How to Add Gamification to eLearning Sites & Boost Student Engagement

Gamification is a smart means to make a course exciting. In recent times when a large portion of education has moved online, adding this feature can certainly increase its appeal to a great extent. Whether it’s a digital classroom for kids, or an advanced learning course, it is perfectly suitable for all. And with the integration of specialized WordPress LMS plugins, this process of taking education online gets even more streamlined.

If you’re in need of making your course engaging and keeping your students interested, it’s your lucky day. In this article, we’re going to highlight how you can gamify your LMS platform and boost student engagement.

So, without further ado let’s get started.

What is Gamification

Gamification adds game-like features to your course or study materials to make it highly interactive. Sometimes our study materials become unexciting and get even more difficult for people to concentrate.

A little twist here by bringing some competitive elements like reward points, badges after achieving certain milestones, adding ranks your profile can do wonders to help the student get involved.

Why Implement Gamification

Gamification is getting popular. Though it is a relatively new concept, more and more learning programs are adopting this to make their course engaging to the participants. No matter how much money and effort you put in to make a high quality course, if you cannot generate (and maintain) user interest it is likely to fall short.

If used correctly, gamifying your eLearning platform has huge potential. As such, you can introduce a point system, reward, badges, unlock, and more along with your courses. To thrive in this highly competitive sector, having this feature will surely beef up your platform.

Types of Gamification Strategies You Can Include with Your eLearning

The main intention of adding gamification to your eLearning course is to enrich its value and increase your potential to make a large volume of sales. We know engaging your students is not an easy task. If you cannot make a positive impression on your visitors, chances are that they will find a replacement as there are plenty of options for users. 

If you want to retain your students for a longer period, then you can follow these gamification techniques for a positive outcome:

1. Badges

Similar to a completion, as recognition of achievement or mastery, you can introduce a badge along with your courses. However, you can align this with a range of activities like passing a test, scoring high in quizzes, reaching the next level, and so many more. Additionally, it will be pushing them to go ahead with better engagement and commitment.

2. Level Completion

This is an encouraging strategy for giving your students the feeling of joy of an accomplishment. When they complete a certain level, their achievement shows in their profile and across their network. Later they can use it for unlocking advanced levels, rewards, points and others.

3. Points

Points can be earned at the end of a course, quizzes, or other tasks. Once the participants achieved a certain amount of points they can keep the points or can unlock the next level course. The most notable feature of points is that it can be determined in numbers. You can create the scope for your students to buy any courses later by using those points. 

4. Achievements Sharing on Social Media

We are always proud of our achievements and love to get recognized for our accomplishments. By allowing students to share their success on social media, you can privilege your learners and motivate others as well to come across.

5. Time Limit

A large majority of games contain a time limiting factor, and not to mention it creates a challenge among the participants. By setting a time limit for completion of a task, quiz or assignments you can create a sense of urgency among your trainees.

6. Certificates

As a formal means of recognition and achievement, the appeal of a certificate will always be second to none. Be it paper format or a soft copy, a certificate will always be acknowledged for its value. At the end of the course, you can present a certificate to the participants.

7. Leaderboards

Leaderboards have been in use for years in gamification. When implemented correctly, leaderboards have the potential to boost a learner’s motivation, engagement, and participation. You can connect leaderboards with social media, online forums, and other platforms to give the students the chance to connect with their peers and share achievements. 

How to Install GamiPress

In order to implement and enjoy GamiPress on your LMS website, you’ll be required to install and activate the GamiPress plugin first on your dashboard. For this, go to Plugins > Add Plugin in your WP Admin panel and in the search field type Gamipress and hit enter. Once you see the GamiPress plugin in the list, click Install and activate.

How to Set Different Features of GamiPress 

GamiPress allows you to add points, achievements, and ranking. Besides, it also has an option called point deduction.

Now, let’s see the process of how you can set different GamiPress features with your online courses.

1. Setting Point Feature

To enjoy this feature, simply click the point types under the GamiPress section. Soon, you’ll be redirected to a new page. Now point your mouse to the add new button and fill in the segment singular, plural and add a slug. 

2. Automatic Point Rewards

Upon enabling the automatic point rewards you can execute this option. For each of the activities of your students you can assign an auto point system by selecting your choice of points.

3. Automatic Point Deducts

Here you got the option to cut any point for activities by setting maximum limits of each attempt.

4. Point Display & Level Setting

From this option you can choose when to enable the point adding or deduction. When you’re done with everything, hit publish to complete the process.

How to Create an Achievement Type

For creating new achievements, turn back to Dashboard, and select Achievement. A new page will appear where upon putting a singular and plural name for the achievement along with slug you can complete the process of achievement setting. To make it eye catchy, do not forget to add an image. Finally, click update and save your settings.

Once you set up the achievement type there are more that you can implement with this part. For example, you can set the position after how many points, one can unlock a level or earn points. To add this option navigate to the achievement section from your Dashboard, and click on add new. When the new page appears, set the required fields.

Setting Required Steps

This is the step from where you can set all the settings sequentially. Add and label all the steps that you want to create, and hit save all steps to complete this action.

How to Add a Rank Type

Just like the point and achievement setup procedure, you can complete the settings of adding Rank too. For this, once again go to your Dashboard > Select Rank and then put singular name, plural name and slug. Finally, insert an image for the rank and click the update button. Repeat the same procedure for as many ranks you want to include.

Benefits of Implementing Gamification

Implementing gamification along with your course has multiple benefits. It not only engages and makes your students learn better, also it can be the key for you to help you increase your sales opportunities. 

Let’s have a quick glance at what benefits gamification can bring for your platform:

1. Makes Learning Interactive

Gamification makes a course fun and exciting. Form avatar creation to implementing a visually appealing course there is a lot that you can do with Gamification to bring life to it.

2. Increase Learner Motivation & Engagement

Learning is tough. Many times students find it difficult or fear to undertake the challenges they need to encounter to complete the course. With gamification, you get the chance to split the task into smaller missions and mini-quests to make sure the learners can handle your course with ease. And as an overall outcome, they will be involved with the courses wholeheartedly.

3. Creates a Challenge to Learning

Often, things get unexciting and repetitive when there are no deals like challenges. By setting time, target, rewards through gamification you can create a course more thrilling for your learners. 

4. Brings Instant Results

Modern learners are used to various interactive gaming. With gamification, you get the scope to divide your entire course and introduce several quests. After completing a quest students can get their results which influence them to be more motivated in the future. 

5. Builds Scope for Self-Evaluation

As your students get instant rewards and gratification for their positive performance, it’s easier for them to evaluate their own progress on the basis of their achievements like point or score.

Wrapping Up

Here we came to the end part of today’s article. In this article, we intend to introduce the concept of gamification for your eLearning platform. Of course, applying this can bring positive results with more students coming back to your platform over and over again. To implement this in the easiest and ready manner you can try Tutor LMS with GamiPress.

What’s your take on this? Have you experimented with any mentioned gamification feature here? Let us know in the comments.