In most homes where a pre-teen or teenager resides you can probably find some video games lying around somewhere. Even some adults enjoy sneaking away to play these games. What at first appears as an idle waste of time is now seen in a different light. Video games in education have gained some of the legitimacy that they never enjoyed before.
The game “FoldIt” has emerged as one of the more prominent examples of how games have applications in health, challenging players to fold a computer image of a protein into shapes that could be used in potential new treatments for disease. Now the game has found a place in research on one of the more prominent…
Businesses adapting new strategies to accomplish a variety of problems will want to consider gamification as one approach. This classic approach has taken on new twists with all of the new technologies that we have today at our disposal. Already gamification creates many exciting outcomes but there are some pitfalls and common mistakes. Forgetting To…
Gamification is the newest corporate buzzword. Organizations slap points, badges, and leaderboards on customer or employee engagement programs, many times only to see the initiatives fail. It’s important to examine the root causes of these failures, in order to learn how you can make your gamification program succeed.
Students sit through hours and hours of boring and unengaging lectures. Professors ramble on to an audience of students sleepily typing away on their smart phones while checking Facebook, Twitter and pretty much anything else that has nothing to do with the lecture. How do we fix this? Enter Labster! Founded in 2010, Labster (@labster)…
Since gamification has come to the fore as an individual technology, the words “motivation” and “engagement” have been used to describe its effect on users. Of course, motivation and engagement are two powerful influencers of behavior, but as Lithium’s Dr. Michael Wu pointed out in an interview at this year’s GSummit, gamification may be focusing…
Love ’em or hate ’em, common core state standards are now a reality for most teachers. The standards are designed to insure students have the foundation to think critically and meet the rigorous demands of college. There’s also an impetus to make sure schools are preparing kids to compete in a global marketplace. Teachers often…
“It turns out video games are just a Trojan horse for studying interest-driven learning” – Constance Steinkeuhler Jesse Schell lead the development of an educational game called Lexicawith the goal of developing life-long habits of reading in children. Lexicais set up as an action game, and in order to progress in the video game the…
Sarah Lawrence College is not known for its sciences programs. A liberal arts school with a reputation of being a haven for artists and writers, even the brochures keep mentions of the natural sciences to a minimum. And yet it is here that I took one of the most interesting and engaging science classes in…
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be defined as the digitizing of reality, the connectedness of the real world, the online extension of … everything. Simply put, IoT is the concept of smart devices interacting with one another through an online connection. IoT technology is not necessarily new in theory or practice: uniquely-identified devices have…
Ashley Tate of BigDoor and Barry Kirk of Maritz Motivation have a deep understanding of customer loyalty rewards programs. As the Director of Marketing for BigDoor, a company dedicated to helping brands and consumers engage online, Tate has seen first-hand what works in the loyalty marketing space. Similarly, as the VP of Loyalty Strategy for…
One of the most amazing transformations using gamification has come from the medical field. Concepts using game mechanics are making their way into a myriad of medical interactions – and probably shouldn’t be super surprising by this point. However I was pleased as punch during my most recent allergist visit to find that the old-school…
Since its inception in 1999, Cricket Wireless (@Cricketnation) has been an innovator in wireless-communications in the United States. It was a pioneer in providing pre-paid, unlimited voice-and-data services. In 2011, Cricket became the first wireless provider in the country to include unlimited music in a rate plan. To address a perceived need for better ways…
Qstream Powers AMS Employee Knowledge Retention American Medical Systems (AMS) has found a new way to boost employee engagement for sales personnel by using a gamified application called Qstream (@qstream). The app aims to improve employee engagement by presenting employees with challenges and rating their responses on a company-wide scoreboard. The Problem AMS was trying to solve a…
“It’s all about money, not freedom, ya’ll, okay? Nothing to do with freedom. If you think you’re free, try going somewhere without money, okay?” – Bill Hicks, comedian Much has been written in the area of enterprise gamification about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the basic ideas being as follows: – Because money is considered an…
