A digital escape game to train employees: how to adapt this format to your training challenges?

Innovative and fun formats are always a hit with learners on a digital learning platform. In any case, this is what we notice on our client platforms. The more immersive and engaging a format is, the more popular it is. 

We wanted to come back to the initiative of SQLI, a European digital services group with 2,200 employees, which proposed a very original animation on its training platform… A digital Escape Game to raise awareness about recruitment and integration of people with disabilities! In this Escape Game, the situations are reversed: each level of the Escape Game takes the learner to a world where people suffering from attention deficit disorders, autism or visual impairment are in the majority. It’s up to the learner to adapt!

These initiatives are highly recommended to boost the engagement of your learners and this is confirmed when we know that SQLI observed a 280% increase in connections on the platform the week the course was published. So, how do you get hold of this magic recipe that works every time?

 

• Identify a fun and engaging format

Learning without noticing it, isn’t it a dream? But it is possible when you learn through an entertaining format. Alexis Guillotin, Group Development and Training Manager at SQLI, testifies:

“We noticed the great success of a fun format among our teams: the digital Escape Game! It allows you to learn without realizing it, by solving riddles to move on to the next level! So we reused our existing initial content, bringing it into this new format to raise awareness among our employees while keeping the gamification aspect.”

Thus, and we have been certain of this since the creation of Coorpacademy, to make learning more impactful and make training a long-term success, the quality and originality of content is crucial.

 

2 ) Define a theme 

Cluedo, Babel Forum, police investigation… The Escape Game can take place through a multitude of different themes, it’s up to you to imagine a scenario and an adequate universe, and which will allow you to rely on it to develop the desired skills.

Of course, you are not alone! Our educational team is there to co-construct the course and imagine together the form that the Escape Game could take.

 

3) Adapt the theme to your training objective

The effectiveness of your Escape game is certainly based on the educational mechanisms linked to its fun aspect, but you must not lose sight of your objective: to train on a particular subject or skill.

In the case of the Escape game designed by SQLI, the objective was to show how the five disabilities listed (essentially non-visible disabilities) impact the daily lives and therefore the work of the people concerned. This digital Escape game was designed as part of the European Week for the Employment of People with Disabilities (EWPD), and was used to raise awareness about the recruitment and integration of people with disabilities. The pitch was as follows: “Travel aboard a ship in other dimensions where the disabilities you know are mostly shared. Practice with our simulation module to better understand the daily consequences of each of these disorders and diseases.”

 

4) The icing on the cake: an excellent communication strategy

To make your digital Escape game a real success, it is essential to promote it to your learners. To do this, there’s nothing better than to make the event a success! You can plan an event to promote the course and think about an appropriate communication plan. We recommend that you send a teasing email to your learners one week before the launch, followed by follow-up emails throughout the course. Finally, a summary email with all the steps and solutions to the Escape game puzzles, to encourage employees to finish or redo the game at their leisure.

 

 

Whether you already have a theme in mind, or a subject on which you wish to develop a course… unlike any other, we are here to guide you. The co-production of your custom Escape Game can be done in as little as 3 months for a single level Escape Game! Contact your Customer Success Manager directly to discuss this, or go to [email protected] for support.

 

And if you are not yet a Coorpacademy customer but are interested in this innovative course format, do not hesitate to contact our sales team: [email protected]