Gamification in Courses: Effective Strategies that Work

Last Updated on

October 21, 2021

Alicja King

If you think about all the types of games available, it doesn't take long to realise that many different genres and themes exist. Once you know this, it's clear that if you want to use gamification in your courses - they'll also need different themes to be successful. In this blog, we'll take a look at the different kind of players that exist and how you can build courses that satisfy them all.

What kind of players are there?

According to the Bartle Test of Gamer Psychology, all people can be split into four categories of players: Killers, Achievers, Socialisers, Explorers. You can even take this test yourself if you're interested!

Let's go through each one:

Killers:

Driven by competition, tests of skill, playing against others; they have a focus on winning and seeing their competitors lose. They are engaged by leaderboards and ranking. Although they make up a small percentage of people, they are still worth satisfying.

Achievers:

Driven by points, levels, trophies; their focus is on gaining status and goals while beating their personal bests. They like in-game achievements and the ability to show them with pride. Achievers make up around 10% of the population and are the ideal player due to their willingness to complete games and unlock everything.

Socialisers:

Driven by friends, community, communication; their focus is on creating friendships and cultivating a community within the game. Having the ability to add friends, chat with others and work together in a group is important to them, more so than winning. And since this makes up 80% people, it's an element that you can't ignore.

Explorers:

Driven by exploration, discovery and the process. An Explorer's focus is to find everything and discover what nobody else has. They enjoy finding elements to unlock to enjoy the process of playing rather than getting to the end of the game. About 10% of people fall into this category.

How to create courses that satisfy all player needs

Knowing that all of these players exist in your workforce is a great first step to figuring out how to use gamification in your courses. After this, look at how all player types can have fun on the courses you want to create. We made a list of touchpoints for you:

Use levels for their learning journey. (Achievers, Explorers)
Let them (and others) see their progress easily (Killers, Achievers)
Build a community - a chat/comment element (Socialisers)
Encourage competition with a leaderboard (Killers, Achievers)
Let them unlock achievements (badges, prizes, titles) (Achievers)
Include hidden elements and prizes for those that go the extra mile (Explorers, Achievers)
Build the course with multimedia (Explorers)

Building this if you have a lot of time and money is quite straight-forward, there are many lists online of gamification done well, Duolingo, Nike+ Run Club, My Starbucks Rewards... But we at myskillcamp realise that not everyone can invest this much into gamification - luckily that doesn't mean it can't be done well!

Even setting up a email chain, around a course if done well, can act as gamification! But if you want something simple yet effective, myskillcamp can help.

How we can help

Myskillcamp is a learning experience platform, allowing company's to build their own learning platform (using either our own LMS capabilities, or their own integrated LMS). Building courses and analysing is the first step, but you can use video, quizzes, podcasts, eBooks, AND choose from over 300,000 courses on our marketplace.

Since we offer multimedia, a large part of gamification has already been achieved, but here's where it gets even better... each learner gets to see their score, progress and the amount of courses they have taken. They can even see the courses their colleagues are taking - adding in the competitive element. The platform you build with us will always have chat, message and comment capabilities, adding a community feel to the learning hub.

Lastly, admins can create courses for specific groups of learners - which can be utilised if a learner reaches a certain point in their learning, or achieves a certain score, unlocking the 'prize'/'hidden element' part of the gamification process.

We at myskillcamp understand that encouraging people to take their learning into their own hands can be difficult, but is hugely beneficial when it happens - that's why our platform is built to allow gamification, analysis, ease of access and simple integration with any LMS you may currently have.

Better yet, our platform gives you a free trial - think of it as a level 1 in the game of e-learning. Are you ready to start playing?

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