Keeping learners engaged in the e-learning process is a challenge many online educators have to deal with. Learners face many distractions and traditional videos may not be engaging enough to keep their attention. When you add elements from gaming into e-learning it makes it more fun and engaging.
Gamified e-learning videos tap into both intrinsic and extrinsic factors that motivate learners. Humans love to explore, compete, and achieve. Game elements stimulate the hippocampus in the brain. This helps to turn the storing of new information into long-term memory. The hippocampus also releases dopamine which helps learners to focus on a task and feel good about completing it. Whether you’re designing content for students or corporate teams, game elements are a powerful tool to improve learner engagement and retention.
Benefits of adding game elements to e-learning videos
Increase engagement
Videos are already more engaging than text but adding game elements to them provides more opportunities for engagement. Quizzes or decision trees allow learners to take action and receive feedback. They don’t just watch videos but actively participate in the learning process.
Enhance motivation
The mechanics from games trigger the reward system of the brain. Whether they earn points or unlock new levels, they receive a hit of dopamine and they want to keep going to experience this again. This can help to reduce course abandonment rate. Learners move forward based on their progress and not because of pressure from educators.
Improve retention
Video gamification requires learners to actively apply the knowledge they acquire as they go. It can create great excitement to use newly acquired skills to fix a real problem. Learning something just for the sake of it or because it may be useful at some time in the distant future is not enough for most learners. When they immediately have to apply knowledge rather than just reading or watching a video, the better they remember it.
Offer immediate feedback
When learners receive immediate feedback, they can correct any of their misunderstandings early on. It helps them to see their progress and understand where they need to improve. Apart from the feedback they get from completing quizzes, you can also use video messaging to communicate with them and offer them supplementary material that helps them to understand more difficult material.
Personalize learning paths
Gaming elements can adapt to the performance of users and offer them personalized learning paths to follow. Personalizing e-learning experiences gives learners more control over the learning experience and they can learn at their own pace. For example, a learner may be able to select a character to play throughout the e-learning journey. Using stories to deliver new information is far more effective than offering a string of facts. Games often use storytelling elements like characters and plot twists.
Encourage repeat viewing
Videos that include point systems or replayable challenges encourage learners to return to the content. They will want to improve their scores or try to understand concepts they didn’t understand the first time.
Whether you’re onboarding new employees or offering professional development courses, the Cincopa video hosting platform allows you to reap all the benefits of gamifying your videos with quizzes and other interactive elements.
Examples of gamified video features
Quizzes
You can embed short multiple-choice and other types of quizzes where appropriate in a video. They allow learners to quickly check their knowledge and make sure they understand before they continue.
Branching scenarios
With branching scenarios, learners have to choose how to proceed. For example, a gamified corporate training video may give several options for learners to choose from in a certain situation and each one leads to a different outcome. Role-play scenarios can focus on soft skills, leadership, or healthcare. They can simulate real-life situations so learners can test their skills without serious risks.
Leaderboards
When learners can see how they compare with their peers in a group learning situation, it can boost their motivation. Some healthy competition can spur them on to achieve more. You can set up group challenges where each team works on tasks and receives points for completing them. These points go up on the board so teams can see how they’re doing. This helps to increase motivation in a group setting.
Badges and certificates
Pavlov’s conditioning theory proves that humans respond to rewards. Small rewards like badges or certificates can motivate learners to achieve milestones. This is about more than just dishing out digital stickers. These rewards should reflect real achievements, such as completing a video or answering quiz questions correctly. Making these rewards shareable on social media platforms allows learners to show off a little. You can surprise learners with extra rewards when they finish a particularly challenging module.
Progress bars and levels
When learners can visually track their progress, they can see how far they have come. Progress bars can motivate them to continue. The learning journey is more fun when you hide content from learners that they can ‘unlock’ by gathering enough points. The more they do and the further they progress, the more content is available to them.
Time challenges
It can help to make challenges time sensitive. Learners need to log in within a certain time limit to receive new challenges. If they don’t, their peers may overtake them on the leaderboard. Use ‘countdowns’ on quizzes where learners have a time constraint so they tend to be more focused.
Duolingo is a leader in gamifying its e-learning content. It has daily streaks to maintain and goals to work towards. You can earn badges when you hit certain milestones. All the elements it uses help to make the process of learning languages addictive.
Live streaming and game elements work well together to create motivating e-learning experiences. For example, during a live session, you can launch a live poll. In a coding bootcamp live stream, coders could race to fix a bug in real-time for points. Participating in live streams by asking questions could be rewarded with points.
Sales teams could compete in a live trivia game addressing compliance protocols. Live streaming and using webinars as video content with game elements provides you evergreen content for learners to access.
Best practices for balancing learning and fun
- It’s important to maintain a balance, or video content with game elements can go too far towards entertainment and dilute the educational content. Don’t try to gamify anything and everything. This can distract from learning rather than supporting it.
- Every element you use should relate to a specific learning goal. Only introduce one when it relates to the learning content and reinforces learning. It’s all about encouraging learners to think, react, and reflect.
- Ensure that the gaming elements you add are intuitive to use so they don’t interrupt the flow of learning. If they are clunky and navigation is difficult, this can frustrate rather than help learners.
- You need to stretch and challenge learners, but you also need to offer them positive reinforcement rather than penalizing them for their mistakes. Give them hints or chances to retry so they feel good about the progress they make.
- Test tech to make sure it doesn’t lag or crash when using gaming elements. This could break the flow of learning.
Tools to create gamified video content
Don’t feel intimidated because you don’t know much about gaming or how to add these elements to your e-learning videos.
There are various open-source tools such as HSP that help you to create interactive videos with quizzes and scenarios. It integrates with platforms like Moodle, which is ideal for online educators.
The Cincopa platform also integrates with Moodle and you can use interactive training video features. You can embed quizzes, track progress, and integrate rewards. It’s a great platform for offering corporate and mobile-based e-learning. It handles all the technicalities of hosting and delivering your gamified e-learning videos.
Conclusion: Boost motivation and results with gamified video
Gamified e-learning videos make learning more effective. They increase learner motivation and offer better results when the gaming elements are introduced thoughtfully. Start simply with one video and when you see how learners respond, your strategy can grow. When you visit Cincopa’s home page, you can sign up for the free trial and explore how to gamify video content so you can stand out and drive results.
