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Overcoming the 5 Most Common Training Challenges with Game-Based Learning Solutions

As organizations continue to expand their learning and development (L&D) efforts, they are exploring innovative ways to make training more engaging and effective, while fitting learning activities into the normal flow of work. There is a significant rise in the adoption of eLearning and virtual training methods, driven by the need for flexible and accessible training solutions. There is also a growing trend toward microlearning—training delivered in small, manageable segments—and an increasing interest in using AI and machine learning to personalize learning experiences. If you are struggling to reach your learners, games-based learning solutions may hold the answer.

Games are some of the most powerful learning tools available, combining the best aspects of all these approaches. A well-designed game can engage emotion, drive behavioral change, and enhance learning outcomes, all while providing a fun and personalized experience for employees. Best of all, games can be tailored to fit the employee’s schedule and learning needs. Let’s examine some of the most common learning challenges and how learning games can help you overcome them.

Challenge #1 Integrating Learning into the Flow of Work

Integrating learning into daily tasks provides many benefits for both organizations and learners. On the corporate side, this approach enables companies to meet the demands of a dispersed workforce and scale learning across the organization without the need to take employees away from their roles for long periods or plan elaborate in-person events. Plus, this approach provides the opportunity for continuous learning, which can create a more agile workforce.

Condensing learning into short, convenient units can also improve learner engagement and drive better retention of knowledge. According to the 70-20-10 learning model, employees obtain 70% of their knowledge from job-related experiences. By integrating learning into the flow of work, employees can apply new concepts directly to their everyday roles.

Ideal Solution: Quiz Games

Quiz games can be accessed through a variety of devices such as tablets and phones, making them ideal for integrating learning into the flow of work. These microlearning experiences break training down into short, concentrated units that can be completed anytime and anywhere.

The Genius quiz platform is a great example of this. This quiz-based game was designed to help employees test and develop their knowledge. The platform simulates a live competition by pitting learners against a recording of another learner’s game. This provides the experience of a one-on-one contest without the need to coordinate live organized sessions. Genius also uses the results of these quiz battles to recommend additional microlearning content to learners. That means learners get to learn while having fun in brief, easily digestible sessions that accommodate even the busiest schedules.

Challenge #2 Analyzing Your Learners’ Needs

To create effective training, L&D professionals must understand their employees’ learning needs. This means gathering insights into employees’ skill and knowledge gaps, learning preferences, and pain points, all of which can be difficult to obtain. Once gathered, this data can be used to create customized learning experiences that are tailored to the learner’s unique role, knowledge level, and learning needs.

Generic one-size-fits-all learning can feel like a waste of time for learners. Personalizing learning not only improves knowledge retention but also provides an engaging experience that motivates the learner to seek out additional learning materials.

Ideal Solution: Strategic Learning Games

Organizations can gain valuable learner data by incorporating diagnostic elements into learning games. Learning simulation games, strategy games, and scenario-based roleplaying are ideally suited to this task. These genres present deep, multi-layered challenges that can identify employees’ further development needs.

We created a game for a quick-service restaurant that perfectly addresses this challenge. The experience was designed specifically for the organization’s operations consultants. This role is filled by people with vastly different experience levels, meaning that the game had to be as relevant to recent hires as it was to consultants with decades of experience. In the game, learners must oversee several simulated restaurants. The game was designed to accommodate a variety of styles and provide players with many different ways to win and lose. This enables learners to experiment with different strategies and use the feedback they receive to try new approaches and gain fresh insights into their job skills.

The experience provides a wealth of data regarding each employee’s performance, knowledge, and skillset that can be used to host performance conversations and create additional learning activities that target critical skill and knowledge gaps.

Challenge #3 Creating Adaptive Learning Content

Challenge is a key element of learning. When learning is too easy, learners are likely to become bored and disengage from the material. When learning is too hard, learners can become frustrated and give up. Adaptive learning pinpoints learners’ existing capabilities to provide every learner with their own unique experience, ensuring that content remains relevant to the entire workforce. One way to achieve this is by providing questions at the beginning of training to gauge the learner’s knowledge and skills and connecting learners with the most relevant parts of a learning program. This maximizes training time and boosts engagement by preventing learners from reviewing knowledge they have already acquired or being overwhelmed by content that is too advanced for them.

Ideal Solution: Puzzle Games

Puzzle games are ideal for adaptive learning. In a puzzle game, learners encounter a series of brainteasers related to the learning objectives. These puzzles often start simple and get more challenging as the learner progresses. This provides learners with a range of challenges that meet everyone’s needs.

Invesco QQQ’s “How Not to Suck at Money” web-based game is just one example of how to incorporate adaptive learning into a game. The game was designed to help college students develop healthy financial habits. It was designed so that anyone can play the game and have a meaningful learning experience, no matter how much they already know about personal finance.

Content varies from introductory lessons such as “How to open a bank account” to more advanced concepts such as “How to develop an investing strategy.” At the start of the game, learners answer several questions about their money habits, knowledge, and goals. The game then uses this information to direct them to the right content that fits their learning needs.



Challenge #4 Measuring Behavioral Change and Learning Impact

Measuring the impact of your training programs can be challenging for a variety of reasons. Gathering data can be complex and time-consuming, especially when it is performed at scale. Additionally, traditional learning activities provide learners with relatively few actions and decisions, which makes it difficult to draw meaningful conclusions from their performance.

<h3>Ideal Solution: Scenario-Based Games</h3>

Game-based learning offers participants significantly more decisions and actions than other learning modalities. In a well-designed game, learners could be making dozens of micro decisions and actions every minute. Each of these interactions is a potential data point that can be used to assess behavioral change and learning outcomes. For this reason, designers commonly describe games as an “infinite well of data.”

A dashboard for games-based learning solutions with several branching and connected data points and data types.

A great example of this is the Visa Inside Track game. This custom-made experience was designed to improve product knowledge among the organization’s sales staff while encouraging employees to engage in ongoing, self-directed learning. The game tracks every action taken by the learner and reports this data to a dashboard. This information helps connect learners’ performances to real-world outcomes, provides valuable insights into the program’s effectiveness, and demonstrates the game’s overall impact.

Challenge #5 Creating a Continuous Learning Culture

The end goal of any training program should be creating a culture in which learning is a regular, ongoing activity that is deeply embedded in the organization. There are many steps involved in building a learning culture, but one of the most important is normalizing learning so that it becomes a regular habit.

Ideal Solution: All Learning Games

Game-based learning can play a key role in shaping your working culture by making learning a habitual and enjoyable part of your employees’ daily roles. Games like Wordle and Duolingo have become cultural phenomena, encouraging users to engage with them regularly. This type of learning can become infectious. People in offices around the world now share their daily Wordle scores, while Duolingo incentivizes users to make learning a new language part of their daily ritual.

There is no single type of game that can achieve this kind of effect, so try experimenting with different types of games in your organization. The important thing is to provide learners with experiences that are short, fun, and meaningful. This will keep your learners coming back for more and help build the ritual, habit, and culture of continuous learning.

Are you ready to harness the power of learning games in your organization? Find out more about our game-based learning solutions.

About the Authors

Rich Calcutt
Rich Calcutt is a Director of Consulting Learning Experience, and also chairs the Game Design team at GP Strategies. Rich's team brings together the science of learning design with the art of play, helping global brands create immersive and impactful experiences that change both mindsets and behaviors. Rich is a believer in the power of games to educate individuals, engage communities, and transform organizations.

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