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The 5 elements of gamification (FRISC) and how to apply them to real-world learning

Humans have long used games to promote learning. Games allow learners to practice applying knowledge and to build skills in a way that’s both low stakes and fun, both of which encourage participation and promote a mentally relaxed state that’s conducive to learning.

Gamification in education

In school settings, past generations used classroom games (such as spelling bees, category bingo, hang man, and boys-against-the-girls quiz competitions) to make repeated practice fun. “Quiet time” activities designed for individual play included teacher-created word search, crossword puzzle, and simple art projects (such as geometry-based drawing).

At home, parents purchased games for their children that were either designed to drive the acquisition of specific educational topics (such as geography flash cards and the Authors card game) or that were designed to drive basic knowledge and skills, such as Cootie (counting, color recall, manual dexterity, turn-taking) and the humble deck of cards (manual dexterity, symbol differentiation, pattern matching, memorization, rule following, and basic arithmetic).

Gamification in training

Awhile back, academics realized the let’s-make-learning-fun-with-games approach could be used on adult learners in corporate settings to good advantage.  And, of course, they’re right. The principles behind gaming—providing learners with engaging, low-stakes ways to practice and experiment with facts, concepts, and skills—apply to all human beings, not just children.

The bad news: Creating sophisticated, truly engaging games that drive the acquisition of learning objectives is a bit harder than most of us realize, and when we get it wrong, we risk alienating our learners.

The good news: Sophisticated gamification isn’t necessary or even appropriate for every training scenario.  And if we do determine that gamification is a good fit, if we understand the gamification principles outlined in this article we can apply them incrementally to maximize the benefits of gamification and still execute within our timeline, budget, and staffing constraints.

When to gamify….and when not to gamify

Gamification drives engagement.  So if engagement is your problem, gamification may be your answer.

On the other hand, if engagement isn’t your problem, gamification can’t significantly improve your instruction. Specifically, no matter how good our gamification techniques are, gamification can’t fix any of the following common issues:

  1. Learning objectives that are poorly defined or missing altogether.
  2. Poor quality content such as text that’s poorly written or that doesn’t follow an outline, video accompanied by distracting background music, or images that don’t contain callouts.
  3. Content that’s delivered in the wrong format (in the form of video instead of text, for example).
  4. Content that’s distributed ineffectively (e.g., content unaccompanied by a table of contents or, for digitally delivered materials, content that doesn’t follow basic UX guidelines).

If your instructional materials are characterized by any of the above deficits, skip gamification for now and focus instead on improving the quality of your materials. You might also want to skip gamification if:

  1. You have a tight timeline. Sophisticated gamification strategies are often time-consuming to design and execute, and figuring out how to make activities “fun” can distract us from what’s far more important: making sure we’re driving the right competencies in the right way.
  2. Your subject, your audience, or both are no-nonsense.  Games are a harder sell for critical or ultra-serious topics (think medicine), as well as for self-motivated audiences who have very little time to spare (such as executives).
  3. You suspect that a significant percentage of your audience isn’t on board with a gamified approach. No matter how engaging you believe your gamified activities are, some learners will likely disagree. Spending a ton of time and effort creating gamified activities that half of your audience dislikes or skips misses the whole point of engagement.

TIP: Never rely on self-reported learner feedback to assess gamification effectiveness. In this day and age, most employees realize:  a) There’s no such thing as an anonymous survey; b) Honest feedback is rarely appreciated or followed up on; and c) Complaining can be a career limiting move. So it’s not uncommon for corporate employees to leave positive survey feedback that doesn’t align with their actual reactions to gamified training.  As captive audiences, learners may feel that gamified assessments are childish, confusing, and take longer to complete than a simple quiz—but are loathe to express these sentiments publicly.

The 5 elements of gamification (FRISC)

Simple gamification is relatively straightforward; in fact, the simplest form of all is the standard quiz or test.  So in all likelihood, if you’re an instructional designer you’ve been applying basic gamification strategies without even realizing it! 

However, it’s the more elaborate gamification strategies that most people think of when they hear the term “gamification.”  

Regardless of the sophistication level, all gamified activities apply the same 5 elements: FEEDBACK, RULES, INTERACTION, STORY, and COMPETITION (FRISC for short). 

All five FRISC elements can be applied to live (synchronous virtual or face-to-face) or canned (asynchronous) activities targeted for individual learners (single player experiences), multiple learners (multiple player experiences), or teams (group experiences).

#1: FEEDBACK helps learners gauge their performance and take corrective action as necessary.

Feedback enables learners to pivot mid-activity and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t work.  Feedback most often takes one or more of these forms:

  1. An indication of whether an answer or other action is correct or incorrect (in text, audio, visual, or interactive form).
  2. A clue or hint designed to help learners complete the next action with greater accuracy.
  3. The actual correct answer, with or without an explanation of why the correct answer is correct.
  4. Branching scenarios, although these can be challenging and time-consuming to construct effectively.
  5. A running score, often accompanied by percent completed.
  6. A final score or grade.

#2: RULES provide guardrails that add pressure and excitement.

Rules common to most gamified activities include:

  1. Instructions (what learners should expect/how they should respond)
  2. A countdown timer
  3. A limited number of tries (lives)

#3: INTERACTION differentiates the gamified experience from passive consumption.

The value of gamification is that it requires and rewards audience participation with the instructional materials, participants, or both.  So, to the extent that we build in ways for our learners to do something—to click a button, drag an image, type an answer, rearrange the steps of a process, or perform a task—we’re increasing participation appeal.  The trick here is to make participation as straightforward and meaningful as possible.

#4: STORY provides context for the gamified experience.

Common examples of gamification stories include:

  1. Ask learners questions and assess their answers. This type of gamified activity is a standard quiz or test. The story here is a straightforward one, and it works best for driving recall of (and assessing) facts.
  2. Give learners a real-life, mocked-up, or fantastical scenario (aka use case, aka word problem) and: a) ask learners to explain how they would handle the scenario in theory and assess their explanations; or b) ask learners to step through the scenario and assess the performance of each individual step; or c) ask learners to perform the scenario and assess their performance of the task as an integrated whole. Executed well, scenarios are an extremely effective use of gamification/

#5: COMPETITION motivates learners and enables them to compare their performance to their peers’.

Strategies to communicate peer performance include:

  1. Allowing learners to view the performances of all players (for live activities)
  2. A leader board (for canned activities)
  3. Allowing learners to compare the results of performance to their previous attempts or to an industry standard (individual-only activities)

The bottom line (TLDR)

Gamification isn’t a one-size-fits-all proposition. In fact, its adaptability is one of the reasons it’s stood the test of time, from antiquity right up to the present.

Gamification strategies fall on a spectrum and range from easily achievable (those applied to standard quizzes and tests) to challenging scenario-based interactives and group games all the way to blue-sky arcade-level experiences.

The range of gamified strategies is great news, because it means we can apply the elements of gamification to our instructional materials in a way that makes sense for our audience and project constraints. 

Keep in mind, though, that for most of us (now as in the past) gamification works best as a dessert, not as the main course.  In other words, we shouldn’t expect gamification to do the heavy lifting. We should pursue gamification as a welcome addition to our material only after our learning objectives and content are as solid as we can make them.

What’s YOUR take?

Do you employ gamification beyond standard quizzes and tests?  How useful have you found your efforts in terms of engagement?  In terms of applied knowledge and skills? Overall, what return on investment is your organization seeing from gamification? Please considering sharing your experiences in the comment box below.

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