Transforming Knowledge Management System With Gamification

Oleh Lazuardi Ridho Maulana & Emil R. Kaburuan

In this era games are extremely addicting and engaging, many companies find their knowledge management systems (KMS) is not attracting the staff to contribute and using it. Gamification helps to enhance KMS with game design elements to increase user engagement, content creation and satisfaction[1]. Using game design thinking, PT XYZ KMS willing to implement gamification aspects in daily quiz systems, knowledge repository, and knowledge broadcast to gain experience of the user with more fun environment. PT XYZ needs to be extracting more tacit knowledge, experience, ideas and insight possessed by employees because of its valuable resource in a company [2], with a positive experience of KMS it possibly empower the staff to share and contribute. In this paper, we mainly discuss what to do by PT XYZ need to adapt to gamification.
Some of the general problems of KMS is worthless if it is not used, it possibly causes by motivation of employees to share, establishing trust, cultivating positive attitudes towards knowledge sharing into KMS, creating effective processes for sharing knowledge and assessing KMS success [3]. In this paper, we only discuss about how to create an effective process for learning and sharing the knowledge in KMS using an commonly use game design such as use of points after completing a quests, leader board, level of character, badges, and challenge [4].

Some elements construct the game mechanics, while others build up the replication mechanics and social mechanics[1], the appliance of this game element can be divided into four major as describe by Trees, 2013 that can be used to gamify KMS [4]:
• Points, it is some rewards for performing various tasks.
• Badges, it is a symbol or ornament that can earn by reaching some threshold in points, completing a certain task, winning a challenge, and so on. It can be displayed in their profile and show it as to what goal they have been achieved.
• Challenges and Contests, these tasks is typically a limited timeframe to complete the challenge and need more effort to finish it. With this special task that makes it feel the more challenging experience.
• Awards and Prizes, after collecting some points, getting the badges and finishing the challenge the user can exchange it or get the reward for what have they done in the KMS environment.
• Rankings and Leaderboards, it shows the current cumulative rank who is the top contributor or top learner in KMS based on the badges they collect, challenges they finish, or points they achieve.

Reference:

[1] M. Ďuriník, “Gamification in knowledge management systems,” Cent. Eur. J. Manag., vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 41–50, 2015.
[2] J. P. Liebeskind, “Knowledge, strategy, and the theory of the firm,” Strateg. Manag. J., vol. 17, no. S2, pp. 93–107, 1996.
[3] S. A. Brown, A. R. Dennis, D. Burley, and P. Arling, “Knowledge sharing and knowledge management system avoidance: The role of knowledge type and the social network in bypassing an organizational knowledge management system,” J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci. Technol., vol. 64, no. 10, pp. 2013–2023, 2013.
[4] L. Trees, “Gamification in Knowledge Management,” APQC Overv., 2013.