Learning awards and rewards - by Dr Naomi Norman
On Thursday night Epic won the ‘best use of mobile learning’ category in the e-learning age industry awards. We won for a numeracy learning program designed on Nintendo DS for the British Army.
Entering the awards was no small feat. We had to submit a justification of 3000 words, including detail of the problem our learning design sought to solve, our innovative approach, our rationale for mobile learning, and the cost benefit to the client. And that wasn’t it! Having been short-listed, we had to do a presentation in front of three judges. At times it felt like it may have been easier to enter and win X-factor or Strictly Come Dancing (and believe me, I am neither a singer nor much of a dancer!)
Nonetheless, putting in the effort on the promise of an award is a satisfying and even enjoyable experience. And scientists have proved this is not just an emotional reaction - it is biological too. The anticipation of some kind of recompense, and then receiving it, releases the feel-good chemical dopamine in the brain. This surge in dopamine helps us to appreciate what we’ve done, so we want to do it again.
This seems to me to be a particularly important finding for learning, because it justifies the place of positive feedback in assessments, scoring in game-play, and, where appropriate, certification. In fact, latest research has found that achieving greater levels of dopamine in the brain may help us to learn even better. But before we all jump on the bandwagon and try to generate as much dopamine as possible in the brains of e-learners by inserting rewards all over the place, I am reminded of a warning once proffered by Jonathan Levy, former Vice President at Harvard Business School Publishing.
One of Levy’s clients, a training manager, persuaded his company that they should give an end-of-year bonus to all employees who completed Harvard online courses. And that year, the client’s staff showed an astonishing completion rate, with record numbers of bonuses received. In addition, training was achieved in less time and for less money and management demonstrated a higher utilization rate of online learning than ever before. It was a big success!
Or was it?
Levy had integrated a tracking system into his courses. This tracking system showed that, in fact, the client’s learners spent only enough time on the online course to scan each page and determine where to click to move on. It seemed likely that very little learning had taken place at all.
There are many lessons to learn from this anecdote. Firstly, be careful what you reward – you may simply get the specific behaviour you reinforced (in this case, course completion rather than learning). Secondly, completion rates alone are a poor measure of training effectiveness. And thirdly, there is much to be said for good tracking being incorporated into learning designs.
As for what we at Epic will learn from having received a trophy for the ‘best use of mobile learning’? Well, in addition to releasing a lot of dopamine on the night, it certainly drives us on to want to understand more about mobile learning. That’s why we are now undertaking an evaluation with the British Army to see what knowledge we can carry forward to future mobile learning solutions. And that’s why we hope to return next year to build on this year’s success in the mobile learning category of the e-learning age awards. Watch this space!
Feel free to comment below with your stories of implementing successful rewards for learning.
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Reply #1 on : Fri December 04, 2009, 10:13:56