by Jonathan Peters, PhD and Monica Cornetti

Sententia Gamification offers three levels of certification for the gamification of learning. Level 1 introduces learners to 30-step, trademarked process for gamifying a learning program. Level 2 fleshes out the process and guides learners through actually gamifying a program. And Level 3 is a full-on design mastermind that takes place once a year (currently).

Meet Irene

Irene was our first learner persona.  She is an mid-career Instructional Designer. Just looking at her, you may have seen  someone like her at a Learning and Development company. She may have look like someone working in your department. It is likely that you and she would have a wonderful professional conversation. It may even be that when people see Irene, they think of you.

What’s interesting about the creation of Irene was the name we assigned her. As Irene “came to life,” Monica decided to name her Irene because the persona, at that stage...

by Jonathan Peters, PhD
Chief Motivation Officer, Sententia Gamification

Recently I read some interesting research on the use of lotteries to change behaviors. While the results of these different programs are significant, people criticized the use of lotteries as manipulative, even when this game mechanic caused people to do helpful things such as save for their futures and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases. 

I will discuss the successful use of lotteries as a game mechanic in a following article and encourage you to consider using lotteries to engage employees and learners, but I thought a pre-amble that hopefully sidesteps the “moral” associations of lotteries would be helpful. 

Elsewhere I’ve argued that what makes a game mechanic “fun” is its appeal to specific (intrinsic) motivators. For instance, Badges appeal to the motivator of Saving (the need to collect). The reason some people like Badges and others don’t care for...