E-learning systems have changed the perspective of learning altogether, by creating comprehensive, systematic, and self-paced learning. However, this self-controlled learning environment has a downside. It may affect the learning discipline and distract students. If the motivation isn’t strong enough, then students may lose interest and the complete idea of e-learning would be ineffective.
Engaging students and keeping them motivated throughout the course is the need of the hour.
Gamification can inculcate the spirit of competition in students. The struggle for the crown or virtual currency literally amuses them. Therefore, the use of gamification in e-learning systems proves to be a strong mechanism to ramp up competitiveness.
Learning through games is another way to drive complete attention and engage the learners. An exponentially increasing percentage of youngsters spending time in gaming is evidence of this fact.
If this is the case, is it possible to use the idea of gaming in a non-gaming environment of learning?
Certainly yes! The set pattern of e-learning involving tutorials and tests can be remolded by using games and gamification to make it more engaging.
Gamification: A play-way method to motivate students, boost interest, and enhance education
Gamification is, essentially, the application of gaming mechanisms in a non-game context. In simple terms, it is an approach that makes existing tasks feel more like games where users compete to score more. It creates virtual scenarios and makes learners apply their knowledge, skills, and experiences to complete tasks for progressing to the next level.
Adapting gamification in e-learning systems with the intent of making it interesting and powerful is indeed a good initiative!
The basic principle of gamification is awarding points after completing tasks or clearing levels. This strategy amplifies the effect of core learning. It affects the learners’ perspective towards their task and ultimately their approach of tackling it. Badges or progress bars on the screen catch the students’ attention, improving involvement and productivity.
Incorporating Gamification into your LearnDash website
Now, there are several gamification plugins out there for you to choose from. When you think of gamifying the teaching experience, you could introduce a ratings plugin for courses – like Ratings, Reviews, and Feedback. Student reviews and ratings might be a driving factor for course sign-ups.
However, when it comes to learning, GamiPress is a comprehensive solution for your LearnDash LMS.
The reasons being:
- It comes packed with powerful features that allow you to add reward systems like points, achievements, and ranks that increase your learners’ engagement with your course material, motivates them and helps in boosting their productivity immensely.
- You also get to decorate and design your gamification elements and provide a quirky look to your elements.
- And, it’s free 🙂
GamiPress, along with its smooth integration capabilities with LearnDash also comes with a wide variety of events that you can add and even enables you to attach rewards to those events
Take a look at some events and how you can attach rewards:
- Quiz-based events – Awarding points to learners on completing any/specific quiz or rewarding badges on completing a quiz with a minimum percent grade.
- Topic-based events – Rewarding points or ranks when a learner finishes a specific topic or any topic.
- Assignment-based event – You could even reward points for just uploading an assignment or reward when the assignment gets approved.
- Lesson-based event – Award points on completing a specific lesson or any lesson depending on your rules.
- Course-based event – Rewarding your learners with badges or ranks on completing a course or a specific course.
You can explore more such events once you start using the plugin and set your rules for rewards accordingly.
With that being said, there are a few benefits that you can gain with the GamiPress add-on, take a look:
Benefits of using GamiPress with LearnDash
- Healthy competitive environment – Whether it’s points, badges or ranks this gamification technique definitely creates a healthy competitive environment forcing the learners lagging behind to introspect when they look at the top-performers on the leaderboard and ultimately push themselves to do a better job.
- Setting up a gamification environment – The integration comes with a drag and drop feature that allows you to set up the gamification environment on your LearnDash website in minutes without any hassle.
- Variety of reward systems – You can configure as many Points types (Credits, Gems, Coins, etc.), Rank types (Grade, Level, etc.) and Achievement types (Badges, Quests, etc.) as you like in order to motivate and engage your learners.
- Setting dozens of triggers – With GamiPress, you can easily set triggers for the award and these triggers can be as simple as watching a video or just commenting on the forum. You can explore a variety of trigger options.
- User-friendly interface – GamiPress, with its simple and user-friendly interface enables you to easily navigate and create rewards for your LearnDash courses.
These are just some of the benefits of using GamiPress with LearnDash and these benefits will multiply in the near future. We’ve also planned on integrating our Instructor Role plugin with GamiPress so that instructors can create rewards for students instead of the admin.
Engaging learners with Interactive content
Today, keeping people engaged with content in the eLearning space is a challenge and delivering content using the same medium time and again, to be honest, can get boring.
There are few plugins like Articulate Storyline or Adobe Captivate that allow you to create interactive course content, however, these plugins are quite expensive.
But, if you’re looking for something that’s budget-friendly and comes with just enough interactive HTML5 content, we recommend you to check out the H5P integration for LearnDash.
H5P integration
With the H5P integration, you can create, share and reuse the HTML5 content to create interactive and rich content through:
- Games
- Flashcards
- Memory games
- Presentation
- Interactive video
- Timelines and much more.
Moreover, this is a free plugin and integrates seamlessly with your LearnDash LMS. To find out more about this plugin, click here.
With games and gamification plugins you can create a full-featured gamified learning experience to engage learners on your LearnDash site!
Endnote
Gamification is a promising way of promoting learning to the tech-savvy generation. It creates a healthy competition among the learners.
With the changing times, it only makes sense to provide a gamified learning experience to your learners by using points, ranks, badges and more to encourage and engage with learners in a fun and meaningful manner.
What’s your take on empowering your LearnDash website with gamification to improve the learning experience?
If you have questions or suggestions, don’t forget to post them right into the comment box!
