Using Gamification for the Development of Soft Skills. Skill Generator Assessment Game Case Study

Learning soft-skills is a challenge in current public education system where all the subjects are focused on knowledge and facts. This means that soon-to-be graduate of a VET school will not be sufficiently prepared for a working life. Being at the barrier between adulthood and childhood, gamification is the best solution for introduction of new skills, especially it can profit out off life and work related contexts. So special environment, content and interactions together with game elements create an optimal stage for learning in an easy and fun way. Online learning developers are focused more and more on developing great learning experiences, both to motivate learners and to facilitate the learning process. Some ways to develop great learning experiences are to include interactive content and to use gamification, either for motivating students or for creating a game-like experience. Using gamification for online courses involves using game/play elements and/or using game-design techniques for facilitating learning and motivating the learners. Online learning platforms, such as Moodle, include numerous game elements, such as score and points, challenges, progress bar and leaderboards, which are very helpful in gamifying online courses. Game-design techniques are frequently used to develop interactive content for game-like experiences, content that is then uploaded into the course. On the other hand, a common complaint of many teacher and trainers refers to the fact that soft skills are very difficult to be thought in an online course. When online courses focus on developing soft skills they often use scenario based learning to attain their goals. Combining the two aspects, gamification and scenario-based learning, seemed a good idea for developing a course on soft skills: Skill Generator Assessment Game. In this paper we discuss the strategies and the process we used to develop the course, the gamification elements we used and the learning experience that we created. The project includes both, a traditional online learning part, based on course presentations, and a game-like assessment that aims to create a game-like experience for the learners. The assessment uses interactive content and scenario-based learning to simulate the game experience. Also, gamification elements such as points and leaderboards are used to motivate learners.