This learning module is about adding gamified mechanics and game-based learning to a management training curriculum to increase learner engagement and knowledge retention.
Management Training, Leadership Training, Game-based Learning, Gamification
In 2018, I wrote the curriculum for a six-month-long management training creatively called Management Academy for my current employer. The program has run annually since. Its content and structure have been modified each year based on participant feedback and trending working topics. The core topics within the program are the role of a manager, performance management, developing employees, interviewing, change management, and employee engagement.
Management Academy was originally an instructor-led, classroom-based training. During the 2020 occurrence of the program, we had to switch from classroom to virtual delivery over Zoom. The transition was decently smooth, but the content wasn’t optimized for virtual delivery. For the following year’s program (still virtual), I adapted portions of the content to better take advantage of Zoom’s features, but largely stuck with simple practices like breakout rooms.
Now, as I’m planning for our 2022-2023 program (which will be delivered virtually), I plan to add gamified media elements to increase learner engagement, encourage collaboration between participants, check learner progress throughout the program, and help the lessons stick. This was inspired by the work of James Gee and I will be keeping his 36 learning principles, things that schools can learn from games, in mind as I go. I will also be drawing from Ku-kai Chou’s gamification and behavioral design framework, Octalysis.
I will gamify the program structure, and introduce game-based learning into select workshops. To break down the differences (Findlay, 2016):
My objectives through the introduction of these elements are to:
The primary goal of Management Academy is to improve management competency for current and future people managers. A secondary goal is to encourage collaboration and relationship-building between participants, many of whom have never met and will never meet in person as participants span across the globe.
You will attend workshops, four hours each, across six months. Each workshop will focus on a different management or leadership topic. Within the workshops, your time will be divided between hearing and reviewing presentations from fellow participants, chatting with our senior management team about course concepts, playing games designed around course concepts, and lecture portions from our facilitator. The objectives for each workshop are below.
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Material requirements for participation are a laptop and Microsoft Teams.
Please complete this survey before your first workshop. The purpose of the survey is to assess your current competency around topics covered throughout the workshops so we can measure progress across time.
Your job is to facilitate the program and tie gamified learning elements into it.
The audience consists of people with varied management experience: some are current managers of individuals and teams, and others will become the managers of individuals and teams in the near future. They have varied years of experience. You must also keep in mind that they come from different parts of the world and have different cultural norms and English speaking abilities.
Material requirements are a laptop, Microsoft Teams, and a MeetingPulse license.
Welcome to Management Academy!
Management Academy is designed around a gamified approach where you’ll earn points based on your participation.
During and between workshops, your minimum participation requirements are to:
Beyond the minimum participation requirements, you’ll earn one point for each extra time you perform one of the minimum requirements (e.g. sharing two articles instead of one after a workshop would earn you one point). You may also earn one point each time you:
You’re only competing with yourself in the points system; the number you have at the end of the program will determine what level reward you earn upon graduation:
We’ll depend on the chat feature Microsoft Teams for the knowledge sharing components. Watch the video below to learn more about Teams and how to tag colleagues in a message so you can respond to their comments or include them in comments.
Comment: What separates great managers from average managers?
Update: In this workshop, we learned about the 3 P’s of people management: purpose, people, and process. How will you influence each of these factors to improve your team’s outcomes?
Context: The first 30 minutes of this workshop are introductory. Explaining the gamified structure is one of the first things you’ll do. After that, proceed with the normal workshop one content.
Gamified element: Applying gamification to the program structure as a whole.
Explain the gamified elements of Management Academy (points system, achievement level system). Then, share your screen and do a tour of the Microsoft Teams chat, highlighting how to tag someone in a chat.
Proceed with the workshop one content.
In this workshop, we'll learn a couple frameworks for delivering feedback and play a simulation game to help you get comfortable delivering feedback under each of the models.
For a manager, giving feedback - both when things are going well and when they aren't - is one of the most fundamental aspects of the job.
Think of the best feedback you've ever received. Why was it so meaningful? Chances are, the feedback inspired you to change your behavior, which resulted in your life getting better. At its best, feedback transforms people in ways they're proud of.
The two feedback frameworks we'll focus on are:
AID (Action - Impact - Do): This is a task-oriented feedback model to use when you make an on-the-spot observation about an employee's behavior. It happens quickly and is designed as an announcement that either nudges the person's behavior back on track or encourages them to do more of it in the future. This is the easiest type of feedback to give because it's focused on the what rather than the who, so it feels less personal. AID feedback is most effective when the action performed is still fresh in your team member's memory, so share it as soon as you can. Unless the task is significant, like a high-stakes presentation, dropping a note via email or chat within the day can work just as well as giving the feedback face-to-face.
