The Gamification Quest

Learning communities—when done well—create a collaborative environment where learners thrive, contributors do their best work, and fosters learning that can be applied to tackle complex real-world issues.

This week my guest, Gamification Guru An Coppens, and I delve into how to create a Gamified Learning Community and that advances these types of immersive experiences.

With an extensive background in eLearning, An has earned a reputation for bringing solid gamification strategy and fun to create more enriching learning experiences. Today you’ll learn how to stretch your thinking about the value of adding a Learning Community into your organization’s talent development plan.

About An Coppens:  An Coppens is the Chief Game Changer at Gamification Nation Ltd, where the vision is to make business and learning more fun and engaging. She is an award winning business coach, learning & development professional, author and speaker. An offers gamification design services and online learning programs designed to encourage winning behaviors and improve business results in sales, recruitment, learning and productivity. Connect with An at:  www.gamificationnation.com

About your host:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the world by UK-based Leaderboarded. She hosts a weekly Gamification Talk Radio program, as well as author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification techniques that can be used within the corporate talent development environment. Connect with Monica Twitter @monicacornetti. Website: www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest Igor Radic - CEO and VP of Funifier.com

For someone new to the industry, the concept of Gamification can be hard to grasp let alone implement. In an era where bringing a product/solution to market quickly is key to winning new customers, what does it take for a newbie to gamify their enterprise or e-commerce site?

Funifier is taking it back to the basics – Their platform is built on the question: Why can't the implementation of Gamification projects be simple and straight forward?

The focus of Funifier is to bring back the fun and common sense in gamification platform integration.

About Igor Radic: A senior operations strategist with 15+ years in various industries that include project management, sales, and system integrations. Igor has lead large teams to attain company goals and organic growth through the use of game mechanics and incentive programs. He’s got an international perspective, born in Ex-Yugoslavia, he attended university in Montreal, and has traveled extensively. Connect with Igor on Twitter @TheFunifier or the company website www.funifier.com

About your host:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the world by UK-based Leaderboarded. She hosts a weekly Gamification Talk Radio program, as well as author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification techniques that can be used within the corporate talent development environment. Connect with Monica on Twitter @monicacornetti or her website www.monicacornetti.com/gamification

The experts agree that opportunities in L&D to apply gamification are only growing, and more opportunities translate into higher pay. Trends project a continued employee engagement crisis, the arrival of Generation Z, the swell of Millennials, the departure of Boomers, and a greater emphasis placed on data and analytics.

Simply defined, gamification uses game mechanics and rewards for non-game applications in order to increase engagement and loyalty, solve problems, change behaviors, and achieve business objectives. Gamification is an important and powerful strategy for influencing and motivating people.

The exciting news is although Gamification is a NEW addition to an instructional designer’s toolkit, it won’t be a steep learning curve for most learning and development professionals, because you have been using many of the techniques for years.

Gamification does NOT mean making a computer or a video game, and expecting it to motivate people … it means taking the concepts around games and using them in an authentic way to drive the behavior you want to get.

This week let's go back to the basics and learn why Gamification works, in what context it is most effective, and why you as an L&D Professional should consider using it in your instructional design and delivery in 2015.

Learn more about earning a Gamification Certificate for L&D Professionals at www.sententiagames.com

About Your Host:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With Special Guest – John Chen of geoteaming.com

Have you ever been tasked to plan a corporate or association meeting – and you struggled with how to get engagement from your attendees at meetings? Are you tired of the same old thing and wondering how to get a younger audience interested – to attract and retain millennials and gamer profiles to your event?

John is pulling back the curtain to share with us his 17 years of corporate team building and his past 4 years of Conference Gamification experiences – so you’ll be ready to dive in to using gamification to improve networking, education and engagement for conferences from 200 to over 3,000!

About John Chen:  The CEO of Geoteaming, John is a Digital Team Building Expert. The Wiley author of 50 Digital Team Building Games, John has completed over 1,110 team building events with over 100,000 clients, and has earned the Puget Sound Business Journal’s Top 40 Entrepreneur under the Age of 40 Award, the Better Business Bureau’s Innovative Practices Award, Meeting Professionals International’s Supplier of the Year and Training Magazine’s Top Young Trainer. Connect with John (@bigkid) www.geoteaming.com NASAGA - www.nasaga.org

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest - Dr. Katrina Firlik of HealthPrize.

Failure to stick with important medications for chronic conditions is a serious problem across the globe. In the US alone, it costs an estimated $290 billion in otherwise avoidable medical spending due to complications that could have been avoided had patients continued with their medication as prescribed.

Long felt to be a problem of forgetfulness or cost, it is increasingly clear that human psychology is largely to blame. Our natural human “present bias,” (preference for short-term over long-term rewards), makes it difficult to take medications that come with no short-term benefits, which is the case for most chronic medications.

Gamification and immediate rewards can help to motivate patients to stick with important prescribed medications, and fits the trend of enhancing the patient experience in healthcare.

About Dr. Katrina Firlik:  Co-founder and chief medical officer of HealthPrize Technologies. Prior to founding HealthPrize, Katrina was a neurosurgeon in private practice at Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, and on the clinical faculty at Yale University School of Medicine. In addition to scientific publications, Katrina is the author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside. Connect with Dr. Katrina Firlik (@KatrinaFirlik) www.healthprize.com.

