Gamification is not all fun and games.
Or rather it is, but it’s also a serious business feature that can increase engagement, learner retention and course completion rates, translating to happy users and a nice, big, return of investment.
In this post we’ll have a look at the all new Gamification engine landing in the latest eFront, and how you can use it to make your eLearning courses more fun and instill a sense of competitiveness and community to your learners.
Game on
Gamification, along with mobile learning and micro-learning have been the three strongest eLearning trends in the last couple of years. In fact, gamification has taken not just eLearning but the whole software world by storm, from social media sites to enterprise portals.
While the possibilities for gamification are endless, there are a few market-proven, reliable and intuitive techniques that have been routinely employed to “gamify” web applications — and for eFront we’ve chosen to implement exactly those, namely Points, Badges, Levels and Leaderboards.
With our new Gamification engine, you can now mix-and-match among all of those options to tailor the gamification experience to your needs and your audience.
Let’s go through the basic options on offer:
Points
Points in eFront are the equivalent of “keeping score” in a game.
A user’s total points are shown on the user’s homepage header, while any new points being awarded are briefly displayed in a non-intrusive message.
eFront lets you configure when points are to be awarded (for example, when a user completes a course, for each login to the LMS, etc.). The whole scheme might sound simple, but there’s nothing like a subtle touch of gamification to ignite the competitive spirit in your learners.
Badges
Badges are the equivalent of real world badges (or “medals”).
They are visual stamps (images), that are unlocked for certain achievements, and are displayed in the user’s homepage header and profile info.
eFront implements a badging system that makes acquiring badges easy in the early stages (e.g after a few logins, or on course completion), and increasingly difficult as the user progresses (e.g after getting a certificate, after getting a perfect grade on a test, etc). This helps to get users hooked in collecting badges (initially) and maintain their interest (in later stages).
Levels
Levels are a hierarchy that the user can move up on (like getting a promotion at work, or moving up to the next grade at school).
All users start on Level 1, and eFront lets you define when a user should get to the next level (for example every X points, every Y completed courses, every Z badges, etc.).
Leaderboards
Leaderboards are eFront’s “high score” list, showing your user’s ranking under several metrics (points awarded, badges earned, number of certifications, etc).
Leaderboards always mention the best user for the selected metric, as well as several students directly above and below the current user. This gives the user a good overview of his or her overall position.
Engine on
eFront’s Gamification engine allows you to select and modify all available gamification options, and fine-tune them according to what you’re trying to achieve.
For example you can choose whether to use points and badges or not (and, for the latter, customize their appearance), or opt to incentivize users to login more frequently by awarding them more points per login.
Ready to play?
The latest eFront update containing the Gamification engine (as well as other niceties, like our new Site Builder) is available immediately to all registered users.
If you’re not an eFront user yet, you’re seriously missing out. Contact our sales or support stuff or take eFront for a ride for 7 days for free and join the eLearning revolution with the best LMS in the industry.