Developing problem solving skills through gamification
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Problem solving skills are necessary to be able to function in daily life. Every obstacle, difficulty, conundrum or vexation takes the form of a problem your brain is asked to find a solution for. At the most complex level, a problem may ask how to build a telescope powerful enough to see other solar systems. At the most basic level, a problem could just be deciding what you’re going to have for dinner.
In the workplace, advanced problem solving skills are highly desired by employers. Consider the worker who can identify the root cause of a problem, analyse possible fixes, and implement the most effective solution. They’re objectively a great asset to any organisation. This is especially true in a working world that is so heavily siloed by remote and hybrid working. If a worker is the only person in the office on a particular day and something goes wrong, how will they use their problem solving skills to independently fix the situation?
The complexities an individual’s problem solving skills may be called upon for can obviously vary in scale. There will also be a great variance in how capable individuals are when it comes to this kind of work, but can problem solving skills be improved? More pertinently, can problem solving skills in the workplace be improved through gamification and educational games? Can you apply game mechanics to training your existing workforce to be better problem solvers?
Thinking through logic puzzles and brain teasers
Brain teasers and logic puzzles date back throughout human history, with many variations of classic puzzles cropping up in different cultures. They require creative thinking to find solutions. One of the most famous examples of these is the wolf, goat, and cabbage problem. If a farmer buys a wolf, a goat, and a cabbage at the market, but only has enough room in his boat to carry himself and a single one of his purchases across the river on the way home, in what order does he take them across? He needs to be creative to ensure the goat doesn’t eat the cabbage and the wolf doesn’t eat the goat
To solve this puzzle requires the realisation that the farmer can bring things back across the river. He can take the goat across away from the wolf, but he can subsequently take the goat back once the cabbage has crossed. Knowing this creative loophole makes an initially difficult problem easy to solve. Having seen the wolf, goat, and cabbage question, and understanding its moving parts, consider applying the same thinking process to similar problems. Consider a chicken, a fox, and some grain, or a team of four who weigh varying amounts, the weight of their supplies, and the maximum capacity of their canoe.
While the initial problem is difficult to solve, the subsequent problems are much simpler. Because they’ve already been faced, you know the process. Organisations are built on hard and soft processes, so consider your problem solving process as the basis for any corporate training on the subject.
Tap into natural creativity and appetite for challenge to re-engage teams in training
People want to be challenged mentally and exercise their brains. Consider that your workers have a natural appetite to exercise their problem solving skills. The same logic puzzles and brain teasers cropping up throughout human history are testament to this. This hunger for a challenge is the most important psychological engagement lever to pull when gamifying your corporate training to make better problem solvers.
Knowing your organisation’s hard process for problem solving is the first step. Consider if this is already established in writing, or have it set down. A hard process to deal with unexpected problems, listing out what action needs to be performed at what stage lays down a framework around which your teams can apply their creative problem solving skills.
Turn problems into games, encourage teams to play
Once a hard process for problem solving is established as a company approved methodology, it can be gamified in order to train your teams to use it. Practising around a methodology will help them develop their own problem solving skills within its structure. Customising online learning games, such as the Quiz on the Drimify platform, allows you to set out a series of questions relating to a problem your organisation has encountered before. Because it’s all online, accessible on any modern device, and gives you instant feedback, it can be a great tool to assess your teams’ existing problem solving skills and how they would react to previous crises.
Expanding on that initial concept, you could utilise Drimify’s Dynamic Path™ format. This option allows you to create a multilevel, interactive learning pathway, and gives you access to all the games on the Drimify platform to customise. Some levels could take the form of the Quiz, either with multiple choice answers or with open answers, and some levels could be made up of video or text content, elaborating on a particular step or aspect of your organisation’s problem solving process.
The learning pathway could be structured to not only give them a thorough and interactive grounding in your problem solving methods, but you could also use it to expose them to how and why that process was put together. This will allow them to experience trying to solve realistic problems but in a low stakes scenario. It gives them a sandbox in which to engage with complex problems, and practise critical thinking and analysis in order to find solutions.
Easily use gamification to bring out the problem solving potential of your teams
Gamifying problem solving skills as part of your corporate training gives your teams exposure to realistic problem solving in a low stakes learning environment. It can also arm your teams with the necessary framework and methodology to find effective solutions. Every worker is a human being, and while they will all approach problem solving in a different way and yield slightly different results, training them in a hard process ensures consistent, thorough, and professional results.
Repeated simulations and exposure to the types of problems encountered in your industry through educational games will make your employees far better equipped to solve new problems when they arise. It will also equip them to identify similarities between new and old problems. This could help them find efficiencies by being able to utilise old solutions.
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