Gamification – The e-Learning Trend
“Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” Malcolm’s words truly reflect that effective education is the essence of lifelong learning, steady growth of life and is responsible for right career through right path. Education and learning is always evolving and there is no end of it.
e-Learning Trend
Phases of learning have seen enormous changes over the last few years. Traditional learning has now transformed into methods which are fast paced, self-driven, accommodative, time and cost effective, customized and where tracking progress is like a breeze. According to a report published by Financial Express in 2014, e-Learning has a promising future in India as it raises the level of education, literacy and economic development in the country. The online education segment is set to become a high stake opportunity in India. There are many factors driving this growth including the environment friendliness, increased reach and overall effectiveness. A report titled “Online Education in India: 2021” published by KPMG and Google finds that from 1.6 million paid users in 2016, the same may grow by 6 times in 2021 and expected to reach about 9.6 million users.
The technological innovations have made e-Learning a sustainable option to traditional learning. With learners being well-versed with smart phones and e-gadgets, learning has become even simpler. Technology driven companies and training organizations are investing in Learning Management Systems (LMS) and other tools and techniques to impart their employees with updated information. With this kicking and screaming advancements, e-Learning is going to be a necessity and a global phenomenon by the end of this decade. Gamification is one such new concept and an upcoming e-Learning trend which is hot talk of the business community. With more and more Millennials joining the workplace, employers are finding it difficult to impart training and inculcate learning interests in them. But there has been a significant acceptance of learning through playing which is observed among employees. Gamification uses best mechanics of games and applies it to non-game activities to achieve certain behaviors. Certain activities which seem tedious and difficult are made fun by introduction of game concepts.
Applications of Gamification
Gamification is the application of game elements like scoring points, changes in levels and competition between players in any area of activity learning. Complex tasks and activities are incorporated into a game challenging people to break different levels thereby motivating them to compete and learn. Be it teachers assigning complicated real-time projects to their students or managers training their team members, this method is becoming popular as it increases interest and participation and results in higher productivity.
Game-based learning and gamification have a greater impact in imparting crucial information having a powerful concept and equally effective results. Gamification increases learner’s engagement and holds back their interest to take learning seriously by having fun. Gaming enhances learning experience and absorption of information as people plunge themselves in the process of gaming. This method captures their interest by challenging them for learning while entertaining.
The creativity of gamification is that it has various innovative uses. It is used in imparting behavioral training, soft skills training, sales training, product training to make the product more engaging and fun to use. Additionally, it is used in recruitment and selection to attract new recruits and identifying qualities in them. Customer engagement is one more area of gamification where users are rewarded for participating in discussions on online platforms and writing reviews. This makes learning more captivating which traditionally may sound boring and monotonous. Training manuals in organizations are replaced by an interactive game these days which allows trainees to participate, learn and test themselves by winning reward points and get certifications. Long boring training sessions is a matter of past now as long sessions can be gamified to maintain the interest and learning levels which is the objective of the entire process.
Future of Gamification
Lot of big brands and companies have already started using gamification and have launched various game-based simulations and apps to track goal achievement of their employees, to get customer loyalty, ensure customer wellness, tracking training records, completing projects on time, for brand awareness, motivating employees, ensure team building spirit, enhance productivity and there are many more such applications.
Gamification is often an essential feature which is used in online applications and websites, mainly designed to motivate people to meet personal challenges which can be related to health challenges, drinking the apt amount of water, walking counted number of steps, relating to weight-loss goals, learning foreign languages etc. What is fun here is tracking one’s progress, achieving hourly, daily or weekly goals and achieve the feeling of a winner by playing it like a game.
Gamification is here to stay and is a trend which is expected to be highly acceptable in enhancing the training implementation in future.
Thanks, it is quite informative.
This article is really very interesting and usefull for us to know about the latest trends. This article also amplify the knowledge on such a meaningful topic.
Thank you for sharing.
Waiting for more article like this.
Amazingly descibed !!! The article is indeed a beautiful piece of work. It helps in enhancing the information to a new domain and also expands horizons by adding knowledge about this interesting topic. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Keep posting more.
Felicitations.
Best Wishes 🙂
Vaishakhi Shah
Intresting way of learning with fun which gives virtual knowledge.
Very informative
Awaited for more this type of articles
Very informative blog..learned the new way of learning.
Great effort and best idea
Very nice and informative