush, Duolingo, immersive, Monopoly Reuse mechanics Remember objectives Present to stakeholders I’d highly recommend getting as many people as you can involved in the ideas generation stage. No matter how good you are at coming up with ideas, there are always other people who will come up with even more, different ideas to you. The more ideas you have, the more you’ve got to play with. At Mind Click, we involve learning designers, graphic designers, developers, project managers, and even salespeople with brainstorming. Not just the people working on that particular project, but everyone in the office. Not only does this give you a great creative basis - but different roles can tell you what is and isn’t possible, what’s a lot of work and what’s not. People can bring inspiration from all different areas of their lives - and of course, playing games is the best start. So, if you’re interested in designing more gamified solutions, I’d say play as many games as possible. From simple games like Tetris, Candy Crush, to learning games like Duolingo or QuizUp, to immersive first person exploration or shooter games, to retro board games like Monopoly that have passed the test of time.   The more games you play, the more you’ll understand gameplay mechanics and the more ideas you’ll have for what to incorporate in your solutions.   And not everything has to be built from scratch - you might be able to reuse mechanics between different projects to save resource. For the Call of Data project for Santander, we reused some elements from games we’d created previously for other clients, but developed all of the content based activities from scratch. But remember to always carefully analyse the requirements and only incorporate gamification where it adds value - not just so you can have a game in there for the sake of it. Once you’ve come up with and refined your ideas, this is a great time to present your proposed approach to any other project stakeholders for approval. To make sure that you’ll be able to see through your ideas to completion, it’s important to get stakeholders to get on side and invest in your idea early on. 
• #18: Fun – bring it to life So those are the fun stages - now you need to stitch it all together and bring it to life.
• #19: Define gameplay Storyboard effectively Do the maths Think like your learner So how do we bring it to life? Here are some tips that I’ve learned from experience… Define gameplay Firstly - define gameplay. I never skip the design specification document for a gamified project. We use this document to outline everything about the solution and how it works. From the authoring tool in which we’re building it, to the templates that we’re using, to the nitty gritty of the gameplay mechanics, the design specification is the blueprint for the whole project. When you’re doing this, don’t skimp on the detail. When it comes to defining gameplay mechanics, the more detail that you can incorporate early on, the better. There will be loads of things that you’ve not even thought about until you start putting pen to paper. The beauty of the design specification is that it’s a comprehensive document which can help stakeholders understand how the solution will work too. Storyboard effectively Storyboarding a gamified solution can be a little different to scripting more traditional e-learning solutions. When storyboarding bespoke activities, you need to develop a format that supplies text for every stage of the activity, in a way that makes it clear how the activity works. It’s important to think through every eventuality and provide the right content to build the activity. There’s also general gameplay text - when we were storyboarding Santander, for example, as well as the 10 bespoke activities, we also needed to script the game instruction sequence, the instruction callouts that appear on the gameboard, bonus questions, the gambling screen that you see before each activity, the activity-specific instructions, the end of game feedback screen, and more. Don’t overlook this sort of thing. Do the maths Sometimes, at the storyboarding stage, you’ll also need to define the points or rewards that will be awarded for each activity, and how this ties in with wider gameplay mechanisms. Sometimes a spreadsheet can help you map out your points system if it isn’t super straightforward. You can figure out what the minimum and maximum scores are across the game and define reward levels accordingly. Think like your learner While you’re doing all these steps to bring your game to life, it’s important to keep thinking from the learner’s perspective. Are your activities getting the learner to practise the behaviours you’re looking for? Are the challenges hard enough that they feel like a challenge, but not so hard that learners give up? Are you providing regular updates on progress? Is the game easy enough to play and does it make sense? To create solutions that actually help to achieve the learning objectives of the organisations I work with, these are questions that I never stop asking myself. 
• #20: So that’s all I’ve got time to cover today. Does anyone have any questions?