Dr. Jonathan Peters, Chief Motivational Officer shared his contagious enthusiasm for bringing more gamification to learning. Key takeaways:
Entice, engage and encourage (them to take learning from game space to work space).
Hard, because our brains associate the learning with whatever environment it happens in.
Gamification is motivational design. It deconstructs game atribures to drive game-like player behavior ina non-game context.
“saying motivation design” instead helps with people who think their work is too serious for games
Loyalty programs are a type of gamification – not necessarily fun, but using game mechanics to drive behavior
When designing, we tend to create experiences we enjoy. But we need to know what our learners consider to be “fun”.
Most studies done on college students, because they are cheap - however may not be representative
With many games, they may have more fun, but outcomes aren’t any better. Maybe the mechanics don’t resonate with them (badges, points etc.)
GAMES Design Method:
G oal
A dventure
M ethod
E ngagement
S ync-it
They train people in gamification – apprentice, journeyman, master craftsman.
One fun example was a game to train employees about something they considered boring. In it Terry turkey has no feathers, every question you answer gets him a feather. If you don’t get at least 22/25 feathers turkey explode. Most people did it twice just to see him explode.
Different player types, according to Richard Bartle
Killers – focus on winning, rank, and direct peer-to-peer competition, engaged by leaderboards and ranks (it’s not enough for them to win, they want to watch you die)
Achievers – attaining status and achieving preset goals quickly and completely
Socialites – focus on socializing and a drive to develop a network of friends and contacts – newsfeeds, friends list, chats
Explorer – focus on exploring
Dr Peters discussed the Reiss Motivational Profile, which is an empirically based taxonomy of human needs and desires culled from a huge data set, cultures from 4 continents. We all have because they move our genes forward. I would like to know more about this, and wonder whether cultural conditioning and gender expectations play a role in who and how people prioritize and display these traits:
Acceptance
Beauty
Curiosity
Eating
Family
Honor
Idealism
Independence
Order
Physical activity
Power,
Saving
Social contact
Status
Tranquility
Vengeance