15 eLearning Gamification Examples to Elevate Training

Everyone in the world has played some sort of game at some stage in their life. Games are a shared human experience and are essential to every culture in the world.

Technology advancements in learning management systems are transforming the learning experience and are changing the way we learn and retain information. Whether you are a student, employee, or customer, elearning gamification is paramount to creating an engaging and inclusive learning experience and online training program.

Let’s explore 15 real-life gamification eLearning examples that have been successfully applied in the workplace, retail, and mobile learning education industries.

1. Cyber Security

It is hard to believe that John Badham’s 1983 movie WarGames inspired President Ronald Reagan to take steps to implement America’s first cybersecurity policy. Decades later, cybersecurity threats are on the rise and what is interesting is blissfully unaware employees are the cause of a majority of breaches and vulnerabilities.

A great example of elearning gamification to increase cybersecurity awareness is through SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Cyber Security course. This distance-learning course is free (up to 10 learners), along with hundreds of others in the award-winning platform’s built-in editable content library of ready-made courseware. Trusted by industry leaders around the globe, everyone from international banks to consultancies has implemented the Cyber Security course as onboarding lessons or refreshers to have an up-to-date understanding of how to recognize and mitigate any potential cyber threats. To reinforce this pedagogy and concepts, gamification is introduced throughout the highly interactive, intuitive, and most importantly, effective microlessons.

2. Reinforce key procedures through gamification

Companies regularly change policies and procedures to align with government legislative requirements. When changes occur, organizations often rely on push communication channels and dashboards such as email broadcasts and leadership cascading to inform employees. These methods have been proven ineffective, unmeasurable, and often unreliable.
SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s “Next in Order” game (above) is a gamification classroom example that can educate and reinforce important new procedural changes promptly through learning activities and online courses. This game also captures employee completion rates in real-time and is a particularly strong way to finish up a lesson about a procedure. Aside from a handful of gamified templates customization to choose from, SC Training (formerly EdApp) also has around 80 other templates, giving you the opportunity to cater to each and every type of learner.

3. Inductions in construction sites

Virtual site simulations use gamified scenarios to induct new starters and visitors to construction sites. Virtual site inductions combine Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality to fast track virtual learning, mitigate risk, and reduce costs.
In this elearning gamification example, by simply wearing a pair of goggles, the learner is immediately taken to the site virtually. Then learner then uses the controllers to transport their movements and become fully immersed in their virtual induction experience. Evidence suggests that more knowledge is acquired and retained longer through a virtual reality induction.

4. Learn how to operate heavy equipment virtually

Virtual Reality (VR) simulators have evolved significantly since the first flight simulation was invented in New York in 1927. These days VR simulations are used as digital learning tools to train employees in industries that operate with heavy machineries such as construction, motor, and aviation.

VR simulators teach people how to operate heavy machinery by stepping through a series of gamified scenarios, elevating the learning environment. The types of machinery employees can learn to operate virtually include scissor lifts, cranes, forklifts, and dozers.

5. Establish and build brand loyalty

In the airline industry, competition is fierce, profit margins are low, and customer loyalty is everything. To remain relevant in the early eighties, airlines started introducing frequent flyer programs to recognize, reward, and incentivize customers.

Gamification features such as mileage points, status levels, and rewards contribute to the frequent flyer experience. Over time, airlines have used frequent flyer programs to create desired behavior gradually.

Programs like this can be mirrored and implemented into organizations as a way of evolving the employee experience. SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s gamification and engagement features include leaderboards, banners, and achievement badges. These enable companies to drive higher employee engagement rates and cultivate corporate culture over time.

6. Making learners feel valued

Retailers incorporate gamification to elicit learner feedback in higher-education. Gamification is traditionally used at the end of an eLearning module to measure the learner’s experience. Forward-thinking businesses leverage this feature and apply it to experience and assignments.
SC Training (formerly EdApp) facilitates this element beautifully with built-in survey templates. Along with 80 other intuitively-designed templates found in the platform’s extensive template library, surveys exist so you can easily gather feedback from your learners about your instructional lessons. To continuously ensure that you’re providing the best training possible for your learners, this type of feedback empowers your learners to add ratings or offer suggestions for future lessons. SC Training (formerly EdApp) enables users to continuously improve learning content and delivery while simultaneously making learners feel valued.

7. Real prizing and rewards

Studies indicate that younger workers have an attention span of under eight seconds. One of the most prominent obstacles organizations face when implementing training initiatives is that employees claim they don’t have the time to complete it.

An effective way to combat resistance to training is to reward employees who do complete their self paced M Learning modules. This instant gratification generates a buzz because it is a fun way to motivate people to take their lessons.

Another great way to promote good learning habits is by recognizing learner achievements. SC Training (formerly EdApp)’s Achievements feature is a reward system to help level up your engagement game by awarding learners badges, banners, and certificates for their milestones and superb learning habits.

8. Badges boost professional credibility

Organizations such as Acclaim, Microsoft, IBM, and AGSM have created digital badges for people to upload to social media platforms such as LinkedIn. Badges are perceived as trusted and verifiable and denote that a person is an expert in their field.

