Engagement guru uses segmented polls to teach gamification

What better way to learn gamification techniques than with game-based learning, including live team competition polls?

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Karl Kapp is a learning technology specialist who teaches engagement techniques as a professor, author, speaker, and consultant. He also practices what he preaches.

Karl’s presentations on learning technology are full of characters, mysteries, story, and interaction. In his seminars on gamification and learning, he uses Poll Everywhere segmentation polls to gamify the presentation itself, and pull the audience into the material.

Learning gamification through segmented polling

From the very beginning of Karl’s gamification seminar, the audience is immersed in a mystery and must do their best detective work to solve it.

Karl uses a multiple choice poll to divide the crowd into four teams (segments). He asks them to choose a disguise: red, yellow, blue, or green. From then on, all responses to polls are segmented into the four team colors.

Along the way, the audience receives tips and clues on gamification from characters in the presentation slides. The characters ask questions to see what the audience knows or remembers, and the ‘detectives’ in the audience respond to the characters’ questions via multiple choice polls, such as, "How many types of gamification are there?"

At the end of the presentation, a final segmentation poll is used to find out which detective team solved the mystery. The winning team is then crowned as the top gamification sleuths.

The polling works really well. The audience loves it. At the last seminar, someone came up and told me, 'You’re the only one I’ve seen who uses gamification to teach.'

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The audience gets to be part of the story

Karl said, "The polling works really well. The audience loves it. At the last seminar someone came up and told me, 'You’re the only one I’ve seen who uses gamification to teach it!'"

Karl also loves being able to learn from the responses he receives. He goes through them after each presentation to gauge how effective the presentation was. Karl sums it up, "One team has solved the mystery, and the whole audience has learned about engaging learning, and I get to take home feedback from the answers!"

How can you do this?

Lay out the facts and theories you want to present, and integrate them into a story or game. Allow characters on the slides to present information and ask questions.

At the beginning of the presentation, run a multiple-choice poll that asks audience members to choose a color or team. Run the segmentation feature on all future polls, dividing answers by teams.

At the end of the presentation, run the final segmentation poll, showing the correct responses each team gave during the presentation. Applaud the winners!