What is E-Learning Gamification?

E-learning (electronic learning) is the use of technology, such as computers and digital technology, for instruction and education. Gamification of learning has been a hot topic in recent years and is increasingly gaining higher adoption rate and popularity in the e-learning space.

Before going deep into gamification of e-learning it’s always important to understand what is gamification?
Wikipedia defines gamification as “the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems”.

Applying the above definition of gamification in the context of e-learning, it is the application of game elements and gaming techniques to non-game context(in this case, online learning or e-learning or learning in general) in an effort to make it engaging for the learners while achieving the larger objective of learning a skill or a technique. Simply put it is the use of game mechanics to encourage learners to explore and learn as they move towards an end goal of learning a skill.

Gamification of learning can be broadly classified into content gamification and structured gamification. To know more about the differences between them click here.

I am sure you will be wondering if gamification of e-learning works! Believe me it does, if conceptualized, designed and applied well.

Let me share a popular success story of Deloitte Leadership Academy, where they had rolled out e-learning gamification to more than 50,000 executives. The objective of implementing gamification was to increase the enrollment and participation of their employees for e-learning. Here Deloitte used gamification elements like missions, rewards, rank, status etc through which they were able to impact the learners participation (resulting in a 37 percent increase in the number of users returning to the site each week).

There are many such success stories where gamification of e-learning has created wonderful impact by imparting unique learning experience to learners, at the same time improving the productivity of an organisation.

Here are the links to the 5 popular gamification of learning examples and 3 gamification of sales training examples. I hope you would find them interesting and useful.

To know more about gamification of learning, read our post on the 12 most frequently asked questions on gamification of learning.

The future of e-learning gamification looks bright and so why not start exploring e-learning gamification ? The time is right and the time is now!