Gamification And Mobile Learning: A Perfect Combination To Deliver An Engaging Learning Experience

n today’s digital era, mobile learning has become one of the effective learning methods for the new-age workforce. The use of personalized mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets extend the traditional learning paradigm into a new era of mobile learning. With an ease to access online courses anytime and anywhere, mobile devices enable the learners to boost their workplace efficiency, engagement and retention levels. When it comes to increasing employees’ participation and engagement, combining gamification with mobile learning is an optimum choice. The combination of gamification with mobile learning encourages the learners to complete their online training anytime and from anywhere.

Mobile learning is convenient while gamification is engaging, and their combination leads to a highly effective learning experience. Before adopting a blended approach of gamification and mobile learning, it is significant for organizations to understand the impact of both, individually:

Mobile learning-

• With the ease to access online courses across personalized mobile devices, enables the learners to learn at their own pace of time and location.
  
• Mobile learning is gradually shifting from its adaptive format (which offers multi-device support as e-courses are accessible on laptops, tablets and smartphones) to the fully-responsive format (which provides learning designs that are optimized for smartphones, although they also offer a multiple device support).

Gamification-

• It improves the overall learning uptake by providing an environment which is fun-filled and engaging.
• Gaming elements such as badges, points and scores motivate the learners to actively participate in training programs and improve their overall performance.
• Feedbacks in the form of leaderboards and scoring systems drive competition among the employees as well as help managers monitor the progress of every learner.

Benefits of Combining Game-based Learning & Mobile Learning
Mobile learning and gamification are the leading trends that have transformed the face of training delivery at the workplace. The adoption of gamification strategies and their delivery through mobile devices offer the following benefits:

• Deliver a continuous learning experience
  Organizations ensure the delivery of continuous learning assets (not discrete content) by adopting game-based learning strategies via mobile devices. As a result, learners engage more as they can start their training in office, and finish it at home.
• Improve cognition levels- from knowledge acquisition to application
  This is another benefit of combining gamification and mobile-based learning which enables the organizations to view the effective application of on-the-job learning. Different game-based quizzes, assessments, just-in-time aids and other challenges that are easy to access on the smartphones improve the learners’ chances to access courses at the point of need.
• Improve skills & expertise
  Organizations choose gamified learning strategies to enable learners face different challenges during the game, followed by giving instance feedbacks and practice sessions to push their level from a beginner to an expert.

While combining the effectiveness of mobile learning and gamified e-learning, organizations can adopt some of the best practices to deliver a highly impactful training experience:

• Organizations can create short gamified content that cater to specific learning needs and provide a learning path with multiple assets to ensure an effective e-learning delivery.
• Mobile learning aids the organizations to reach out to the learners even after the training is completed. More content nuggets can be delivered across personalized mobile devices which further enables the learners to boost their knowledge competency.
• Organizations can make an effective use of badges, scores and leaderboards to encourage active participation of every employee and gain social recognition.

Modern workforce wants to continuously boost their skills, learn on-the-go and achieve their diverse business goals. With an increasing need to effectively train the workforce, gamification is poised to impact learning across personalized mobile devices. The delivery of short and interactive gamified courses on a smartphone or tablet caters to the pertinent needs of globally diversified audiences.