If you’re a training manager, you’re doubtless working with salespeople from consulting firms and vendors to select the products and services you need to support your teams. As you evaluate these competing bids, it is very easy to subconsciously favor the bid from the person you’d prefer to do business with moving forward.
You don’t want to disregard this gut feeling entirely. Having a good working relationship with the people you’re going to deal with on a day-to-day basis is crucial to the overall success of your training program. Unfortunately, the salesperson is typically not the individual you end up partnering up with once you’ve signed a contract. Instead, you find yourself dealing with sales engineers or customer service representatives. Continue reading →
In my first post, I discussed the most common mistakes trainers make when creating programs. First up, onboarding.
The onboarding process is an exciting period for new hires and the organization alike. Everyone’s excited to get to work—and managers are often too quick to end the training phase because they want to get back to their own work. Continue reading →
Training seems so simple. You have information, you have an audience, and you have a medium of delivery. You should be able to plug the information into the medium of delivery and present it to the audience who absorbs the information through the chosen medium and—ta-da!—completes their training. If only life were so simple.
As readers of this blog are well aware, a lot of thought and effort goes into optimizing training programs, which means there are many opportunities for things to go wrong. Continue reading →
Games can increase customer loyalty, incentivize employees, and help achieve personal improvement. It’s been said that globally we spend 3 billion hours a week playing video games. For many it’s hard to imagine a world before video and digital games, especially now that smartphones have become so ubiquitous. The link between education and gaming is strengthening. Let’s move beyond the idea of bringing “fun” into the classroom; gaming can stimulate the brain’s reward system. So how can we harness the power of games to truly impact the way we learn?
Gamification is the integration of game mechanics in non-game contexts, such as employee training and development or standardized test preparation. The concept is gaining traction as an innovative way to engage students in education and participation in learning beyond traditional teaching methods.
Badgeville, a behavior platform company, has found success using gamification to incentivize learning for Deloitte and Beat the GMAT, a social network for MBA applicants. Deloitte’s Leadership Academy, a digital education program with 10,000 senior executives at more than 150 companies around the globe, tracks and rewards behaviors. The program includes completing lessons, watching full educational videos, answering quizzes, and all the way up to earning an optional diploma. Beat the GMAT empowers members to learn, share, teach, and support each other. Those studying for the GMAT are motivated to compete against their peers, driving the competition towards getting a better score on the exam.
Still not convinced?
- Many students have at least one subject they struggle with or find boring; gamification can add an element of fun into an otherwise not-so-fun subject.
- Gamification encourages performance, displays progress and shows individual strengths giving students confidence and motivating them to achieve at the same time.
- Gamification platforms can be used to track student progress, rewarding students with certificates for completing levels, being in the top ranking an can be viewed when applying for different colleges and future opportunities.
- Gamification rewards those who do well, which can be a motivator for others. Those who are falling behind in a class see successful peers and feel compelled to keep up.
What do you think? Is gamification just another buzzword?
For more on the topic of gamification, here are some related articles:
In response to TrainingMag.com’s recent industry report, Lauby sees the probable increase in training expenditures as an indication that training will continue to be a major focus for organizations. More importantly, organization will have to actively engage participants and create learning retention. She discusses in detail three trends:
1. Social Learning
2. Social Networking Techniques
3. Gamification
eLearn Magazine’s Jane Bozarth and Karl Kapp both offer their insights.
“Social media tools help to amplify the social and informal learning already going on in organizations all the time, every day, and make the learning available on a much larger scale. They provide ways to connect talent pools and expertise in an organization or within a practice area, and can offer just-in-time solutions to problems and performance issues.”
Read the entire article at Mashable