Gamification has blown up in the learning and development world. Honestly, I think it's exciting stuff. When I was looking for a learning management system, I put Gamification as a top priority (as it aligned with the company culture).
From an instructional design and eLearning perspective, Gamification comes with many pros. The overall approach is brilliant. The downsides revolve more around the development. Your leadership inquire you incorporate Gamification in your eLearning or you may want to do it yourself.
Today I will be discussing time commitment. I will cover other aspects in upcoming articles. These will include: aligning games to content, company culture, instructional designers vs. game developers, and designing Gamification without a budget.
Let's discuss timing and Gamification. I mentioned earlier that the desire may come from yourself or management. Regardless, planning your project and the expectations is essiential. When the request comes from management or your project sponsor, I suggest being upfront. I typically inquire by stating,
"I love Gamification and think it's a great idea. The one drawback is our project timeline will be longer. I would need to do some in-depth programming and extensive testing to verify the gaming features work. What would be your preference: delivering the course quickly or taking more time to add Gamification?"
You may need to put Gamification aside if you have a tight timeline. The most important thing is to manage the expectations of you stakeholders and SMEs. Also, if it's your first time building a course with Gamification, plan on it taking almost double the time.
Gamification can definitely enhance learning. However it can be time consuming for new projects. I suggest incorporating Gamification into eLearnings that have a flexible due date. This allows you extensive time to build and test your courses!
More to come on Gamification!
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