When I was in elementary school, our teachers often tried to make test preparation fun by turning it into a game show.  They taped pieces of paper with questions on one side and answers on the other to the wall.  Answering an easy question was worth 100 points, and the most difficult questions were worth 500 – just like the popular TV quiz show Jeopardy! – and my classmates and I would compete for prizes, like plastic toys or candy.  And while sometimes these games got a little chaotic, they certainly held our attention better than a lecture or homework.

Decades later, one of my company’s clients – an industrial equipment manufacturer – was having difficulty getting maintenance technicians to complete their mandatory training on time.  

The company had divisions in the United States, South America, and Australia, and when we studied the personal interests and motivations of maintenance technicians across the three divisions, we found they had three things in common: they were highly goal-oriented and competitive (individually and as a team), most liked to drink beer (but different local brands), and most liked to watch “football” (i.e., soccer in South America, American Football in the U.S. and Australian Rules Football down under).

So, we designed a contest named “Football / Football / Fútbol” where the three divisions competed to see who could achieve 95% training compliance first.  At the end of the quarter, any technicians who completed 100% of their courses got invited to a party where they drank the winning team’s local brand of beer and watched the winning team’s preferred version of “football”.  The contest caught on, sparking a playful rivalry between the divisions which in turn spurred them all to hit their training targets.  

But while these types of contests can make for a good time – do people actually learn better through games?

The answer depends on the type of game, and how you leverage it within a training program. 

Contests: Increasing Participation Through Competition and Rewards

The “football” and “Jeopardy” examples above are examples of using competition and prizes as an incentive.  However, they don’t directly incentivize learning as much as participation in the learning event.

From the children’s perspective, it didn’t matter if a classroom game show involved math or geography. We just wanted to win toys and candy; knowledge of the subject was incidental.  Likewise,  the “football” contest could just as easily be used to reward the team who raised the most money for charity; the activity was incidental to winning a catered office party. 

Multiple research studies have found that, while contests can increase participation in training, they don’t necessarily make training more effective.  Children might enjoy a game show more than a practice quiz, but it won’t necessarily boost test scores.  

This isn’t to say contests are worthless.  A skilled teacher can make a game show effective by asking challenging questions and giving relevant feedback.  And when it comes to voluntary corporate training, motivating people to show up is half the battle- just don’t assume that participants will retain what they learn after they receive their gift card, unless you give them other reasons to care.

Energizers: Refreshing the Body and Mind

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers believed in the notion of “a sound mind in a sound body”: Plato himself was an Olympic wrestler and Aristotle advocated for physical education.  And modern studies have found that exercise boosts memory and cognitive performance.

Compare the brain activity in someone sitting quietly vs. someone who just took a brisk 20-minute walk.

Games that encourage learners to get up and move around can be an excellent way to improve learning during extended workshops.  While many facilitators will use “energizer” activities where people get up and do silly dances just for a break, physical activity can be even more effective when combined with specific learning objectives. 

For instance, in my prior career developing digital classroom tools, our favorite thing to do with a touch-screen “smart board” was to display a question with targets representing different answers and have children throw a rubber “koosh ball” at the correct response.   For adult audiences, simply having people stand up when doing “breakout” activities in small groups (i.e., “The team brainstorming new marketing slogans for senior citizens gather by the flip chart on the left – those brainstorming slogans for teenagers gather by the flip chart on the right”) can help maintain engagement.

Functional Play: Making Skill-Building Fun

Humans and animals alike acquire skills through play. Young lions hone their hunting techniques through playful pouncing, just as human children learn teamwork and coordination in youth sports.

Military leaders have long used games to build soldiers’ skills, from chess to modern videogames.  And while chess might not be a realistic simulation of military strategy and Fortnite might not be a realistic representation of infantry combat, they force players to think about when to sacrifice a piece to achieve a larger strategic goal, or how to use cover to avoid getting shot.  

Likewise, some business organizations have teams take improv comedy lessons as a way to develop group communication and problem-solving skills.  And toys like Bee-Bot – where children tap buttons on the back of a plastic bee to direct its movements – teach basic computer programming concepts like sequencing and debugging in a playful and accessible way.

However, the biggest challenge when using “functional play” is making sure participants make the connection between the play activity and their actual work.  This can be done either during debriefing discussions post-activity, or by immediately following up with a second activity that calls for applying the same skill in a work context (e.g. shifting from telling an improvised story about a perfect vacation to an improvised story about an organizational change initiative.)

Simulation: When Games Get Serious 

Simulations or “serious games” involve people directly practicing skills in a realistic work context – for example, role playing performance review conversations, engaging in a computer simulation for managing staff and supplies aboard a cruise ship, or having emergency responders rehearse for an earthquake in a realistic setting, with live actors playing victims.  

While simulation design is a complex topic that could fill a book, perhaps the most important consideration is deciding how much “realism” is required for a simulation to be effective.  

To give an example of simulation gone wrong, in the 1970s the U.S. Navy created a series of simulation exercises intended to teach cultural awareness to personnel stationed overseas.  For one exercise, they built a full-scale replica of a Japanese train station, including a fully functional ticket counter, storefronts, and Japanese-speaking actors playing the staff.  However, participants were distracted by the setting and largely missed the point of the exercise: role playing cross-cultural interactions.

The moral of that story is to aspire to the minimum level of detail required: if people can work through a disaster planning case study well enough with pencil and paper, then there’s no need for virtual reality. 

Conclusion

Games can be an engaging and effective way to enhance workforce training.  However, as with everything, we need to be intentional about how we deploy it in order to realize the benefits.

If your organization is interested in developing game-based training, or dealing with any other learning-related challenges, feel free to contact Sonata Learning for a consultation.