There is a part of the new age learning and teaching process that revolves around game mechanics and game design techniques. This is called Gamification. The intention behind it is to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals. It taps into the basic human desire of status and achievement.
I have been studying up on it for the past few weeks. It is a powerful method that is being used by organizations around the planet in helping people achieve everything from learning a new languages, follow process, increase efficiency and teamwork or even on-board new employees. That is not the end of it though.
The same technique can also be used to engage customers, promote desirable software usage behavior (websites, applications and games all fall under this category) and even supplement, and sometimes replace, conventional classroom learning.
There are constituents of Gamification that would hold true in case of parenting or leadership too. One of those constituents are what are called Activity Loops. They are
used to encourage a user along a desired path of activity.
Activity loops in a gamified system are of 2 types:
- Engagement Loops
- Progression Loops
Engagement loops encourage a person to perform in the form of an accomplishment. The feedback, in terms of the accomplishment, then becomes the motivator and encourages people to take their performance to an even higher level.
Progression loops allows for the participant to move in multiple smaller progressive steps instead of one big leap which might overwhelming. Each sub-accomplishment allows for "rest" in between to set the player for a bigger/ harder fight in the next stage.
Leadership, or parenting, also expects us to provide external motivation whenever required. By following rules of gamification, we can follow a process that is capturing people's imagination around the world and gaining a lot of momentum.
Let us play the game in all its glory and keep improving with our accomplishments.
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