Gamification

I am finding that I'm really fascinated with the idea of gamification and gaming, and really enjoyed reading about it in the Horizons report. I thought I'd share some of the ways gaming has been used where I work, since we're already starting to use it a bit.

The company I work for designs sales and sometimes other types of training to pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Although I am not an instructional designer, I see much of what is designed, and do a bit of it here and there.

On of our instructional designers, who just finished up her Master's in Instructional Design last summer, is particularly into gamification and regularly designs trainings that involve games of some sort. For instance, one package we sell is all about the hospital. An interactive hospital/game board map was designed, and to learn more about each area, you click on the "room" in the hospital, and go through a whole series of learning and questions. We also often model interactive gaming sessions after reality TV shows, think Survivor-based learning games and the like. Most recently this particular ID made multiple different game boards and scavenger hunt exercises for a huge pharmaceutical company for their annual meeting, and learning that way really seems to appeal to all ages, even adults.

At this point the technology we use isn't designed so that each individual sales rep can play the game on a table or smartphone, but I think eventually that is the way our training will be transmitted. So, although we're not at that point, we're definitely making use of the ideas behind gaming and gamification, although the availability of it in an electronic format is, like the Horizon Report mentioned, a few years away.