What is Gamification?
Gamification involves the application of game mechanics and elements onto non-game situations and activities. The purpose of gamification varies from person to person and from organization to organization (some apply that to cyber security games, for example). Still, generally, gamification is incorporated to increase participation rates and motivation amongst all the participants.
it considers people’s tendency for competitive behavior and achievements and uses this as motivation to get them to do more work. The specific achievements that a game would offer, such as leveling up or gaining some other kind of reward, are transferred into the real world to motivate people to achieve their learning goals quicker and more efficiently.
Gamification is an incredibly versatile tool used in various facets of the business world. According to a Forbes report from 2014, about 70% of the global 2,000 companies were already using or going to use its components for increasing customer retention and improving marketing efforts. Although the report came out in 2014, we can see more relevant examples of gamification used everywhere, like cyber security games.
A prominent example includes Nike’s fitness app, which gamifies and tracks your runs, health levels, and other characteristics, comparing with your previous grades. In addition, you can also compare your performance against your friends to add competition and improve motivation.
Gamification in Corporate Learning - Benefits
Organizations are evolving their training program and are incorporating gamification into these to create a seamless learning experience for their employees. They don’t want the employees to look at learning opportunities as a tedious task anymore, so they incorporate these mechanics.
Why would organizations use it? Here are the main reasons:
Gamification motivates employees effectively
Gamification drives people to act. No one wants to sit in a room and simply absorb vast amounts of knowledge as it is both tiring and tedious. With it, employees would be more motivated to learn the content and do better in the assessments with competition and challenges. In cyber security games, for example, employees become more aware about cyber risks.
It incentivizes and accelerates learning
People tend to learn more and get incentives when they feel rewarded and recognized for their effort. By using gamification, there will be direct feedback for their effort, and so people would be able to gauge their current standing and feel recognized. This acknowledgment would motivate them to work harder. Since the training would be more interactive, the employees would feel more compelled to participate, thereby accelerating learning.
Higher interaction
Due to the inclusion of friendly competition, gamification allows employees to interact with one another to learn from each other. This competition would help bring a team closer which would go a long way in facilitating teamwork, allowing for smoother operations.
How we use Gamification in Cybersecurity
At Right-Hand, we incorporate gamification into the learning process and supplement it with adaptive learning technology and artificial intelligence. These three elements help boost effectiveness in training programs and simulations, as they work together to improve learning journeys.
We believe in using these elements to understand employees and influence their behavior change, creating a unique learning path that will adjust itself in real-time during the user’s journey. Why do we insist on gamification being only one element to drive cyber awareness success? Because the combination of adaptive learning, artificial intelligence, and gamification shows motivation increases over 25%. With students, the dropout rate is reduced by 26%.
In conclusion, gamification and the use of cyber security games are important elements in any kind of educational initiative, but become especially valuable in organizational training programs, where the user attention is overloaded and knowledge retention is critical to business continuity,