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest Jordan Fladell, EVP and Co-Founder of mLevel (www.mlevel.com)

Today we’re going to explore mobile learning. As I’ve worked on gamification strategies for organizations that plan to use mobile devices in the delivery of the content – I've learned that mobile learning is so much more than just reformatting our eLearning on a mobile device. Jordan is going to help us understand how to:  know what belongs where, understand user behaviors on mobile devices, handle our design approach, map our plan to track mobile... and more! It’s going to be great!

About Jordan Fladell:  EVP and Co-Founder of mLevel, the world’s first casual learning platform designed for the enterpise. He brings a unique viewpoint to the learning world as for the past twenty years Jordan has been delivering and educating corporations on disruptive technologies witnessing firsthand the engagement challenge companies face today. The excitement and passion for helping companies successfully drive advancement via education is what Jordan brings to the table each and every day. Connect with Jordan on Twitter @mlevellearning and his website:  www.mlevel.com

About Your Host:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. Monica writes The Gamification Report blog, and is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used within the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest Gal Rimon of www.gameffective.com

Enterprise gamification is evolving, influenced by changes to performance management methodologies, the concept of fitbit and the quantified self, a deeper understanding of employee motivation and the use of game narratives. On today's program Gal and Monica will explore how gamification is:

Becoming the new corporate performance managementUsed to appeal to the people below the top 10 percentiles on your leaderboardCreating new concepts of performance management and transparency -- the quantified selfApplied in complex scenarios of skill acquisition and training

About Gal Rimon:  The founder and CEO of GamEffective, a next-generation gamification company. GamEffective offers solutions for sales, customer service, and on-boarding, offering clear calls to action, rich game narratives, and cross platform integration. Prior to founding GamEffective Gal served as Chief Executive Officer of Ness-Gilon Global and Chief Executive Officer of Synergy at Gilon Business Insight Ltd, a Business Intelligence Provider. Connect with Gal at @gameffective and @galrimon on Twitter.

About Your Host:  A gamification speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as a #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. Founder and CEO of SententiaGames.com, a global consortium of gamification professionals that offers a Gamification Certification for HR and L&D professionals. Monica is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest Joshua Roberts of gamingintraining.wordpress.com

How to take advantage of video games in the world of learning looks at the best aspects of video games and how we can apply that information in Instructional Design and E-Learning development. This short interview will give you creative inspiration from some popular video games and dissect the instructional theories the game developers use to portray information to the player. In this interview the focus will be on creating powerful and engaging scenario based learning and systems training.

About Joshua Roberts: Joshua is an experienced Instructional Designer who focuses on gamification methods and video game theories for application in learning. There have been a number of large international corporate companies Joshua has worked with to implement his approach - all of which have had huge success in engagement numbers. Joshua is also a key speaker at gamification and E-Learning events in the UK where his reputation continues to grow. The deconstruction of video game theory provides the background to his blog and is a useful resource for Instructional Designers and E-Learning developers. Connect with Josh at @GamingTraining on Twitter and his blog https://gamingintraining.wordpress.com

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used within the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

Design of a winning gamification project is FUN and a lot of hard work. When done incorrectly, you can actually negatively impact your workers.

Instead of asking, “How can we leverage gamification in our organization?” begin with clearly defined business objectives and an analysis of the suitability of gamification to achieve those business objectives.

Gamification certainly has many benefits. When done well it can increase productivity, strengthen teams, motivate employees to achieve goals, create fun and enjoyment, inspire friendly competition and increase engagement.

Forward thinking organizations who understand the power of gamification to increase engagement are quickly learning how to leverage that power to achieve their business objectives.

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com

With special guest, Jonathan Peters, PhD

Training isn’t always the answer – and yet we offer training solutions for problems that we know are not training related.

There are many reasons why people don’t take action. The question to ask, “Is this a Can’t or a Won’t?”

Basically, there are two types of motivators that cause people to take action – extrinsic and intrinsic. In successful gamification, extrinsic and intrinsic motivators are not polar opposites, but instead, they are co-dependent on each other.

Today, gain insight into how to make sure the target audience has what it takes before you start designing any type of training program.

About Jonathan Peters, PhD: An international speaker and writer, Jonathan has spoken before audiences from Melbourne, Australia to Augusta, Maine. His specialty is marketing and customer experience, helping audiences improve identify what motivates their customers and learn how to speak toward those motivators. Jonathan has authored four books, including Cavemen Can’t Market, the first the Caveman Trilogy and has also ghostwritten 37 non-fiction books. An adjunct professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, he instructs senior-level business majors. Connect with Jonathan (@jpetersphd) www.jonathanpetersphd.com.

About Your Host:  A gamification keynote speaker and curriculum designer, Monica Cornetti is rated as the #1 Gamification Guru in the World by UK-Based Leaderboarded. She is the author of the book Totally Awesome Training Activity Guide: Put Gamification to Work for You. Monica’s niche is gamification used in the corporate environment. Connect with Monica (@monicacornetti) www.monicacornetti.com