Can you remember back to your middle school days? Perhaps it’s a different visual for everyone, but mine is a crystal clear picture with smell-o-vision. You know that “this classroom of preteens is barely discovering deodorant” smell? I remember it well. I also remember the antagonistic nature of boys versus girls in raucous gameplay. Nothing else could whip my classmates into a competitive frenzy then when my fourth grade teacher would split us up into gender-based teams and break out the trivia cards. Oh, the exhilaration of walking up to the white board to triumphantly strike a line through four slashes to make a total of five points. This practice continued well into the sixth grade, where our history teacher allowed our class to finally pick our own teammates and compete in the ultimate quiz game where the answer was provided…you just had to phrase the question properly. “What is, Jeopardy!?” Each team would compete fiercely to rack up the most points, unknowingly learning and retaining information for a final exam. Ah, the thrill of victory. The rules of gamification Gaming techniques like these, incorporating elements like points and leaderboards, are far from new. The concept is rooted in the deeper mechanics of game creation, which has a rich history in both the competition and education realms. Dr. Karl Kapp, assistant director of Bloomsburg University’s Institute for Interactive Technologies, writes: “A well designed game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge, defined by rules, interactivity and feedback that result in a quantifiable outcome often eliciting an emotional reaction.” This emotional reaction, when applied to learning, can translate into a sense of confidence, achievement and success. This is why many human resource professionals are now constructing employee development and retention programs...

Yardi Systems’ Raleigh, N.C. team let their artistic sides loose last Friday to create temporary murals in one of their office conference rooms. The interim installation of cool employee-painted art, which will stay up during an office expansion, resulted in a variety of cool colorful murals. Here’s one of the most artistic from the Commercial team. Looks like they have great creative skills in addition to real estate technology know how!...