1-2-1 (Motivation - Development - Actions): While some feedback is best given on the spot, some feedback is better delivered more formally in a 1-2-1 with your team member. That's where the 1-2-1 model comes in. The 1-2-1 model is most useful for behavior-based feedback. The feedback should feel as if you zoom out and look at many examples of task-specific feedback you've given someone, and then look for themes. Those themes are what you're giving feedback on.
Let’s practice giving feedback in an online simulator under each of these models. You have 10 minutes to work your way through. Instructions are provided on the second screen. Access the simulator here.
Comment: Looking back on your career so far, who has been your most influential coach and why were they so effective?
Update: Think of the different personalities and working styles of your direct reports. Maintaining confidentiality, describe one of their personality types under the Insights Discovery model and how you will adapt your coaching and feedback delivery to meet their needs.
Context: In this workshop, participants will learn about two feedback models (AID and 1-2-1), having difficult conversations, and performance improvement plans.
Gamified element: A feedback scenario game designed in Articulate Rise.
After introducing both of the feedback models, send learners the link to the Articulate Rise feedback scenario game. Give them 10 minutes to work through the scenarios.
After the game is over, put participants in breakout rooms and send out additional scenarios for them to practice person-to-person under each of the models.
Our third workshop focuses on helping team members grow. We'll learn an easy framework for helping team members develop optimally, and we'll play a short sorting game to help you get a feel for the framework.
One of the most satisfying parts of being a manager is helping your team members develop professionally. It's also one of the most important parts of management. Employees are motivated to do great work under managers who care about their development and give opportunities for learning and growth.
A framework we use to ensure employees are learning optimally is the 70/20/10 Model for Development. It holds that individuals obtain 70 percent of their knowledge from job-related experiences, 20 percent from interactions with others, and 10 percent from formal learning events.
To test your understanding of what development opportunities fit into each of the 70/20/10 experiences, let’s play a sorting game. You have 5 minutes to play. If you don’t get all opportunities sorted the first time around, please retry until you do! Access the game here.
Comment: Why is personal development planning often forgotten about?
Update: Consider the opportunities you’ve had for your own personal development. Where did they fit under the 70/20/10 model? Does reflecting on this inspire you to incorporate any new development opportunities into your personal development plan?
Context: In this workshop, participants learn about the importance of personal development planning, how to frame development under the 70/20/10 model, and a model for coaching called GROW (goal, reality, options, will).
Gamified element: A sorting game to help participants understand the 70/20/10 model designed in Articulate Rise.
When initially introducing the 70/20/10 model, do not elaborate on specific learning activities that fall under each learning experience (formal learning, social learning, and on-the-job learning).
After introducing the model, send the link to the Articulate Rise sorting activity through the Zoom chat. Explain that the sorting game will introduce them to what learning activities fit into each of the 70/20/10 experiences. Give them 5 minutes to complete the game. Then proceed with the remainder of the 70/20/10 content.
Before we start the regular portion of our workshop, we’re going to play a content review game on the key concepts we’ve covered in the first three workshops. It serves two purposes: to remind you of what we've learned so far, and to bring up concepts again so we can have brief discussion arounds them and hopefully help them stick a bit more!
Click here to join the game (please note I don't currently have a license for this program and therefore am not able to add more than five questions to the game).
You’ll be prompted to enter your name when you join. This is so we can keep track of our leaderboard. Then, you'll answer one multiple choice question at a time. Your facilitator will have visibility to the results after each question and will elaborate on the correct answers as needed. After the final question, we'll take a look at the leaderboard to see who won. Our top three scorers will earn a free lunch.
Comment: What one concept or model we’ve learned so far has stuck with you most? Why did it resonate so well?
Update: Please share how you’ve put at least one of the concepts or models we’ve learned so far into practice with a team member and how it went. Ensure confidentiality of the team member in your update; fictionalize details of the situation as needed.
Context: This workshop is about interviewing, unconscious bias, and onboarding. As it falls halfway through the program, we’ll use it as an opportunity to check how much knowledge participants have retained.
Gamified element: A content review game designed in MeetingPulse.
After introducing the review game, you’ll need to facilitate it in MeetingPulse.
Send the link through the Zoom chat when you’re ready to begin. Then, open the meeting where all of the questions are pre-loaded. Open the questions one by one. After each question, you’ll quickly be able to check for understanding by seeing the number of learners who answered the question correctly. Provide more information about the concept/framework after any questions that had low numbers of correct responses.
