Put Gamification on Your Career Path

Is Gamification on Your Career Path?Gamification is a big trend these days. I’ve had mixed feelings about it for many years. Not bad. Not good. Mostly just confusion around definitions. There is the simple side of gamification which includes adding scoring and badges as learners complete courses, or tasks, or prove a new competency. And then there is the more complicated side of gamification which includes the use of game design with instructional design, or even in place of it. My current belief is that most of us have settled comfortably on the former. I’m still intrigued by how game design can be applied to learning design, but I hope we come up with a different, better, name for that.

You could spend a lot of time googling “gamification” and getting a LOT of mixed information. Instead, I would recommend reading Dr. Karl Kapp’s book “The Gamification of Learning and Instruction“. Seriously. Stop reading this blog post and buy it now on your Kindle or go with prime and have it in 2 days.  Everything you need to know about Gamification is in that book.  There is nothing new I can add for you here.

Wait… maybe there is one more thing.

I can also highly recommend a second book. And that’s Raph Koster’s “A Theory of Fun“. It’s such a great read, but may not be as immediately impactful to your day to day activities as Dr. Kapp’s work. But if you are buzzed by the idea of connecting learning with fun and games then you will LOVE it.

Okay, so maybe there is a third thing.

Playing Jeopardy is not gamification.  There! I said it.