Zombies, Attention Spans and more: May roundup

As always, we’re scouring the internet to find the most interesting and forward thinking pieces about gamification.

Zombies to the rescue

The Association for Talent Development published an article detailing the development of a computer game for sales training. The game features, believe it or not, zombies. Karl Kapp, who developed the game, explained how fantasy features can actually make employees more open to learning than in traditional settings. Fantasy environments put players in an unfamiliar environment where they are more flexible, willing to experiment and open to failures.

Interestingly, Kapp also emphasizes the importance of actually introducing the learning points and concepts, instead of attempting to “hide” them in order to create a seamless learning experience. The reason is that if the players aren’t made aware of the learning and given an opportunity to practice and reflect on their actions, they are left only with the experience of playing, without the added value of what they have learnt. It’s well worth reading the whole article here.

Gamifying med-school

I’m always surprised by how gamification is taking hold in new and unexpected industries and areas. This article, about how gamification is being used to help burnt-out med-school students definitely caught me by surprise. It’s an in depth piece looking at the different benefits that gamification can have for these students. It touches on how gamification can assist in creating short term goals and rewards in what is otherwise a very long road, on how gamification can make mundane and repetitive information become a bit more interesting and attractive, and on how gamification can be valuable as a supplementary tool for small group learning together in and out of class.

For those of us who are used to looking at gamification from a business angle, it’s actually quite a refreshing read that sheds some light on the directions in which gamification may be going in the future.

Gamifying attention spans

Daniel Burrus wrote a compelling post on iamwire.com, where he delves in to the benefits of gamification for learning. Daniel’s angle is that since we are living in an age of constant distraction through multiple screens we tend to and constantly check in with, it is almost impossible to achieve high quality learning.

An interesting point made in the article is the high relevance that gamification has to a generation that grew up playing video games. Unlike previous generations, today’s workforce look at many of their tasks in a ‘video-game-like’ fashion, and are already inclined to view the world in this way. Employers should make sure to take full advantage of this, and make life at the workplace both better for their employees and more beneficial for the companies’ bottom line.

MarketsandMarkets report on the state of gamification

MarketsandMarkets released their report on the state of Gamification, and it includes some fascinating facts about the state of the industry. Firstly, the report notes that the rising adoption of BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) at the workplace is expected to help gamification grow significantly, until 2020. Secondly, increasing usage of gamification techniques in marketing and sales departments will help the gamification market grow as well. Thirdly, the reports states that Asia-Pacific is expected to become one of the major adopters of gamification techniques by the year 2020.

For those that are interested in delving in to the more extensive report, I really recommend it. The full report can be found here (but might require a login).

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