Where To Get GBL In USA: Game-based Learning (GBL) has shown documented success in education – especially among younger audiences. But over the years, GBL has made a strong connect with audiences in the world of corporate training as well. Games are experiential, impactful and exciting. Thus they have a longer-lasting learning impact on audiences of all ages and profiles. Thus in additions to e-Learning, corporate trainers and L&D managers also include gamification in their learning delivery to increase its impact. To make GBL really effective some strategies can be adopted – at the conception level. This will align learning games to the learning objective as well as the learners’ needs.
- The biggest benefit of GBL is that it increases learners’ excitement and provides something ‘new’ for the learners. Learning games need a definite learning objective n addition to the interactive elements that engage the learners. This can be accomplished through the narrative or a vivid storyline. Characters and other contextual clues can also create familiarity and a necessary push for learning.
- A balance needs to created between visual appeal of a game (ie. Graphics, background, animations etc.) and its content. Though the visual appeal will make game more attractive to the learners and encourage them to spend more time with the game. But the content or the experience the game provides is the ultimate take-away for the learner – so that also needs to created with enough deliberations as well.
- Learning games can effective only if the learners are suitably challenge with the activities and scenarios within the game. If it is too simple, it will not excite the learner enough and the learning will not happen. But if the level of difficulty is too high, then too the learners will get frustrate and after multiple efforts, just give up! Include simple ways of making a game challenging – time-bound activities, multi-layered challenges, negative points and so on.
- Points and scores can also be provided to encourage the learner. Especially since most learning games are play with peers. Comparing scores encourage the learners to strive more and in the process learn more.
- Listing top players and their scores as well as timings can encourage other players to achieve the same. Ranks can also given according to the scores and others can encouraged to beat the top scorers to achieve a ‘rank’. This provides a healthy competition and ensures learner engagement.
- Games provide a virtual platform to master skills before applying them in the real world. Creating space for trying, making mistakes and learning from them. This provides a powerful confidence boost and helps learners master physical skills as well. With the developing motion-based gaming technologies like Kinect, games can increase the level of involvement by making learning ‘motion-based’.