Show the leaderboard midway through the game, and again at the end. Suggest that for anyone who struggled to remember the information, they could go back to the previous topics and do another comment or update to earn more program points and refresh their memories.
Proceed with the regular portion of the workshop.
A large portion of this workshop focuses on unconscious bias and the role it can play in the hiring process. Unconscious biases are social stereotypes about certain groups of people that we form outside of our conscious awareness.
Your unconscious bias can lead you astray, though - it can affect the way we recruit people, make hiring decisions, give job assignments, give people development opportunities, listen to people's ideas and suggestions, make promotional choices, give performance reviews, and treat customers.
In the hiring process, unconscious bias can introduce unintentional discrimination and result in poor decision making. It can cause us to lose the competitive advantage diversity offers, limit innovation from collaboration, create favoritism, and make it more difficult for marginalized groups to succeed.
Recognizing your own biases is an important step in addressing them. Project Implicit offers a number of tests looking to determine your evaluation of some concept, and whether your evaluation is positive or negative. Your results can help you become aware of your own biases. Test topics include sexuality, race, religion, and weight. You will not be asked to share your results with anybody, but they are critically important for you to be aware of to overcome your unconscious biases.
You have 20 minutes. Click here to access the tests.
Comment: What one thing will you commit to doing to overcome your unconscious bias?
Update: We learned about seven types of bias: affinity bias, halo effect, perception bias, confirmation bias, group think, labeling bias, and selective attention bias. Think of a time you acted as a result of one of these biases. What did that look like, and how have you grown from that experience?
Context: This workshop is about interviewing, unconscious bias, and onboarding.
Gamified element: Learners will take their choice of tests from Project Implicit, a non-profit committed to advancing scientific knowledge about stereotypes, prejudice, and other group-based biases. While the tests aren’t presented as games, they have game mechanics like unpredictability, active learning, semiotic principle, levels, and time pressure.
After presenting the unconscious bias portion of the workshop, send the link to the Project Implicit tests (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html) through the Zoom chat. Then, give participants 20 minutes to complete a test.
After 20 minutes, do not ask anybody their test results; these are private. Proceed with the remainder of the advice for overcoming unconscious bias.
Welcome to your final Management Academy workshop! We’ve covered a lot of information and it feels like so long ago that we began our program. Some of the early concepts might feel like distant memories, so to bring them back to life, we’re going to play Management Academy Jeopardy.
To start the game, somebody will pick a category and dollar amount. The first person to raise their hand will be called on to answer the question. If they get the question correct, they earn that dollar amount and pick the next question. If they answer incorrectly, they lose that dollar amount. Whoever has the most money at the end of the game is our winner!
After completing the Jeopardy game, we'll take a look at our points leaderboard to see what prize each of you qualified for based on your participation throughout the program.
Comment: What is your biggest takeaway from Management Academy?
Update: Please share how you plan to change something related to your management style based on what we learned throughout our six workshops. Pull from any of the concepts or methods.
Context: This final workshop focuses on employee engagement.
Gamified element: Prior to the employee engagement content, learners will compete in a Jeopardy-style content review game covering content from workshops 1-5.
You’ll open this workshop by running a Jeopardy-style review game. You will need to facilitate and keep score. The game board will hide each question after it has been clicked on.
Please add additional information after as many of the questions are answered as possible. For example, you could elaborate on the respondent’s answer, or explain why it was a strong or incorrect answer.
When about half of the questions have been answered, announce the current leaderboard. At the end, announce the top 3 scorers.
The success of this program will be measured in two ways: through participant feedback (they will receive a pulse check after each workshop and more formal surveys pre- and post-program), and through pre- and post-program 360 degree evaluations seeking to understand changes in management approach across the duration of the program according to participants' team members and own managers.
Participant pulse checks will be administered through Peakon, and formal surveys will be administered in SurveyMonkey. 360 Degree evaluations will be performed using a program called my360plus. A brochure for my360 plus is below.
Post-program follow-up is critical as well; not just at the very end of the program, but several months out. At that point, participants will have a clear idea of what course concepts influenced their behavior as managers and which weren't as useful to them. We'll use that information to make improvements for the following year's program.
Chou, Y. (2021, March 8). Octalysis: Complete gamification framework - Yu-kai Chou. Yu-Kai Chou: Gamification & Behavioral Design. https://yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysis-complete-gamification-framework/
Findlay, J. (2020, July 29). Game-based learning vs. gamification: Do You Know the Difference? Training Industry. https://trainingindustry.com/articles/learning-technologies/game-based-learning-vs-gamification-do-you-know-the-difference/
Introduction to Microsoft Teams. (2022, January 18). [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoWHXrmIszg