Remember a time when you had a fun yet challenging experience. Maybe it was a physical challenge or a game. Maybe childhood was the last time you let go and experienced playtime. Eventually, we grow up, adapt to expected adult behavior and forget how to play.

We learn best through active, engaging play that challenges us to abandon our automatic responses. Many employers use learning management system (LMS) programs to mimic play, yet many fail to awaken our desire to learn. Let’s explore why learner motivation is essential, how adaptive experiential learning works and how gamified experiential learning can help.

Organizational Learning

We live in a world that requires agility to respond to new challenges. Organizations must become more creative and flexible to gain a competitive advantage and adapt to continuous change.

Organizational learning provides organizations with a mechanism for improving the management of an organization facing continuous change. Effective organizational learning has the potential to be an experience of play interjected with engagement, inspiration and collaboration through interactive, gamified experiential learning.

Employee Learning

Effective employee development is a critical competitive advantage that strategically contributes to organizational goals. Organizations have realized that employee commitment and morale are highly linked to learning environments, contributing to an atmosphere of innovation.

Employees prefer learning programs where they can make choices and exercise autonomy. Online platforms dedicated to learning and development (L&D) provide opportunities to deliver low-overhead training programs. However, participative training programs encourage innovation while increasing employee self-efficacy and teamwork, providing the highest value to organizations.

Experiential, Adaptive Learning

We have lived through significant events that have changed how we experience our daily business lives. Learning through these events encourages adaptive change and prepares us to effectively move through future change.

Experiential learning was introduced as a continuous learning cycle that relies on adaptive, active learning by transforming activities into learning experiences through activity and reflection. Experience and learning are like yin and yang, with one complementing the other, although not equally.

Motivating Our Desire to Learn

There is something deep inside us that unconsciously motivates our desire to learn. At a conscious level, we rely on our educational institutions to provide opportunities that motivate us to learn. The ultimate purpose of adult educators is to transfer learning that learners can use in everyday situations.

Various active learning techniques, such as role-playing, games and peer teaching, must be used to reach diverse learner preferences. To motivate employees to learn, they must understand the goal behind the training and why it is essential. Two significant types of motivation, when used effectively, can encourage learning and change:

• Extrinsic (external) motivation includes things like prizes and rewards.
• Intrinsic (emotional) motivation involves making your training fun, focusing on the enjoyment of your learners.

Gamification is a learning method that extends experiential learning, encompassing extrinsic and intrinsic motivation while promoting interactive engagement through problem-based learning using real-world challenges to encourage deep learning.

Achieving Adaptive Learning and Motivation Through Gamification

Well-designed games can be effective learning tools that engage learners in complex ideas by interjecting gaming aspects to create interactive learning experiences using the principles of intrinsic motivation.

Gamified learning uses human emotion and motivation to create change. Creating deeply emotional games that trigger emotions such as fear, joy, satisfaction, relief, gratitude and happiness is the most effective method of gamification design. Properly executed gamified learning programs effectively tap into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

Using IGEL to Create Learning Programs

Organizations often need assistance integrating gaming techniques into training programs to engage users and encourage learning. Gamification development uses game features to create the illusion that a person is playing a game by creating an interactive gamified experiential learning (IGEL) environment that increases engagement while improving decision-making, problem-solving, attention and memory. Three gamification qualities generate motivational change:

• Mechanics are significant to the player’s experience, regardless of their roles as players, competitors, spectators or designers.
• Emotions are determined by the game player’s dynamic experience, which increases intrinsic motivation, providing an atmosphere of competition, fun, enjoyment and achievement.
• Dynamics are the game mechanics, such as rewards, scores, leaderboards, competition and achievement, which drive a person’s desire to compete and continue playing, increasing extrinsic motivation.

The IGEL model is an iterative diagram that signifies the importance of repetition and behavioral loops in creating new habits by tapping into intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. IGEL learning programs increase motivation and engagement by creating subconscious behavioral change.

Design note: feel free to redesign this to fit the article’s theme

Guidelines for Creating an Interactive Gamified Experiential Learning Program

The guidelines for creating an IGEL program were developed using existing research for behavioral change, motivation, gamification and experiential learning. Lecture and discussion experiences should carry the gaming elements into all aspects of the learning environment. There are seven critical components of an IGEL program:

1. Program Basics

• Sessions: From 4 to 20
• Duration: Average 90 minutes
• Total training: 10 to 20 hours
• Frequency: Range 1 to 7 days
• Where: Anywhere learning, engagement, and fun are possible
• Delivery: 0-40% online; 60-100% in person
• Source: 50% researcher; 50% instructor

2. Pre-Program Reflection

• Incorporate evidence-based neuroscience
• Desired learning outcome
• Interest connection established

3. Interactive Learning

• Hands-on problem-based experiential learning
• Short learning bursts
• Atmosphere of curiosity
• Multiple learning styles in a mixed-learner environment

4. Game Learning Activity

• Respect autonomy, provide control, encourage confidence
• Opportunities to choose, fail and make decisions
• Badges, rewards, progress bars and leaderboards
• Multi-level missions, storytelling and role-play
• Time-constrained, rules-based goals
• Challenging competition

5. Active Group Learning

• Valuable learning providing a sense of accomplishment
• Incorporate unexpected events
• Create complex, stimulating challenges
• Team-building with group learning interaction

6. Post Reflection

• Continuous feedback discussions
• Encourage self-compassion
• Personally relevant questions
• Awareness of self and others

7. Evaluate

• Same-day evaluation
• Desired outcome achievement
• Assess active engagement
• Adapt sessions to assessed engagement

Meeting the Needs of Our Current Generation

Younger generations have access to more technology and information than previous generations: educational methods must change to meet their needs. Gamified learning is a potential solution to motivating and engaging learners in a manner that engages emotion and behavior while increasing learning, social skills and knowledge retention.

Remember to Play and Have Fun!

When games are well-designed, learners are motivated to think differently and solve complex challenges. Well-designed programs interject a psychological change in emotion, behavior and well-being. Organizations facing continuous change require new approaches to improve organizational flexibility. IGEL provides organizations with a methodology to adapt to constant, emergent change.