GSummit’s Advance Gamification Workshop: A great introductory for newbies and refreshers for veterans GSummit 2013 is finally here and it has started out with a full house at the Advanced Gamification Certification Workshop facilitated by Gabe himself. For those who are unfamiliar about the workshop, it exposes attendees how to develop and implement a gamified…
Community planning meetings are often times an unpleasant experience for any potential attendees. Participants occasionally have to deal with long-winded formal proceedings, dull meetings and repetitive discussion points just to put forth their personal inputs on key issues. In short, this traditional form of civic planning can be a rather inefficient and tedious process, which discourages local residents from actual engagement.
Now, what if there was a way to make civic planning not only simpler to participate but engaging as well? Designed by the Engagement Game Lab at Emerson College (one of many labs across the US), Community PlanIt is a game that aims to get local citizens more involved with community planning.
Gamification has drawn much inspiration from games and gamers in tackling real world problems. Just to name a few, video game titles such as World of Warcraft and Simcity are revolutionizing lesson plans, Portal 2 was used as a talent recruitment tool and a puzzle game helped to unlock parts of the AIDS protein structure. These developments have allowed significant progress in their respective fields. Yet, how do we tackle the burning issues of security and fraud in an enterprise scenario? While it may seem daunting at first glance, we could once again draw key lessons by literally observing gamers and combining big data analytics.
The use of gamification is slowly gaining traction in the enterprise sector as the corporate workforce is warming up to the ideas of blending fun and engagement into the workplace. Unsurprisingly, this similar scenario is occurring within the education sector as well. Recent groundbreaking developments such as the use of collaborative platforms and massively online open courses purposes has redefined the traditional sense of education and teaching methodologies. With all this in mind, it leaves many to questions like how do we make sense of these developments, what does it mean for the future of learning and how does this affect the enterprise realm. However, fret not dear readers, as GSummit has an amazing line up of speakers to address these hot topics; here are some of our top picks for education gamification sessions.
Prior to the 2012 elections, MTV was working on new ways to better engage US citizens to be involved in the American democratic process. With support from the Knight Foundation, MTV conceived Fantasy Election 2012, an online game which gave users a new way to hold electoral candidates accountable while being rewarded for getting involved in the electoral process.
Whether you are a project manager of a fortune 500 companies or a small business owner, organizing a project can often times be a tedious and strenuous process. Thankfully with the advent of collaborative software such as Microsoft SharePoint, the days of conflicting information and miscommunication between projects are a thing of the past. Yet, while SharePoint has been adopted by almost 4 out of 5 Fortune 500 companies, spanning over 125 million users, the software is still not being optimized to its full potential. This is where gamification could play a leading role in rectifying these challenges by increasing end user adoption as well as boosting organizational productivity.
In the recent months, efforts to combine gamification and training programs in the corporate work environment have been gaining steam. With news such as TrueOffice hitting the headlines and major companies like Deloitte embedding gamification into their training programs, gamified training is soon becoming the new lingo in corporate speak.
Big class lectures can often be a painfully boring but inevitable part for any college student. It may be surprising to some but professors can be just as bored by the class material they have to teach. This has led to a growing movement by teachers and professors to innovate the teaching practice with the primary goal to better engage their students.
Among those trendsetters is Professor Cliff Lampe from the University of Michigan who has been using gamification to teach his undergraduate seminar classes. As an assistant professor at the university’s School of Information, Professor Lampe conduct classes for the undergraduate program in informatics. What he is currently most well known for is his use of gamification elements and principles in his 200 person introductory lecture.
In their common endeavor to engage its employees, enterprises have been slowly embracing the concept of gamifying employee training programs and handmade cosmetics firm Lush is no exception.
Lush’s training program, Lush Quests bears the markings of a gamified training system where employees are introduced to Lush’s brand and products through an interactive story filled with challenges and rewards. Upon completion of the narrative, users are then given a 10 minute quiz to reaffirm what they have learned from the material. Thus far, over 2,000 Lush employees have completed this online training program.
Loyalty programs have been commonly associated with airlines and retailers but Montreal’s recent plans may soon change that perspective to include public transportation systems. Montreal operates the Opus-à-l’année also know as the Opus & Cie subscriptions, a subscription service which recharges a commuter’s OPUS card automatically every month.
Montreal STM will be introducing a VIP class for its customers, which will only be made available to 20,000 commuters (9% of the 217,000 who regularly buy monthly Société passes). After subscribing for more 12 months, Opus & Cie users will be given the opportunity to upgrade to their new “maestro” status.
Getting employees involved with training can be a challenging task for many firms. Even when the training program is simple to use and easily available, training would be the last thing employees would like to do when they are away from the work place. As James Sanders, Manager of Innovation at Deloitte Consulting puts it, “Let’s face it, for most people, on a typical Sunday morning, if given the choice between ‘Am I gonna watch ESPN, or am I gonna do some training?’ training will not win out.” While it may seem that the odds are stacked against enterprises, Deloitte is keeping itself ahead of the pack with their training program, Deloitte Leadership Academy (DLA).
At the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum, chief product officer for Pearson’s K-12 technology group, Luyen Chou acknowledged that his company needs to become an “Electronic Arts for education.” What does Pearson, one the world’s largest book publishers for education, have in common with Electronic Arts, another giant of the video games industry?
Gamification is being utilized as productivity tools in Nokia, AutoDesk, and Microsoft Whether it is to design a new system, troubleshoot bugs or implement new features, developers are the chief problem solvers in any enterprise. D Developers and programmers are software engineers who are often tasked with finding solutions for abstract problems in addition…
Mastering the mechanics and principles for effective implementation of gamification is no easy feat for any aspiring gamification experts. Yet, mastering the art of articulating and pitching gamification to one’s own organization can be daunting task for many. How does one successfully pitch gamification to their colleagues and upper management? Although the task ahead may…
Imagine yourself managing your very own virtual farm and being able to obtain fresh, organic produce, delivered right to your door step. This description seems more befitting to the popular Facebook game Farmville but it is not entirely based on virtual fiction. This concept is brought to reality by a farming cooperative in Kyrgyzstan which…
