What Barclays needed
The Barclays team, responsible for Information Security, provide a range of engaging learning courses that employees complete annually.
Their goal was to identify two potential risk areas:
- How much knowledge was retained in the months after completing the course
- What knowledge gaps existed within the business
Client considerations
- As the training was optional, it needed to be highly engaging to encourage participation
- The training needed to assess likely behaviours in realistic contexts
- Barclays wanted to assess the degree of confidence learners had in their answers
- The solution needed to identify knowledge gaps in a variety of competencies
Gamified learning solution
The bank chose gamified learning designed by Skillcast to achieve its goal.
The game was designed to be fun and engaging but, most of all, to serve as a valuable tool in the bank's learning and compliance armoury.
Why our approach stood out:
- The ability to assess the player's level of confidence
- Technology delivering the game on the Barclays LMS
- Seamless delivery on mobile, tablet and PC
- Advanced reporting metrics
- Flexibility of use
How this worked for Barclays
Emma-Louise Fern explains how the Barclays Chief Security Office used Intelligent Learning to assess knowledge retention and understand key concepts through gamified learning.
Not got access to YouTube? Watch this video in Wistia
- Objective: Measure & reinforce knowledge of 90k learners at 3 months post-training
- Method: Mandatory course followed up by a personalised knowledge assessment game
- Personalisation: Based on roles, shortening the course to a learner-specific length
- Delivery method: Skillcast SCORM course, including confidence levels
- Sample size: Almost 3k of invitees completed - a broad and substantial sample
- Results: Physical security & resilience showed 98% & 89% retention rates, respectively
- Outcomes: CAP Gemini's rating rose from 1.75 in 2016 to 3.25 by the end of 2019. Barclays were able to design future training to focus specifically on the identified knowledge gaps.
Why the Barclays game worked
Sometimes less is more.
Our research showed that mimicking popular games (throwing dice, board games with questions) have limited appeal. More importantly, these games fail to provide the meaningful data senior learning and compliance professionals need.
Our gamified learning solution was simple, compelling and encouraged competition. It focused on garnering invaluable information about knowledge retention and learning gaps.
- The game consisted of short scenarios and quick-fire questions.
- Learners selected a card that posed a question on each scenario
- Extra points were earned by stating how confident each person is with their response
- Answering incorrectly led to forfeiting a life; with no lives left, the game was over.
- Their scores were ranked against their peers with the chance to retry and improve their score
Why confidence levels are important
It is vital to identify individuals who think that they know everything but actually know very little. This group represent the highest risk of compliance breaches in an organisation.
Analysis of the gamified learning data (including confidence levels) helps compliance professionals to identify these individuals and undertake remedial learning interventions.
Standard assessment tools capture knowledge retention, but there is always a struggle between two conflicting elements:
- Assessment length - You don’t want assessments to be too long
- Learner knowledge - Assessments need the rigour to assess competence accurately
The second issue is resolved by adding a new dimension detailing how confident each learner is in their answer. Those who guess are unlikely to be confident and hence achieve a lower score.
- Correct = 10 points (Confident and correct = 15 points)
- Incorrect = 0 points (Incorrect and confident = minus 5 points)
SCORM-based reporting & metrics
A key feature of Skillcast gamified learning is that it is SCORM based. This means that it can be hosted on any SCORM-compatible Learning Management System.
Wherever it is hosted, our gamified learning courses continue to provide information on confidence levels and peer comparison by benchmarking against average scores.
And it is delivered seamlessly on desktop, tablet or mobile.
One compelling reason for the bank choosing Skillcast was the powerful management information that our gamified learning provides. Questions can be grouped by topic (learning objective) and then broken down by department, manager or geography. This has a number of benefits:
- The learner can see instantly which areas they need to improve
- The business can identify topic areas that represent red-flags
- Efficiently identify weak areas and then deliver relevant adaptive content
- Time spent on learning is reduced
Use cases for our gamified learning
The technology behind Skillcast gamified learning has been designed to ensure it has multi-use flexibility. It can be used in a number of compliance and learning contexts:
- Pre-course diagnostic assessment
Text-heavy modules can be automated to deliver content tailored to learner needs. - Post-course assessments
As a more engaging replacement for post-course assessment. - Continuous learning retention
Assessing knowledge retention at a specified period after course completion. - Campaigns
As time-limited campaigns introducing new topics or checking knowledge retention. - Competency mapping
To identify knowledge gaps across teams, roles or other sectors you define in the reporting
What is gamified learning?
Gamified learning has helped many of our customers to identify strengths, weaknesses and a clear focus for future initiatives. If you'd like to learn more, we have a series of gamification blogs, case studies explaining how we helped Barclays, Société Générale and Royal Mail or and a gaming hub where you can try out one of our themed games.
Skillcast games present your employees with challenging propositions in a realistic context. Learners accept or reject each proposition with a click or swipe, losing lives for each incorrect answer and completing the game within a time limit. They are a fun and engaging learning tool with a serious purpose.
How games improve learning outcomes
- Driving behavioural change
- Boosting knowledge retention
- Improving employee assessments
- Highlighting competency gaps
Isn't it time you added gamified learning to your compliance learning toolkit?
