“Designing and developing Game-Based Learning is not an easy task, you need to get it right from the initial stages itself “. One could read the seriousness of the statement right from his face as he continued giving the instructions to his team members.
This had simply caught my attention as I sat for a quick chat with our Design Head, who is a super expert in developing Game-Based Learning.
This blog is written based on the tips shared by him to make your game based learning right.
1.Design your Game-Based Learning with goals and objectives
While developing an e-learning game, the organisation should ensure that the game has an objective to achieve for the learners. The developers should also ensure that the designed objectives are achievable and realistic in nature and are aligned with the overall organizational goals.
2. Plan and decide the best game type
Games are of different genre. For example, there are the adventure games, problem-solving games, action-based games and much more.
The developers need to evaluate and analyze the objective to be fulfilled and match it with the appropriate game type.
For example, a role play game is very suitable for training your sales team while a puzzle or crossword is not a right fit here.
3. Keep the game design simple
To get your game based learning right, the organisation needs to ensure that complexity is fully driven away from your e-learning game. The game design should be simple and must contain clear guidelines that guide the learners throughout the gameplay. Make sure that the learners are aware of the objectives and every action should be clearly linked to an outcome.
4.The right use of multimedia content
While developing any e-learning game, the developers should ensure that they don’t overload multimedia content to the learning topics. While these are important elements in designing e-learning games overloading it can disengage the learners. Hence the developers need to plan the use of multimedia content effectively.
5.Narrate a story
Who doesn’t like to listen to a good story?
Research says that humans are wired to enjoy good stories. Hence I recommend investing in your storyline to effectively train your learners. For example, while developing a scenario in your game-based learning, I strongly recommend to wove the learning content around an effective storyline that can hook the learners.
6.Include the right game elements and game dynamics
Game-based learning needs to find the right mix of game elements and game dynamics to ensure that the learners are able to achieve the learning objective. The use of complicated game mechanics and game elements can only confuse the learners and can misguide them
7.Encourage the learners to fail
Yes, you heard it right, in a game based learning approach, the learners need not worry about failing. Instead the repeated failing forces the player to analyze what went wrong and rethink about the existing approach and plan a new one. And the continually reviewing of the content helps to reinforce their knowledge.
8.Instant feedback
While developing an e-learning game, ensure that it enables instant and continuous feedback to the learners. With an instant and continuous feedback, the learners are properly guided through the gameplay to achieve the learning objective.
9.Reward the learners for the correct actions
Rewards are a very important element in your game based learning approach as it gives a sense of satisfaction and achievement for the learners. Research suggests that our brains love rewards. Ina game-based learning approach the organization can include the game elements like points, virtual coins, and badges etc to reward the learners in achieving the objectives or the set milestones
9.Induce competition in the game based learning approach
Promoting healthy competition among the learners are always recommended in a game based learning approach. The organization can include leaderboards within the game that ranks the learners. Further to induce the competition, the organization can allow the learners to share the leaderboard positions on the social media website or on the internal portal and forums of the organisation.
10.Get Social
With the increasing use of social media, the organization can leverage the benefits by encouraging the learners to exchange thoughts and experiences on a social media platform. Like facebook etc. The organization can also allow the users to share the scores, achievements in the social media platforms.
