Overview

Gamification allows you to create games where learners can earn points and badges by doing certain tasks, advance through levels as they gain points, and optionally see a leaderboard to introduce a fun competitive spirit.

Gamification is based on our rules engine feature which allows you to define rules for when points and badges should be awarded to learners. For more information on how to add rules, visit the Rules topic. For more information on how to create badges, visit the Badges topic.

Rules can be added to courses, modules, sections, assessments, groups, learning paths, and accounts. You can thus award points and badges for a particular game from any of these places that accept a rule action.

Periodic promotion/demotion allows players to be promoted and demoted in a game, within a designated period of time (monthly, weekly, etc.). During the game, players are randomly assigned into groups. Each period, the groups are reassigned. At the end of the designated period, the top players are promoted to the next level and the players at the bottom of the leaderboard are demoted to the previous level.

Games are also available for each course and learning path. For more information on how to add course-wide games, click here. To see how to add path games, visit the Path topic.

Adding games

Before creating a site-wide game make sure you have Gamification enabled. Go to Admin/App center and install Gamification.

To add a new game, go to Admin/Games, then click Add game.

Enter the name of the game and in the Level using: field, there are two options: Points and Periodic promotion/demotion.

Selecting points uses a point system to rank the players. The periodic promotion/demotion option allows you to set a designated period of time for the game and at the end of the time period, the top players are promoted to the next level and the players at the bottom of the leaderboard are demoted to the previous level.

Select the appropriate option and click Save.

You will then see the overview page for the game, where you can add a game description, levels, and set your options for the leaderboard.

To add a new level, go to the Levels section, then click Add. Enter the name for the level and the numbers of points, then click Save.

After adding the levels of the game, you can define actions that are triggered when a particular game level is achieved. By default, the "Achieved level" canned message is sent, but you can add any kind of action, including awarding badges, points, certificates, and more. To add a new action that will be triggered when learners achieve a certain level in the game, click Add in the "Level actions" area of the level.

When you click on Add, a pop-up will open.

You can add multiple actions for each level.

Details about Badges and Points will appear once Rules that award them are added across the site. 

When you create an "award points" or "award badge" rule action, any site-wide games will now appear in a drop-down list for the "Game" setting. You can thus award points and badges for a particular game from any place that accepts a rule action. Rules can be added for courses, modules, sections, assessments, groups, learning paths, and accounts.

Any player that's in a site-wide game will now see those games in the right column of their dashboard.

They can click the Game Detail icon to see all the details.

Periodic Promotion/Demotion

To utilize periodic promotion/demotion, from the home screen click Admin from the left navigation bar and click Games.

Click Add.

Enter the name of the game and in the Level using: field, there are two options: Points and Periodic promotion/demotion.

Selecting points uses a point system to rank the players. The periodic promotion/demotion option allows you to set a designated period of time for the game and at the end of the time period, the top players are promoted to the next level and the players at the bottom of the leaderboard are demoted to the previous level.

Select Periodic promotion/demotion. Click Save.

The game overview page displays. Click Edit to enter a description for the game.

Enter the description of the game and click Save.

Under Levels, click Add. This is where you add the levels that will be available for this game.

Note: The first level you enter will be the lowest level in the game. Every level added after the first will be one step up. The last level you add will be the highest.
Example: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Master

Enter the name of the level and click Save. Repeat until all of the needed levels are added.

When a level is added, a new section appears to assign the actions to that level. The default is “Send the canned message…”. To change this, click the pencil icon under the Edit column. You can also remove this by clicking the minus sign in the Remove column.

To add additional actions, click Add.

Add actions as you normally would.

Under Periodic promotion/demotion, click Edit. This is where you will determine several settings for your game.

Max group size: Enter the maximum number of players allowed in each group.
Start: Enter the start date for the game.
Frequency: Enter the frequency of the game, either monthly or weekly.
Promotion percent: What percent from the top of the leaderboard will be promoted at the end of the period
Demotion percent: What percent from the bottom of the leaderboard will be demoted at the end of the period
Group by: Indicate how you would like the users grouped. The most common is to group
members by their organization.

Once you have entered all of the game settings, click Save.

Under the Leaderboard heading, select if you want the board to be enabled and other values you wish to include.

Players do not need to be added directly to the game. Once they begin winning points, they are automatically entered as a participant!

The leaderboard for periodic games not only shows the point system, but also indicates promotions and demotions.

Adding teams to games

Team games allow you to group players into teams and add the teams to the game. The teams added to the game will be displayed in the leaderboard along with the number of points and badges earned by the players in each team. You can add teams to site-wide, course, and path games.

To enable teams for a game, go to the game and visit its "Leaderboard settings" area then click the "Support teams?" checkbox.

After enabling support for teams the Teams area will appear.  To add groups as teams, click Add under teams.

Select the groups from the pop-up and click submit. Note that in the first version of this feature, only site-wide groups can be added.

After the teams are added, they will show up in the Teams section. To remove a team from the list, click its  icon.

When a team has been added, it is displayed along with its ranking, total points, and badges in the "Teams" section of the leaderboard.

You can click on the points/badges area for a team to see how each player in that team has contributed to the total.

When you visit a group that is a team in one or more games, its games are shown in the right column of the group landing page along with the other teams and their ranking.

To view the details of a specific game, click the ">" icon on its leaderboard.