“We don’t stop playing games because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing games.”
George Bernard Shaw could not have known how true his words would ring today, arguably more so than ever before in modern times. And whilst we have long known the value of play, the pandemic has served as a stark reminder of the immense benefits of adult play. These include:
- Relieving Stress. Play is fun, triggering the release of endorphins, the body’s natural feel-good chemicals. Endorphins promote an overall sense of wellbeing and can even temporarily relieve pain.
- Improving brain function. Games that challenge the brain can help prevent memory problems, while improving brain function and growth of the cerebral cortex.
- Stimulating the mind and boosting creativity. Children and adults alike learn best when playing. Grasping a new task is easier when it is fun and when the learner is in a relaxed and playful mood. Play can also stimulate our imagination, helping us to adapt and solve problems.
- Improving relationships and our connection to others. Sharing laughter and fun has been found to foster empathy, compassion, trust, and intimacy with others. Play does not have to include a specific activity-it can also be a state of mind. Developing a playful nature can help you loosen up in stressful situations, break the ice with strangers, make new friends, and form new business relationships.
- Keeping you feeling young and energetic. Vitamin P(lay) boosts our energy, vitality, even improving our resistance to disease!
Play is experiential and when introduced into the classroom – real and virtual – the result is something a little magical, in that it is motivationally challenging and unavoidably engaging. The application of simulations in training presents learners with the opportunity to apply real knowledge and skills in a recreated yet safe environment. It has the added advantage of allowing delegates to ‘reset’ scenarios while trying alternative strategies and approaches. Behaviour is changed as participants are given space to experiment, test their assumptions, and learn from mistakes through multiple iterations.
- FACT: Most employees do not experience positive associations when hearing the word ‘learning’, often linking it with reading dull textbooks, listening to boring lectures, or clicking through standardised online texts.
- FACT: It is the age of incentivisation, where people (primarily younger generations) are needing and receiving constant feedback, such as shopper reward points, flying miles, and wellness benefits. Yet, learning new skills and gaining knowledge traditionally lacks any feedback.
- FACT: Traditional Instructor-led Training (ILT) has had to adapt, requiring a reskilling of providers to gear up for the virtual platform. Training has had to evolve, to become more interactive, visual, and engaging. Size and brevity have become the order of the day – short bursts of content to smaller groups.
In their 2012 article, Huotari and Hamari introduced the term’ gamification’ to describe strategies that bring elements often used in and associated with games, into a non-game environment. These include badges, leaderboards, quizzes, points & scores, levels, or challenges.
Gamification uniquely engages learners through the gaming mechanics and motivational methods inherent in this approach, which mimic the competitive and socially interactive environment in the workplace, fostering learner behaviour needed to achieve goals. It delivers on four key levels – motivating learners, presenting them with a sense of control and a cue to action, in a safe, competitive space. More importantly, facilitated gamification will appeal to all three learning styles – visual (pictures and images), auditory (hearing the message or instruction) and kinaesthetic (sensing the position or movement of the task or skill).
The adult learner has many responsibilities that must be balanced against the demands of learning. Conflicting needs are further challenged in the virtual space, where the absence of social connectivity is one more barrier to fully participatory engagement.
Gamified learning embraces new technologies with broad appeal to an increasing sector of the workforce. With millennials currently comprising 35% of the global workforce, training that is interactive, targeted, addresses all learning styles, and – most importantly – is fun, is the best solution.
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