Gamification
In the 2011 book “Gamification by Design”, gamification is defined as “gamification is the use of game thinking and game mechanics to engage users in problem solving.” That is a highly accurate definition of gamification. The definition begs the question – can learning be made fun and engaging like playing a game? Yes indeed and that is what gamification in elearning is all about.
Gamification in an online elearning platform is about laying out the course in way that users can interact, engage and learn from the course all at the same time. This means designing a course layout with interesting activities like quizzes, questionnaires, badges, gold stars and even certificates built into the course. This also means that the course be given a game-like leveled structure – to proceed to the next level you have to clear the previous level. This type of a course structure makes learners strive to reach the next level in the learning process.
Can gamification help my course and how?
This depends on a case to case basis but as a general rule of thumb, all courses of all types can be gamified based on the type of course and the content. A well gamified course results into learners spending more time on their learning activities and rapidly advancing to the next levels in the course. This means more effective learning for your learners and more repeat business for you.
ScholarLMS provides you innumerable possibilities to gamify your courses. You can set a leveled structure, you can have various types of badged based on various type of achievements within the course that our engineers will help you configure when we set your cloud based lms up.
To know more about how you can gamify your courses, we recommend that you take a look at this presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/ghenrick/gamification-what-is-it-and-what-it-is-in-moodle