It’s great to see leadership training on the agenda at World of Learning 2015 with both conference and exhibition sessions tackling some of the challenges involved in developing the skills of managers at all levels.
Leadership is a big issue for L&D teams with around 25% of budgets going on this sector alone. Such a high level of investment signals just how important good leaders are to the success of any organisation.
Towards Maturity’s new report, Excellence in Leadership Development provides independent evidence to help organisations understand the role of technology in leadership development and how to improve the impact of learning innovation. It’s full of interesting insights and I would recommend taking time to digest the results, if you haven’t done so already.
The report compares the actions and strategies of high achievers and low achievers; those L&D teams and learners largely achieving business benefits versus those who are not achieving any. I was drawn to one particularly statistic – 50% of high achievers are using games or competitions compared to just 12% of low achievers.
I’m a big fan of elearning games, also known as serious games. I believe they provide organisations with an opportunity to engage learners more effectively than ‘traditional’ elearning. To find out that half of the best leadership development programmes are making use of games is really encouraging. It backs up my own experience of working with global organisations, many of which are looking for innovation in the way they deliver leadership development.
Elearning games are becoming increasingly popular in management training for a number of reasons. One factor is the move towards mobile learning.
The Towards Maturity report reveals that 7 in 10 managers are using mobile devices for learning and much of this mobile learning takes place on the way to work. Elearning games lend themselves brilliantly to this environment, after all how many people are on the train playing Candy Crush anyway! With clever design, elearning games can provide stimulating short learning experiences, perfect for the daily commute.
But the value of elearning games in management training is not just technological. Games work as part of a leadership learning programme because they can help develop the leadership skills we value most.
Research for Harvard Business Review places collaboration and team work, problem-solving and strategic perspective in the top ten skills that leaders at all levels need most.
Elearning games are great tools for helping to develop these crucial skills and you could argue they do this better than ‘traditional’ instruction.
First, it’s worth focusing on the foundational elements of game-thinking as described by Professor Karl Kapp of Bloomsburg University. He breaks these down into four aspects; engagement, autonomy, mastery and progression.
Kapp sets the engagement bar high for serious games. He says: “The learner needs to be engaged with the content, thinking about it, interacting with it and reacting to what happens with the content and doing tasks related to the content.” The best games use storytelling as a way to engage people quickly by putting them into a scenario in the position of protagonist.
Learners are more engaged if they have some control over their route through the learning. Game players like to explore the game-space. If they don’t know what they will find, this also increases the sense of mystery and suspense.
Games can allow learners to repeat tricky challenges until they have mastered the knowledge. The game can be quite simple but made challenging when set against the clock or requiring very quick decisions.
Scores, badges, levels – these game rewards can keep learners interested by showing them what they have achieved and what they have not. Kapp believes their value is in helping people visualise the progress they have made.
These foundational elements work together to allow elearning designers to use serious games for skill development in a number of ways. I’d like to relate these back to the core leadership skills identified in the Harvard study.
Games are particularly helpful in teaching the art of balancing one choice versus another because they allow learners to see the impact of their decisions straight away through immediate feedback. They give people a space in which to practice, allow safe failure and the option to try again.
By their very nature games are a challenge; you have to complete a task by obeying a set of rules, often against the clock. To achieve this you have to explore, get to grips with how the game works and test out strategies – in short you have to be curious. In a corporate context, elearning games are most effective when they deal with real-life risks and consequences which are recognisable to learners and replicate the types of decisions they might face in their working life. To achieve this aim the game space should simulate a place or a context.
People often focus on the competitive aspect of elearning games but they can be just as powerful as collaborative exercises. Working together to make decisions and having to gain input from others before completing a challenge are techniques that can be used to help managers develop their team skills.
More and more large organisations are including games or game elements within their workplace learning and my elearning company, Sponge UK has seen a 35% increase in game solutions in the last 12 months. One trend is the move towards elearning games as a tool for teaching leadership skills. I’ll be expanding on this at my World of Learning talk and showing an example from Royal Mail of an interactive video game which is being used to support frontline managers in handling difficult conversations. It’s a useful demonstration of why those who lead should play.
Louise’s free exhibition seminar How to boost engagement with elearning games takes place on Day One of World of Learning (Sep 29) from 12.15 until 12.45pm in Theatre 2.