Game-based learning platform for corporate training

In the context of a video game, serious games are the result of the use of a game-based methodology in a video game format. Serious games through video games create real situations in a virtual world so skills can be trained in a zero risk and secure environment.

The use of serious games in corporate training is increasingly focused on soft skills training. Soft skills have to be practiced in order to improve or be developed; there is no way of learning soft skills if they are not practiced.

Serious games ensures skills learning because students are able to put skills into practice and learning from their own situations, decisions, and mistakes. Improving soft skills through a serious game is much more effective than just reading a manual.

Readers learn the techniques but do not actually acquire the skill itself. Involving students into a serious game to develop their soft skills while overcoming different game levels, ensures learning and motivation thanks to the game context. In short, the student learns the soft skill proposed by practicing and improving in the serious game, so at the end of the course he will be able to put the soft skill acquired into practice in a real situation.

Gamification, which has become a favored buzz word, is being introduced in different areas and ways by companies. Gamification has become an important element in corporate training as a way deployed by instructors to increase participant motivation during the learning process.

Gamification training, in brief, makes the learning process more motivating and engaging. However, the use of gamification has nothing to do with the appearance and structure of the course. Gamified learning cannot solve itself poor learning content, such as the use of non-interactive PowerPoint formats, then the benefits of gamification elements are wasted and have little impact on the ability of students to learn.

Soft skills are personal attributes which enable effective individual interactions and, accordingly, enhance career development and job performance. The use of gamification in training is especially interesting when talking about soft skills, because of the way they are developed and learnt.

That is because soft skills have to be practiced in order to be learned. In traditional instructor-led training, the instructor would have participants engage in role play and other activities that bring up the techniques of gamification so as to practice and learn soft skills. With the advent of online gamified learning, students are able to do the same in a virtual world unharnessed by physical limitations like a classroom.