If you have a online learning management system based on the Sensei plugin and you haven’t yet gamified it for the users then it’s high time you should. And here are three very good reasons to support my claim. But wait, before I go onto why you should customize Sensei plugin to gamify your LMS, I will elaborate a little on what exactly Gamification is.
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What is Gamification?
- Fundamentally, gamification is the process of including various gaming aspects such as a scoring system, competition, rules etc into real life activities.
- So, when I speak about gamification of an online LMS it would ideally include bringing in aspects such as rules, competitions and awards to make the learning process more intuitive and enjoyable for the students.
3 Reasons to Gamify your Sensei LMS
- Gamification improves user experience on your LMS.
- Encourage students towards collaborative learning.
- The final goal of increasing student base on your website is achieved with gamification.
How to Customize Sensei to Gamify your LMS
So now that we have understood more about gamification and why it should be added to your website let’s take a look at how to customize Sensei plugin to add various gamification features to your Sensei learning management system.
1. Incorporate the Concept of Badges
- If you have played games on mobiles or computers you would know that once you have been introduced to games, it is not easy to discontinue playing these games. Ever wondered why? It’s simple, the incentives that players are rewarded with after clearing specified objectives motivates them to keep coming back for more. It also generates a form of competition between two players to earn the most incentives.
- Currently, Sensei allows students to enroll for courses and take these courses by logging in to the LMS website.
- However this is the most basic form of learning and can sometimes be unstimulating for students. In order to engage the students further into the learning process and keep them motivated an incentive in the form of badges can be provided to them. These badges can be provided at various stages in a course and can be based on certain rules. This functionality can be achieved by using the ‘Sensei BadgeOS’ add on.
- So let us assume that students are awarded certain points based on the courses they have completed. Now a rule can be set based on which students will be assigned badges once they have achieved a certain minimum number of points.
2. Include Existing Students into the Gamification Process
- The above concept of badges though appreciable comes with a glitch if you are going to incorporate the Sensei BadgeOS into your existing system. While it works seamlessly for new students it experiences a hiccup while assigning badges to already existing students.
- Existing students are not awarded badges for objectives they might have achieved before the Sensei BadgeOS plugin was installed.
- So now what? Well simply put there is a need to customize Sensei BadgeOS plugin to assign badges to already existing users based on the rules specified in the system and once this has been done then Voila! Now you’re good to go as far as existing customers are concerned.
3. Display Badges to Enrolled Students
- To further keep the students motivated an entire list of badges that can be earned by the students is displayed to the users in a sidebar panel. This sidebar will be available to the users once the user has logged in to the website.
- The badges that have been earned by the user will be highlighted while the ones that are yet to be earned will be greyed out. Now each time a user earns a particular badge, the corresponding badge in the widget is highlighted.
The one thing that is certain is that the eLearning space is here to stay. So, while it’s here why not cash in on it while having some fun. Gamify your Sensei LMS now and unleash to your students an enjoyable learning experience while you sit back and enjoy the ever increasing student base.
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