We all know what education is and how crucial it is. You cannot overstate the importance of profound education nearly in all spheres of life, especially when it comes to your business and career goals. But did the word “education” ever come to your mind with the image of tons of books, daunting exam days, and strict professors? If yes, then you might want to know that just as everything else in this rapidly changing world, education is taking a new turn – towards edutainment. So what is edutainment?
Edutainment is a form of education that is entertaining but has clear educational goals. It encourages education as well as social cooperation between students and instructors with help of modern entertainment devices and platforms such as TV, PC and computer games, movies and music, interactive learning websites, mobile apps, virtual reality, multimedia, etc. Some of the well-known edutainment examples include The Crash Course YouTube channel, The Mind Explained series, and, of course, Ted-Ed. The benefits of edutainment are obvious. Firstly, audio, video and physical playful learning games promote personalized learning and better comprehension of complex subjects. Secondly, they enhance your creativity and visualization. Finally, edutainment encourages real world exploration, portable learning, and learning freedom, which is of great importance in our highly globalized world. Simply put, edutainment makes learning effective and fun at the same time.
And the trend of introducing digital entertainment elements has been changing not only educational settings. Business, and marketing environment specifically, has been affected by this approach too. Here, it came with gamification. As the name suggests, gamification is the use of gameplay elements in non-gaming settings, such as websites, online communities, or business intranets, to increase user participation. Gamification of activities is one of the most effective ways to achieve the ultimate goals of employers, which are engagement, motivation, commitment, and outcomes. Educating one’s customers is an important step to keep them engaged. For example, if you are a bank that is looking for new clients, you can opt for another way instead of simply creating an add that says why your bank is good and how it differs from others. You may come up with a free online game that challenges the players to establish a financial empire by making proper investment choices. To improve engagement, you may introduce branded messaging and sound advice into the game so that players learn more about your offerings during the game. In this way, you provide education and entertainment and encourage the person to choose your brand.
Apparently, both edutainment and gamification have similar features, which allow them to form an efficient relationship and work together to provide relevant information. Let’s take as an example a company, where they can be applied to meet different goals. First, the business value of gamification is clear: boosting user engagement to influence business results. When users take part and engage with your gamification initiative, they learn the best way of interaction with your brand, services, and products. What’s more important, engagement with game mechanics gives useful data that can help improve marketing campaigns and reach performance goals. That’s about the external direction of the company. What about the use of fun and game elements in its internal setting?
Edutainment will definitely come in handy when providing your employees with additional knowledge. Combined with traditional learning methods, video content, games, or virtual simulations will help educate employees while simultaneously amusing them. That is why 80% of US workers say that game-based learning is more engaging. In its turn, gamification can also be useful in the work-place setting. Let’s not forget that employees are first of all people, and therefore their behavior and motivation too can be influenced positively by gamification. That’s why you might want to know what affects their behavior and performance and how to respond accordingly. You can apply gamification to a whole range of situations where employees need to pursue specific goals or complete certain actions. Game mechanics make an employee’s job more transparent as the goals become clear and simple to reach. In this way, an employee sees their progress in performance, gets instant feedback on completed tasks, and interacts with co-workers through cooperation and competitions.
When implemented correctly and strategically, gamification in the workplace provides you with the information that can enhance business results in the following ways:
- It helps adopt and use learning management tools
- It promotes retention among employees
- It boosts employee knowledge sharing and, hence, service levels
- It improves employee performance and satisfaction
Overall, as previously mentioned, gamification is about evoking one’s intrinsic motivation, that is, the intrinsic motivation of employees, in this case. And as we all know, motivated employees and happy clients directly influence and boost the company’s performance.
At Brame, we fully acknowledge the importance of introducing game elements into users’ experience. In 2018 alone, 81% of respondents in surveys stated that gamified and edutainment activities grow their sense of belonging. With this understanding, we offer unique gamification solutions so that your brand gets noticed and remembered and, most importantly, so that you acquire and build a long-term relationship with customers that are truly interested in your products and services. Our gamification tools will help you raise awareness of your brand through multiple touchpoints with users, engage them and keep them interested, build loyalty between your brand and the user, and collect relevant customer information. Gamification is already changing the whole meaning of digital marketing, so come and join us in this change!
