How to Integrate Gamification into Your LMS Platform

Imagine if you had to choose between playing your favorite game and sitting through mandatory compliance training. We could probably guess which one you’d pick. (And no, we’re not psychic.)

Most employee training programs fill a gap – you need resources on hand to train employees, but you don’t have the time to make them engaging. 

However, by integrating gamification into your learning management system (LMS), you can improve the quality of your employee training and realize massive business gains.

In this article, we’ll show you everything you need to know about LMS gamification. 

How do LMSs integrate gamification?

Because the benefits of leveraging gamification in learning have become clearer, some pioneering learning management systems have led the way in bringing gamification into their systems, namely Cornerstone OnDemand, Blackboard, and Canvas.

Cornerstone OnDemand added badges and points to its platform back in 2014. These virtual rewards provided social motivation and recognition for users who completed training modules, courses, and other assigned activities. 

Blackboard, another early experimenter, rolled out digital badges and a tangible rewards catalog in 2015. Learners accrued points for tasks like participating in discussions, taking quizzes, and accessing certain content areas. They could then redeem points in an internal company store for prizes like gift cards. Learner surveys indicated that the incentives significantly boosted their motivation to learn.

Meanwhile, Canvas launched its gamification tool in 2016 to allow clients to build their own reward systems. This allows instructors to customize badges, leaderboards, levels, and virtual currencies for specific goals.

Today, business leaders continue to find new ways to encourage gamification across their organizations – and it’s well worth the effort! Let’s dig into some of the benefits of gamification next.

The benefits of LMS gamification

Research shows that, when implemented well, gamification can yield impressive benefits for online learning via LMS platforms. 

Perhaps the most significant advantage is increased user motivation. Gamification elements tap into the brain’s reward pathways and enhance engagement by appealing to our innate desires for achievement, status, and self-expression.

A study from the National Library of Medicine even found that adding gamification to interactive online modules enhanced learning outcomes and instructional efficiency, as well as student engagement and enjoyment.

Gamification also fosters healthy competition that can strengthen learning. For example, classic gamification elements like leaderboards and public recognition for top performers engage social and competitive instincts that inspire learners to put in extra effort.

Additionally, a gamified LMS can build stronger communities as learners support and learn from each other. Game formats like collaborative quests, team leaderboards, and social sharing cultivate positive interaction and peer learning, which makes implementing gamification worth the investment.

How to start gamifying your LMS

So, how can business leaders begin incorporating gamification into their training content? Well, if you’re using an LMS or creating videos with an interactive platform like Colossyan, then you’re already halfway there.

Let’s go over some gamification elements you can put in place to realize your online training courses’ full potential:

Incentivize learning with points and badges

One of the simplest ways to introduce gamification into your corporate training is by adding game design elements, like points and badges, to your LMS. These virtual rewards keep learners engaged by allowing them to track their progress.

To set this up, first decide how learners will earn points. Will they need to complete a lesson, pass a quiz, or finish a full course? 

Once you’ve figured out how your point system will work, you’ll then want to design digital badges at different levels that will automatically unlock as learners reach certain point thresholds. For example, you might offer a bronze badge at 500 points and silver at 1,000. 

Be sure to display the current amount of points and unlocked badges on your earners’ profiles so they can track their achievements and compare them with their peers. This small change can transform dull training courses into engaging challenges.

Add interactive quizzes to your content

Gamification isn’t just about rewards – it’s also about making the learning process more engaging and user-friendly. You can do this by incorporating interactive elements into your online courses. 

For example, adding multiple-choice knowledge checks throughout your content modules can help break up your content and check learner understanding along the way. 

Video platforms like Colossyan allow you to create videos with these interactive quizzes in scene, and then transfer these videos to your LMS via SCORM export. 

Adding these types of game design elements to your LMS will make your learning program feel more like a video game than a mandatory training program.

Foster competition with leaderboards

Leaderboards are another classic gamification strategy for motivating employees through friendly competition. We like to call this “social learning” because it turns your learning environment into more of a social experience than a traditional learning and development program.

Here’s how you can set this up: In your LMS dashboard, create a public leaderboard to showcase the top point-earners or those who’ve achieved the most badges. You can also create smaller leaderboards at the department or team level. These leaderboards encourage learners to check in more often and strive to improve their rankings.

Be sure to incentivize participation, not perfection. Doing so will result in a much better learner experience in the long term because it will allow users to focus on their own learning paths (and get rid of any unnecessary performance anxiety).

Incorporate branching scenarios 

Branching scenarios – also known as the “choose your own adventure” style of content – are a great way to create learning experiences based on real-life scenarios. 

Although some LMS tools do support branching, creating branching videos in Colossyan is easier and takes a fraction of the time. 

In Colossyan, you can design an interaction between avatars that ends in a decision. From there, you can prompt your viewer to choose a course of action, which they will then watch play out, depending on their decision. 

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Not only are branching scenarios more engaging than a traditional video, but they also provide a place for your viewers to practice their decision-making skills in a low-risk learning environment. 

Use cases best suited for LMS gamification 

Now that we’ve shown you how to get started with your own gamified LMS, let’s get into the nitty-gritty of when you might add gamified elements to your learning platform.

The following examples will dive deeper into how gamification can enhance learning across common business functions. You can use these as starting points to brainstorm ideas and then tailor them to your unique needs. 

Also read: What Is eLearning Gamification? 3 Key Tips for Success

Compliance training

Compliance training is an area that’s well-suited for gamified learning. (It’s not exactly the most exciting subject, after all.)

With a gamified training program, employees could receive one point for every compliance module they complete in the LMS. 

Entire departments could also compete in an ongoing “compliance cup” challenge, where the company would celebrate the first team to achieve a target completion rate of 90%. Making compliance training into a friendly competition by leveraging points, badges, and interdepartmental challenges could significantly boost learner engagement and knowledge retention.

Employee onboarding 

The onboarding process for new hires is another prime opportunity to bring your LMS to the next level through gamification. With a gamified LMS, new employees might earn five points simply by completing their very first day of training and orientation and an additional three points for finishing their second day. 

This structure also incentivizes completing onboarding content. Furthermore, departments might earn a single point each time one of their team members helps an onboarding buddy, which could create a healthy competition to be the most welcoming employee in a department or team. 

Soft skills training

When it comes to incorporating gamification into your soft skills learning initiatives, interactive weekly challenges are a great template to use. 

A “communication challenge” could provide employees with hypothetical speaking or writing prompts to respond to through the LMS. Their peers would then grade each submission’s quality and clarity, as well as the demonstrated empathy, and award up to five points and the “Voice of the Company” badge to the top entries.

Not only would this get the entire team invested in the training, but it also makes an otherwise dull type of learning experience more interesting.

Customer service training

As far as gamifying your customer service training goes, simulated situations in your LMS could present employees with realistic customer scenarios and track their responses to determine if they’re following best practices.

Employees could receive points on a scale of one to five depending on how well they handle issues. This type of training is great for branching, as your customer service representatives can practice their customer interactions before they enter the real world. 

Sales training

For sales training, roleplaying scenarios are a classic example of gamified learning that can encourage active participation while also facilitating skill acquisition. 

When practicing their skills through simulated sales calls or client meetings, your sales reps could earn between one and five points for handling common objections, depending on how well they perform and the objections’ difficulty. 

Teams could also compete in periodic “Sales Sprints,” where the first to achieve their quarterly targets as a unit could earn a reward like an all-expenses-paid lunch outing. Additionally, public leaderboards could track top individual performers, who could be rewarded with extra client prospects, box seats at a popular sporting event, or a greater end-of-year bonus.

How to keep your gamified content relevant long term

While leaderboards and badges can initially boost excitement for learning modules, what do you do when the novelty wears off?

To prevent your gamified content from going stale, it’s important to plan for your learning program’s continuous evolution and refinement. Employees’ needs and interests will change as they take on new roles, so the learning experience needs to adapt accordingly.

Here are a few strategies you can use to maintain long-term user engagement with gamification in the workplace:

Create custom video content

One effective way to maintain long-term engagement is by creating custom video modules for your gamified training program. Instructional videos can be a highly engaging medium for learners and are great for gamified learning programs.

The easiest way to create video content is by leveraging AI to do so. AI video platforms like Colossyan allow you to easily create engaging text-to-speech videos by leveraging AI presenters. 

AI can help protect your long-term investment in gamified content by making it easier to update your content. Instead of having to reshoot your video footage when your material changes, simply update your avatar’s script and regenerate your video. That’s it!  

Rotate challenges regularly

Another best practice is to avoid reusing the same point-earning activities, time-based sprints, or team competitions indefinitely. You should introduce fresh challenges every few months that encourage exploring different areas of the LMS. 

Personalize where possible

You should also leverage user data to tailor content recommendations, automatically enroll individuals in relevant challenges, or create personalized learning paths. 

Ultimately, gamification works best when you tailor content for your employees rather than providing only a one-size-fits-all approach. Tap into AI’s capabilities as well to more efficiently enhance personalization.

Create gamified learning content at scale with Colossyan

You may think that you don’t have the time, budget, or bandwidth to create a gamification system for your employees. 

But with interactive video platforms like Colossyan, you can use AI to create gamified content for a fraction of the cost and effort. 

With branching scenarios and multiple choice quizzes, Colossyan gives you the tools you need to write, produce, and publish gamified training videos, which you can then embed within your LMS via SCORM export. 

‍Try Colossyan for free today. Or, book a demo with our team of experts to learn more.