Another Way to Make Virtual Training Effective and Fun: Gamify It.
Many organizations are struggling right now with the question of how to make virtual training effective. In a previous blog post, I wrote about advantages of remote meetings, highlighting ways to make these more effective. But training is different - it’s less about getting everyone’s input and more about helping a group of people learn a new skill set.
The type of training that I do, which focuses on soft skills for leadership and teamwork such as coaching, delegating, managing conflict, motivating, and engaging across differences, is often believed to be the most difficult to convert from in-person to a virtual format. These skills call on very nuanced communication and body language practices, which are harder to demonstrate and more difficult to practice in a virtual environment. So how do we teach these skills effectively in a virtual space? Here we’ll explore an alternative way of constructing virtual training - doing what the educational technology and multi billion-dollar gaming industries do best: gamification.
The key to making learning effective is to combine high quality content with a high-quality experience - in other words, make it both informative/instructive and fun. How do you make training fun in a virtual environment? One option is to convert standard training into a game. Games are incredibly motivational, even addictive. Research has demonstrated that games motivate us through intrinsic desires to achieve, to socialize, and to immerse ourselves in experiences.[1]
Gamification Basics
Consider for a moment the fundamental components of all great games:
Ways to score / move forward
Ways to lose points / move backwards
Skills and knowledge required to score / move forward
Rules-turns of play
Visual progress tracking
Intrinsic vs extrinsic rewards
Now consider how you might build an experience, leveraging these building blocks, to teach the material you’re trying to teach. Avoid the temptation to integrate a game into your existing material. The goal of gamification is to learn through a game, not to build a came into a course.
Questions to Consider
As I begin to gamify the classes that I teach, I’ve developed a rough strategy which begins with a set of questions. These questions include:
What new skills and knowledge does my class seek to promote? In the domain of soft skills, the end goal is to help participants shift their behavior - to try new ways of doing things. Thus, a powerful way to encourage participants to try out new approaches is to tie their score to the behaviors you’re seeking to promote. For example, if you’re trying to teach listening skills, you might award points when participants demonstrate Level 2+ listening (listening to understand and to empathize) rather than Level 0 or 1 listening (distracted listening or listening to respond).
Who is in the best position to judge participants’ answers? In the simple domain of soft skills, chances are high that there’s no true “right” or “wrong”move/answer. As such, you will likely need someone, or some group, to play the role of judge. Choose wisely! While having other class participants judge responses is a great way to keep them engaged, they may not be the best judge of behaviors that they, too, are just now learning.
How will the participants in your class (e.g., game) take turns? One of the most challenging aspects of all classes is full engagement. Some people will always be quicker to speak than others, which creates a disadvantage for those who like to think before they speak. However you go about it, you need to design rules of play that give everyone equivalent opportunities to participate.
How will scores be tracked? The reason that gamification is so effective is that nearly all people have at least an ounce of competitive spirit. Even the most collaborative, least competitive person will get an endorphin rush from seeing themselves and/or their friends in the lead. As such, it’s crucial to have a way that participants can see where they stand in relation to others. The best games constantly remind us of this — each move prompts an effort to catch up, get ahead, or stay on top.
How will you reward the winner? From my perspective, this is a trick question, so be careful how you answer it. Remember that there is great intrinsic reward to winning. Victory is a fundamental human experience that is strongly associated with elation and delight. Furthermore, there is a plethora of research pointing to the fact that extrinsic rewards (e.g., a prize) diminishes the impact of intrinsic rewards(e.g., the “high” of winning itself). Think hard before you introduce any sort of prize. You may just have undermined the entire experience.
Example: Leader-as-Coach
In addition to 1-1 and group coaching, one of my passions is to teach leaders to become great coaches to their people. With no end to social distancing in sight, my clients are ready to give virtual “Leader-as-Coach” a try. Could this be an opportunity to gamify the class? If so, what would that version look like? I don’t have it all figured out yet, but I’ll share the design I’m playing with (get it, playing with?).
Leader as Coach Design Components:
Points are earned by making “coaching moves” - demonstrating a coaching skill, mindset, or approach that (simply defined) helps a teammate think more deeply and ultimately generate solutions for themselves.
Points are lost whenever participants solve for their teammate.
All class participants serve as judges, but must judge wisely. If their judgment of classmates moves aligns with that of the Course Instructor, they earn points, but when their judgement differs from that of the Course Instructor, they lose points.
Participants turns are based on pulling names from a hat, which means that all participants must be ready to go at any moment in time. However, once a person’s name is drawn three times, it remains out of the hat until all names have been drawn. However, having your name removed from the hat doesn’t remove you from the game, as you still earn points each time you judge another participants’ response.
Participants’ scores are tracked on a virtual game board which mirrors the classic game “Chutes & Ladders.” I chose this classic game board because it’s easy to design, easy to see who is in front, and most importantly, mirrors the concept of coaching: great coaching is like a ladder that moves people quickly upward toward their goal; solving for someone is akin to sliding down a chute…it usually hinders others’ growth more so than it supports it.
The winner is be rewarded by knowing they won. Perhaps I’ll choose a way to celebrate their success, based on their personality.
Of course, I’m also re-jiggering course agendas, activities, and materials to work in a remote setting. This will work too! But yet I wonder…is gamification the better way? Given that clients have already taken me up on the idea, time will tell!
[1] Yee, Nick. “Motivations for Play in Online Games.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 9.6 (2006): 772-75. Web. 17 Oct. 2016.
