“What’s the capital of France?”
There you have it. A perfectly acceptable, mundane, and not great trivia question. Sure, you know the answer is Paris, but what if you didn’t know? The question above gives you only one “path” to the right answer. Either you know Paris is the capital or you don’t.
What if it was written a little differently. . .
“What is the capital and largest city in France that is also known as “The City of Lights”?”
Voila! (pun intended), you’ve just given yourself three different paths to the answer and also provided educational material. You could answer this question knowing that:
1) Paris is called “The City of Lights”
2) Paris is the largest city in France
3) Paris is the capital of France
You only need to know one of those “paths” to get you to the right answer. Say you know it’s called “The City of Lights.” By answering this question, you got it correct and learned that “The City of Lights” is also the largest city in France in addition to being the capital. Que Magnifique!
This ability to reinforce existing knowledge while imparting something new is a powerful tool in an educator’s arsenal and trivia questions are a great way to wield that power. Plus, when mixed with some gamification elements like points, teams, or badges, a simple trivia game can go a long way to providing fun and engagement while increasing your learner’s knowledge retention
Why Trivia Games are Effective
Trivia games are a tried and true method of material reinforcement. In addition to reinforcing knowledge, by offering several “paths” to the answer as we explained above, you can reinforce old knowledge and impart new knowledge at the same time.
There are numerous benefits when incorporating trivia into your training plan. Including:
- Improved cognitive development
- Community building if played in a team setting
- Improved memory by exercising recall
- Improved concept formation through different “paths” to the answer
Answering trivia questions correctly also just feels good. Dopamine is released when doing so and learners experience a rush when they get a question right. This rush of dopamine adds a positive, physical reinforcement to your training material. Trivia, however, is not habit-forming and you have nothing to lose except your pride! And maybe a couple of points on the board.
In addition to taking your training to the next level, Trivia from The Training Arcade® can be a great team-building tool or the perfect way to spice up your next event!
Gamify Your Trivia
Trivia is particularly effective when some good-natured competition is involved. You could have different sales teams, classrooms, departments, store regions, etc. compete against each other in a trivia game for prizes. Things like gift cards, days off, lunch with the boss, or whatever you can think of!
Proving you know the capital of France is one thing. Knowing it, receiving points for it, beating another team to the answer, and then winning a prize for it, adopting gamification like this brings engagement with your materials to a whole new level.
Different Question Types
As an instructional designer or educator, customizing a game to your learning content and also your learner’s needs is a step towards becoming a training hero. Trivia from The Training Arcade® provides you with the building tools you need to do just that.
Many trivia games you can find online offer only one or two question types. We, however, believe variety is the spice of life and you have the following question types available through Trivia:
- Multiple choice
- Multi-select
- Text input
- Image matching
- True or false
- Polling
Play a demo game here on diversity and inclusion in the workforce.
By including multiple types of questions you can tailor your training to different learning styles and personalities. There’s nothing wrong with good old-fashioned “what is” questions, but having things like image matching and text input forces the learner to think differently about answering. It may also make them recall different information to answer a picture clue as opposed to, say, a true or false question.
In addition, you can make the questions timed so learners earn more points the faster they answer. Also, there is a streak meter that encourages players to earn even more points for answering multiple questions in a row correctly.
You can also add custom feedback for both the correct and incorrect answers. This offers you another opportunity to engage your learners and reinforce your training material.
Adding feedback to questions is another way to engage with your learners and offer further help or reinforcement of your training material.
Become a Trivia-Training Hero
Games and Gamification have been proven to make your training more effective by driving learner engagement, participation, and motivation while also increasing knowledge retention. Couple that with an easy-to-build Trivia game and you’re well on your way to becoming a training hero.
