Game-based training has been applied to education for centuries. The earliest examples of game-based training can be traced back to scenario planning games in military strategy during the Middle Ages. Nowadays game-based training has become a successful training solution for soft skills learning. Although game-based training is less frequently applied to train technical content, recent cognitive research has shown that it significantly enhances the retention of the technical content as well as newly acquired knowledge.
Heute ist Game-Based-Training zu einer erfolgreichen Lernlösung für Soft Skills geworden. Obwohl Game-Based-Training äusserst effektiv in der Vermittlung technischer Inhalte ist, wird es selten dafür verwendet. Besonders die erhöhte Retention des vermittelten Wissens ist ein Kernmerkmal von Game-Based-Training-Lösungen..
Current cognitive science identifies some key strategies on how to maximize knowledge acquisition and retention.
One key learning is that the most durable training requires effort.
But why is that? Why does learning have to be hard and time consuming? Every time you learn something new your brain must change anatomically by creating new neural connections. Your brain stores your learnings, memories and knowledge and each time something new is added it needs to change. This is hard, requires effort and unfortunately does not get easier the older we grow.
Cognitive science however presents us with two key strategies that can support making the learning journey much more effective.
Retrieving your newly acquired knowledge is key to retaining it.
There are three ways that knowledge retrieval can be practiced:
Personal reflection on the retrieved knowledge or recalling the knowledge from memory.
Besides measuring your learning performance testing is one of the most successful ways to make you retrieve and retain knowledge.
Repeated retrieval like repeated personal reflection or testing situations makes your memories more durable.
By transferring newly acquired knowledge in one context enables you to apply that knowledge in a different context. This elaboration helps you truly understand the subject matter and is key to connecting the new teaching to knowledge you already have. There are three ways you can practice elaboration successfully:
There are three ways you can practice elaboration successfully:
Discussions on the newly acquired knowledge with people in the same training allows you to understand the areas you are not sure about and creates a memory and emotions you can connect the knowledge to.
Just try to figure it out, if you make mistakes on the way do not worry as this only improves the effectiveness of learning and retention.
Mix up what you learn, the more you mix up different content and try to apply it to solve a problem the more successfully the knowledge is retained.
The success of the game-based training application is achieved through incorporating the outlined strategies into the training design. Most effective game-based training methods incorporate all strategies:
Besides incorporating the key learning strategies outlined above, game-based training creates, by its playfulness, creating positive emotions that help the participants to achieve the learning goals more easily. It has been observed that in game-based training settings the participants frequently enter the state of “flow” due to the captivating nature of the training. This allows them to maximize the learning effect during the time allocated to the training while enjoying the experience.
Well-designed game-based training creates an opportunity to retain knowledge. Key factors for the high knowledge retention are the fun experience and the creation of positive emotions through incorporating successful cognitive science strategies.
If you are interested in learning more about our game-based training methods, please contact us: contact@in-the-box-consulting.ch
Christian is a certified chemist and naturally a tinkerer. His strength is to initiate strategic change processes and implement them sustainably. Christian is currently training in advanced analytics, Big Data and digital transformation.
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Learning has to be hard and time consuming to be effective. With the game-based training approach, we create experiences and memories that allow us to learn new knowledge over the long term. There are a few tricks, we'd like to share.