Why Gamification is Taking Over Education and Business?

Educational Technology defines gamification as utilizing game-style elements in the educational process. This generates excitement, competition, and an immersive student environment. One of the reasons why games are so compelling is gamification. It is defined as follows:The process of adding games or gamelike elements to something (such as a task) so as to encourage participation (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). It is done to make learning more exciting for students. An increasing number of studies has been conducted at the primary level and beyond, encompassing the following element elements:

• Enhanced Learning
• User Engagement
• Motivation
• Reward
• Challenge
• Creative
• Competition
• Goals

Implementation of Gamification in Education

When gamification is implemented in education, participants are introduced to myriad gaming-style elements, including competition with other learners, levels, points for achievements, etc. All of this is geared towards deeper engagement with the content. Believe it or not, the term ‘Gamification’ only came to pass in 2008. It’s a relatively new addition to our lexicon, but it has outsized importance across many industries.

Cognitive Benefits of Gamification in Learning

Gamification isn’t just about making learning fun—it’s about fostering cognitive growth through interactive challenges. Do strategy games improve intelligence? Research suggests that these games enhance problem-solving skills, critical thinking, and adaptability, making them a valuable tool in modern learning environments.

Examples of Gamification in Educational Games

Think of highly interactive educational games like Mathematics Bingo, a.k.a. Math Bingo, as a case in point. This breakthrough game introduced interactive, creative, and compelling content designed to make learning more enticing, engaging, and fun. It bridges the divide between entertainment and learning. It’s an evolving practice among educators.

Growing Adoption in Educational Settings

Nowadays, classrooms across the United States, continental Europe, and beyond implement gamification-style learning experiences. Educators use these techniques to drive interest and maintain high levels of engagement with students. Astonishingly, lecturers now use apps that allow students to earn badges and points for completing their homework, participating in class, or submitting assignments.

Impact on Learning Outcomes

We see evidence across the spectrum, with leaderboard challenges encouraging students to compete and achieve. But gamification is dramatically affecting learning outcomes not only online but also in classrooms. Team learning activities, role-play, interactive discussions, and collaborative projects are increasingly common. Educators want students to be invested, interested and engaged with the material.

The Role of Rewards and Engagement

Evidence abounds with points scoring and reward-based systems. Everything is geared towards high levels of engagement with otherwise dry material. The more meaningful the experience, the more successful the gamification strategies. Motivated students tend to respond better to educational challenges, and that’s where game-style elements play an important part. This is evident intrinsically and extrinsically.

Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Gamified Education

For starters, there’s the internal motivation from delighting in performing the activities. There is external motivation in the form of reward-based systems. Educational rewards encompass grades, class ranking, and recognition. Students who grew up enjoying video games can instantly relate to gamification elements in education. It’s a no-brainer to them. The learning environment becomes akin to a gaming milieu. This instantly sparks interest and drives intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Clarifying the Essence of Educational Gamification

It is important to clarify what educational gamification is all about. It has nothing to do with transforming educational activity into a video game. It is also distinct from game-style learning. Ultimately, this is simply about immersion with rewards fashioned around gameplay elements. All games are designed to be fun, immersive, and rewarding. That’s precisely what carries over into the educational realm.

Gamification in the Workplace: Addressing Employee Engagement

Now, let’s turn our attention to gamification in the workplace. Like education, workplaces require employees to be engaged, motivated, and productive. It’s pretty obvious why this is the case – an unmotivated employee has low productivity levels. Expensive and destructive behaviors result from employees not committed to achieving organizational targets. Things like absenteeism, disruption, and low morale can ruin an organization. Consider that during 2022, the tail end of COVID-19, employee motivation hit an all-time low, with up to 75% of the workforce reporting feeling disengaged.

Early Attempts and Lessons Learned in Workplace Gamification

As a result of these serious problems, management began implementing alternative approaches to generate engagement, interest, and motivation among employees. Consider the 2018 example of UA (United Airlines) that offered every worker with 100% attendance every quarter an entry to a lottery with massive prizes. This didn’t sit well with the employees, and it was scrapped. While this gamification concept was a failure, UA learned from it. There is a tremendous benefit to employee reward programs, given that compensation and attendant benefits are highly motivating to workers.

Successful Implementation and Key Elements of Workplace Gamification

With gamification, we know that game-specific elements are juxtaposed in a non-gaming environment. When implemented correctly, it can have dramatic repercussions. Again, leaderboard challenges, recognition, prizes, bonuses, and promotions may result from gamification initiatives. The three elements of this include autonomy, competence, and relatedness. If any of these aspects are missing, it’s difficult for initiatives to succeed. Harvard Business Review (HBR) stated that the market size of gamification would grow 27.4% (2020 – 2025).

Examples of Gamification in Business

Many examples abound, with insurance companies offering wheel-spin opportunities to top performers, replete with big prizes. In 2019, Uber, the rideshare service, offered platinum-level drivers tickets to win a $5,000 prize. Traditional rewards-based programs struggle to incentivize and motivate workers and are considered mundane. HBR studies indicate that a unitary lottery program boosted performance and worker motivation much more than other programs, particularly for low performers.