How to Gamify Your Elearning Course

13 Sep

10 Fun and Effective Ways

Gamification, as the name suggests, involves bringing elements of games into non-game contexts to make those contexts more appealing and engaging.

This method has been used with great success in several types of contexts, including education, training, marketing, and even government initiatives designed to help the community at large

Gamification is becoming more and more popular when it comes to training employees and driving positive behaviors in the workplace. However, not all gamification efforts are created equal; some of them can actually turn your audience off if they’re not done correctly.

To help you make your elearning course more fun for your students, here are 10 ways to gamify your elearning course that we think you’ll enjoy!

What is eLearning Gamification?

How The gamification process works

First, let's look at how the gamification process works. From the perspective of a student who is working on the site, he or she will see two primary tasks—mastering topics (or earning points) and completing assignments (or earning badges).

The points system usually follows a common point value model—earning 10 points equals 1% completion. In other words, if you earn 100 points in total, that would mean that you completed the course and mastered all content.

As for badges, there are many different badge types out there—sticker badges, interactive badges, photo-badges. Some courses allow users to customize their own personal avatar badge too!

Now let's look at some gamification strategies that might work well with an elearning course:

Get Clear on What You Want to Accomplish

When you're thinking about how to gamify your elearning course, it's important to get clear on what you want to accomplish.

Do you want to increase engagement? Drive certain behavior changes?
Boost knowledge retention?

Once you know your goals, you can start looking for ways to add some fun and excitement into your elearning course design.

Start with a Game Plan

To gamify your elearning course, you need to have a game plan.

This means knowing what your goals are, who your target audience is, and what type of game mechanics will work best for your course.

Once you have a clear vision, you can start to look at the different ways to incorporate gamification into your elearning courses.

Create a Storyboard

Creating a storyboard is a great way to gamify your elearning course. By doing so, you can make your course more engaging and fun for your learners. Plus, it can help you add an element of excitement to your course. Here are 10 ways to gamify your elearning course through storyboarding

Create a Storyboard - Create a storyboard that helps guide the learner through the course by providing them with objectives, milestones, and interactions along the way.
Objectives - Create different tasks that allow the learner to learn at their own pace. Provide objectives for each lesson in order to keep the learner on track with what they need to accomplish before moving onto the next lesson.
Milestones - Milestones should be simple yet challenging enough that it gives learners something to strive towards without overwhelming them. When setting milestones think about how far ahead or behind they are in relation to where they should be if they were following your desired path (i.e., did they complete five out of six lessons? Did they complete all six lessons? Set a milestone for completing the course).
Interactions - Have interactive elements throughout your storyboard such as games, quizzes, surveys and puzzles. These activities should not be related to the content but instead have to do with outside topics such as movies, popular TV shows, etc. Make sure these interactions also provide feedback that will encourage learners while giving them information on whether they're right or wrong.
Gamification Design Tips - Aim for creating courses that are enjoyable while still maintaining an educational value . To do this, include various design features such as graphics, animations, illustrations and voice overs. You can even set up contests for learners or reward them for successfully completing tasks. There are plenty of design features available to give your elearning course a sense of entertainment. Consider using humor within the storyboard itself. For example, create animated pictures with stick figures walking around telling jokes or telling stories from different perspectives. The possibilities are endless! You could even incorporate game mechanics into your gamified design to ensure that learners stay engaged during every part of the process.

Choose Your Engagement Method

Start by evaluating what type of engagement will work best for your elearning course.

Do you want learners to be actively engaged throughout the entire elearning course, or just during certain sections?

Once you've decided on the overall engagement strategy, start thinking about how you can gamify specific parts of the course.

What activities will encourage learners to participate?

Make a list of potential game elements you could use in your course. This could include things like points, badges, leaderboards, or virtual rewards.

Think about how you can use these game elements to promote desired behaviours in your learners. For example, if you want learners to pay attention during a lecture, you could give them points for every minute they stay focused.

Explore Pre-Built eLearning Platforms

One of the easiest ways to gamify your elearning course is to explore pre-built platforms. Many platforms, such as The Learning LAB, allow you to add game-like features to your course with little effort.

Here are some things you can do with pre-built platforms

Add levels: Use something like a scoring system that allows learners to see how much they have accomplished and how close they are to completing their goals in the course. Change color schemes or background images for each level, too
Create power ups - In a game, players earn power ups when they accomplish tasks in the game. In an elearning course, create a system where students can earn power ups that help them progress through learning content more easily. For example, if students have trouble figuring out an equation on their own, give them a button that automatically solves it for them or gives hints on how to solve it on their own.
Build challenges: Design challenges into your course to keep learners engaged and interested. You can use videos, pictures, animations, or anything else available in the software that you're using. If there's a puzzle component to the challenge, offer hints so they don't get stuck forever.
Allow time management - If you are building a problem-solving game, let people know how long they'll be working on a problem so they know what time constraints they are working within. Allow them to save their work and come back later if needed as well so that people don't get frustrated from not being able to finish a task because of time constraints.

What is eLearning Gamification?

Build Trackable Metrics

To gamify your elearning course, you need to have clear, trackable metrics in place.

By doing this, you'll be able to identify which areas of your course need improvement and where students are excelling.

Plus, you can use data from your metrics to create fun and engaging challenges for your students.

Record Them Progressively, Not Retroactively

Allow learners to see their progress as they make it. This will give them a sense of accomplishment and motivate them to keep going.

Set goals for each learner and help them track their progress towards those goals.

This will give them a sense of purpose and direction. Make the content of the course engaging and fun.

This will keep learners engaged and motivated to learn. Use badges, points, and leaderboards to encourage competition and recognition. This will spur learners on to do their best and have some fun while they're at it!

Offer rewards for completing tasks or reaching milestones. This will provide an extra incentive for learners to stick with the course.

Integrate the Right Resources

If you want to gamify your elearning course, there are a few key resources you'll need to integrate.

First, you'll need a learning management system (LMS) like TheLearning LAB that supports gamification features.
Second, you'll need engaging content that's aligned with your learning objectives. Finally, you'll need a way to track and measure progress.

Let Participants Take Control

One way to gamify your elearning course is to let participants take control. This could mean giving them choices in what they learn or how they learn it.

You could also let them choose their own avatar or character. Allowing learners to have a say in their learning experience will make it more fun and engaging for them.