Many people may not directly correlate an e-badge as a form of gamification. However, badges are a component of gaming and are awarded to a learner upon completing their eLearning or SCORM module. It symbolizes that someone has mastered a specific skill set. SC Training (formerly EdApp) offers a built-in course completion certificates feature, which allows learners to access a certificate and show off their achievements after completing SC Training (formerly EdApp) courseware. Studies show that by giving students salient recognition of their work, outcomes can be improved and motivation increased.

9. Coding for kids

Gamification is regularly used to teach students, particularly children, the basics of how to code. By incorporating animated stories, fun characters, quizzes, and achievement levels, the eLearning experience is more engaging and makes Javascript, HTML/CSS, and Python coding fun!

10. Museums use gamification to connect with visitors

Museums across the world are using elements of gamification to tell their story while harnessing curiosity and learning. Some of the different ways that museums use gamification is through VR by virtually recreating world wonders and by using mobile/app-based puzzles and quizzes.

In the United States, the Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington) uses Augmented Reality to help visitors empathize with Shoah victims. By pointing their phone to historical pictures, museum visitors can see the people’s names and read their story. Creating a meaningful experience and allows visitors to connect more with victims as individuals rather than numbers. When used correctly, gamification can be a compelling way for museums to connect with their visitors.

11. Be the best on the team leaderboard

Leaderboards allow learners to compete with one another for the #1 position in the training module. This is perfect for roles or teams who are naturally competitive, such as recruitment, sales, or even medical teams who covet being the best in their role – whether that’s for bragging rights or for a prize.

Luxury retail brand, Dunhill was able to implement leaderboards as part of their elearning gamification strategy. Here’s what Global Marketing Manager Ben Nuttall had to say about the feature:

“SC Training (formerly EdApp) has allowed us to build a sense of community between the different regional team members with some friendly competition. With the introduction of SC Training (formerly EdApp) Apps user groups and leaderboards, it makes it simple to divide employees into organized groups, giving a clear analysis of participation, completion rates, and everything in between.

“The feedback we’ve received from our learners has been extremely positive. Unlike traditional e-learning platforms, our teams have commented on how fun and engaging SC Training (formerly EdApp) App microlessons are – especially the leaderboards. It’s made organizing and tracking our team’s performance incredibly easy.”

12. Win virtual currency

Bring a little spice and value to your training with virtual currency. Just like how we’re motivated in the real world to work hard in exchange for a salary, a virtual currency offers the same exchange of time for value. This encourages your teams to dedicate time to complete lessons so they can earn enough points or stars to win against their coworkers – or put their virtual currency to good use and purchase a pre-set prize through your elearning platform.

13. Play a find-a-word game

Word searches are not just for kids – find-a-word games allow admins to reinforce keywords from a lesson. Find-a-word games consist of the letters of words placed in a grid, which usually has a rectangular or square shape. The objective of this puzzle is to find and mark all the words hidden inside the box. By hiding newly learned words in a jumble of letters, learners must recall the keywords they learned from a lesson and find them in the grid.

SC Training (formerly EdApp) offers a find-a-word gamification template where admins can easily insert new words for learners to find as part of their lesson. While boosting your brain, problem-solving skills, and spelling, this type of game helps further improve language learning. It’s a great way for people of all learning abilities to learn words, increase vocabulary around new languages, technologies, or even products – plus they make you feel smarter.

14. Be a contestant on your organization’s own Jeopardy

Your learners might not walk away with thousands of dollars after spending an evening putting their general knowledge to work, but they can learn more about your organization with this fun eLearning gamification idea. SC Training (formerly EdApp) has a gamification template that’s similar to the popular game show of the same name. In the free mobile app and learning management system, learners can select from a grid of varying categories and difficulties. The engaging and entertaining game experience is easily editable for admins, and offers a unique way to reinforce key concepts their learners recently learned.

15. Test your learner’s sequencing knowledge

Another example of elearning gamification is a reordering or sequencing game, which tests the learners’ conceptual understanding of a process flow. This is particularly important knowledge for basic safety training, cashier training, manufacturing, and more. Reinforce each step in a procedure in a timed game to ensure your learners are able to react appropriately and in a timely manner when learning about any process they may encounter during their work hours.

Gamification helps people of all ages to learn and retain information faster and in a fun way. Next time you are on your mobile phone, check out how your apps use gamification features to give you a more engaging and meaningful experience.

What is Elearning Gamification?

Gamification takes elements of games such as leaderboards, rewards, and scoring, and then incorporates them into the learning experience. Integrating gamification into everyday online learning (eLearning) keeps people more engaged, curious, and motivated. By combining gamification elements with eLearning, you create a fun, convenient, and inclusive learning experience. Elements of gamification are being incorporated into eLearning to inspire and fast-track learning across various daily experiences. If you own a mobile phone, you are likely to already be immersed in some sort of daily gamification experience, possibly without even knowing it.

Ready to start using gamification but don’t have an SC Training (formerly EdApp) account yet? Create your free account* now, for both you and your teams.

*Up to 10 users.