How to make learning more fun? Online gamification workshop by Oleg Koschinsky

You cannot teach games without playing them! So, it's no wonder our gamification training was almost entirely a game. This way, we helped participants understand just how exciting and engaging an online learning format can be.

With the underlying tone set by the presenter Oleg Koschinsky, the Quiz game and its author Polina Guzova became a special highlight of the event.

The distinctive feature of the workshop was that we set aside the theoretical background and focused mainly on practical activities that served as the foundation for the training.

Hosted by Oleg Koschinsky and guest speaker Polina Guzova

Mission: Run an interactive online training session to teach participants to gamify training events as effectively as expected, with a clear understanding of the goals and ways to achieve them.

Background:
How to make learning more fun? The ManGO! Games team believes that nothing brings more fun than gamification. In an attempt to teach this knowledge to our colleagues, we came up with the idea of running an online gamification workshop.

Solution:
We chose an online workshop as the most practice-oriented training format. Apart from that, we invited a real master of game-making to be our guest speaker.

Our invited expert was Polina Guzova, the ideological inspirer and creator of the project for organizing Zbyshek Quiz intellectual games. The facilitating role, meanwhile, was played by ManGO's Development Director and gamification innovator, Oleg Koschinsky. One important part of the workshop was a team game session designed to enhance participants' gamification skills and ability to apply those in the future.

The tools we used to conduct the event were already familiar to our regular participants:

• Zoom videoconferencing platform as the main platform for the workshop.
• Surveygizmo survey system.
• WhatsApp chat for support and technical assistance.

Still, there were some new tools as well, including:

• YouTube.
• Google Docs.

The workshop covered the following topics:

• Game thinking.
• Gaming practices.
• The principle of technique selection.
• Participant behavior patterning.
• Checklist for future practical application.

The event incorporated a variety of hands-on activities, even more than our previous ones. The workshop presented the participants with useful techniques, game examples, and lots of practical exercises.

This way, it sufficiently demonstrated the interactive and agile potential of online communication.

Following the workshop, the participants had a chance to review the results and get some valuable tips and advice from the hosts.

Our regular online meetings have become something of a habit and an expectation for the participants. Still, there are so many topics our online hangout hasn't yet practiced or discussed.

Among the topics touched upon were back-to-office stress management, adjustment to the new reality, leadership, time management, negotiation, remote team-building, etc. We strongly believe that our guests will learn and master many other things together with ManGO! Games.