Everyone sees the power of gamification—a trending concept in the learning and development industry—in the workplace, but is either too expensive or no one knows how to implement it. Learning professionals are being asked to do more with less every day. So if you have already created a catalog of eLearning courses for your organization in Articulate Storyline, how can you make these more engaging? How can you save thousands of dollars by adding basic gamification elements to your existing and new courseware?

In this session, you will gain a valuable overview on gamification as a concept and how learners can create out-of-the-box—no custom coding whatsoever—conditional scenarios to add to your course. You will be able to create scorecards, badges, point, and quizzing levels in less than an hour. After this session, you will walk away with actionable tips and tricks to enhance your Storyline 2 courses with gamification elements.

In this session, you will learn:

• About gamification as a concept for interactive eLearning
• How to design a gaming experience with menus and badges
• How to create score cards using variable triggers
• How to enable learners to customize an avatar
• How to create branching slides based on score points

Audience:
Novice designers and managers.

Technology discussed in this session:
Articulate Storyline 2.

Participant technology requirements:
Laptop with latest update of Articulate Storyline 2, Adobe Flash Player, and HTML5 capable web browser, i.e. Google Chrome.

Gamification is a hot topic, but where is the research to back up the use of gamification? Anyone interested in gamification for learning will be interested in seeing empirical results to be better informed about whether or not gamification is appropriate for their learning environment.

In this session, you will review material, prepared for submission to a peer-reviewed journal, highlighting correlation results, retention, and memorization data, as well as usage data related to the gamification platform of Axonify. This session will reveal correlation research related to gamification and highlights empirical results, linking gamification actions to retention and learning results. Data extracted from a database of over 250,000 users of a gamified platform will be examined.

In this session, you will learn:

• How gamification impacts learner engagement
• How gamification provides learning retention results
• Correlations between learner engagement in a gamification platform and on-the-job performance
• How gamification statistics confirm the use of gamification for learning

Audience:
Intermediate managers and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Axonify gamification platform.

What are some creative ways to develop leaders? Business acumen is typically obtained through experience. Developing learning solutions that grow business acumen in an effective way is difficult to produce. Especially when the content is nuanced or complex. Gamification is one of the topics buzzing around the industry, but if you speak to many people, there is little application beyond putting badges on existing content.

In this session, you will learn to take a complex topic and use the tenants of gamification to bring the content to life. You will be shown how to use gamification to develop leaders’ business and financial acumen in a fun way. You’ll learn fundamentals, such as balancing the mix of learning and play, and building decision points. You’ll also see an actual game that teaches leaders how to make money in a fun and creative way.

In this session, you will learn:

• How to use gamification to increase the business acumen of leaders
• How to identify the proper mix of learning/game play to maximize retention
• How to build decision points into a game
• How to utilize the proper tools to be successful
• About the complexity of designing decision trees within a game
• The best practices for identifying a business champion to help drive initiative
• New ideas for leveraging media from third parties such as Shutterstock

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A

The use of badges, points, leaderboards, and other concepts that are commonly found in games have enthusiastically been incorporated into online training by instructional specialists hoping to create a more engaging and motivational learning experience for end users. But is the gamification of learning actually yielding the results that warrant the hype?

In this session, you will review the results of a multi-semester study that explored the gamification of an online course. You will learn the factors that led to the decision to gamify a course, understand the research methodology, and discuss the tools and techniques used to collect continuous data from the end users. You will learn the effect that gamification had on behavior and performance, and you will explore the lessons learned from the study that will serve learning professionals in similar projects. You will learn a rigorous strategy to evaluate the results of learning projects in order to secure buy-ins from sponsors and clients for future projects.

In this session, you will learn:

• The effect of game mechanics on learner behavior and performance
• The importance of the evaluation of your instructional design strategy
• How to assess the impact of your learning strategy (beyond the smiley sheet)
• Techniques and tools to collect data from your learners
• The significance of collecting data from learners throughout the course (not just at the end)

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Google Analytics and MS Excel.

Taking the plunge and deciding to create a serious game is an exciting and daunting task. Critical for Checkers and Rally’s was to find the right partner to help the company realize the benefits of this learning method. Other companies had tried, failed, or abandoned their investment. The mission was to realize the significant benefits by developing a serious game that could drive results by reducing costs, improve proficiency, encourage engagement, and deliver effective learning.

In this session, you will explore many of the learnings and best practices encountered in the development of a sandwich game contracted by Checkers/Rally’s with Designing Digitally. You will learn what makes a serious game a success or a failure. The discussion will include the proper steps to take throughout each phase of the project to ensure success. You will learn what works and what to avoid or consider. This session will include best practices, and also will show the pain points.

In this session, you will learn:

• What to consider when deciding to develop a serious game
• How to plan and develop a serious game (internally or externally)
• The best practices when creating the serious game
• How to support the serious game after the effort has launched

Audience:
Novice and intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Sandwich game.

Over the last decade, there has been an industry-wide emphasis on developing learning objects with embedded gamification elements. However, taking the concept of gamification past the singular learning objects to the more global, overall learner experience is more of a rarity.

In this session, you will be shown the specifics of one company’s journey and lessons learned so that you can take those practices to your own company. You will explore the realities and challenges faced when designing and developing a gamified open-learning platform. This session will focus on the learner experience design process with specific emphasis on the engagement model, learning space and journey, and game economy. You will learn how issues were solved relating to employee goals and ambitions, the learner lifecycle and engagement loops, learner motivation and emotional engagement, as well as establishing criterion and conditions that set a solid foundation for the game economy.

In this session, you will learn:

• The definition of gamification
• How to plan for the learner lifecycle
• How to incorporate Barte’s player types into your game mechanics
• How to set up a game economy
• The elements to consider in the learner experience design process
• The best practices for the learning space and how to outline the learner journey
• How to support the learner’s sense of autonomy and mastery
• How to evolve your system to add new functionality and to stay relevant

Audience:
Intermediate designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
Examples of a gamified platform.

Many eLearning professionals are attempting to use gamification and serious games to spark employee engagement and drive learning retention; it seems everyone is working to make the best serious game that will enhance learning objectives and retention. The biggest setbacks for some have been little-to-no planning, tough-to-pinpoint metrics, little-to-no implementation strategy, and insufficient or nonexistent post-deployment support.

In this session, you will learn about planning, developing, implementing, and supporting serious games for companies that have never gone down the route of serious games and gamified learning experiences. You will learn what makes a serious game a success or a failure. This session will also address the proper steps to take throughout each phase of a project to ensure success and also the pain points you will have to deal with when going down the route of gamification and serious games. You will walk away with best practices, what not to do, and how to support serious games at their organization.

In this session, you will learn:

• The best practices to ensure a successful serious game implementation
• The first steps of getting into the realm of serious games
• The best practices taken by other organizations in regards to phases of the effort
• What not to do and how to support serious games at their organization

Audience:
Novice to advanced designers, developers, project managers, managers, and directors.

Technology discussed in this session:
N/A