You’ve heard the hype. Learning games are hot… and they may just be the future of learning. We are certainly major advocates of game based learning: we were at DevLearn in October 2012 to launch our Knowledge Guru learning game engine as a product. Despite all the praise learning games are receiving, business decision makers still need to connect the value of learning games to the bottom line. What is the return on investment? Will we see a measured increase in profits – or decrease in operating costs – by using a learning game as part of our training program?
ExactTarget, a global software as a service (SaaS) company, engaged employees, partners, resellers, and clients alike with MobileConnect Guru, a game that coincided with the launch of their newest mobile marketing product. The game had hundreds of players… and the results have been tangible.
ExactTarget has launched quite a few products in recent years, so it was easy to look at the numbers and see how MobileConnect compared to its predecessors. The infographic below has a few highlights from the data:
We strive to provide the latest in technology to our clients – and ExactTarget was ready and willing to be on the cutting edge. They ran with us on the Knowledge Guru… and their results demonstrate just how effective game based learning can be. The next time someone asks you “what’s the ROI of learning games?”, send them to this post.
I am a Roosevelt University graduate program student and I agree that there should be some form of ROI for game based learning that supports the HR objective. It’s easier to measure the number of participants vs. productivity or quiz results vs. lessons learned. There is definitely value in learning games for children and adults however WLP’s should continue to explore new and innovative ways to measure the benefitis.
The key to games is how much tracking they enable. If the backend is well designed, you see all sorts of data on every action performed, play length, score, duration, etc. Way more than completion and quiz grades for an eLearning course. And now, thanks to Tin Can API, all that data can be brought back in to an LMS. Great stuff.