Gamification and engagement

Rights required: badges fall under animation rights, like certificates; their activation grid and the avatar levels are set in Configuration. See Assigning rights.

Three mechanics reward the learner. Points count what they do and translate into an avatar level. Badges mark one specific achievement, once it is reached. Challenges offer them a bounded effort, which they start themselves from the app.

Three mechanics, not one system with three faces

They are not set in the same place, they do not fire on the same events, and switching one off does not switch off the others. A single link runs between them: badges in the Gamification category fire on points, and memorisation scores count towards that total.

Points are counted at account level, across all of the learner’s capsules and all of their revision sessions. The ranking only displays them: which score is retained is chosen group by group, in Creating and organising user groups, and the scope of the comparison is set for the whole platform. An academy can hide the ranking, but when it does show it never compares the learner against the members of their own academy alone: see Academies, analytics and engagement.

The three pages in this section

• Points and avatars: read this to know where a learner’s total comes from, and to set the thresholds at which they move up an avatar level.
• Badges: read this when an achievement should leave a mark in the app, and before creating the first badge, because its rule is chosen at creation and cannot be changed afterwards.
• Challenges: read this for the timed objective and memorisation, two modes the learner starts on their own and the back-office does not configure.

What it does not prove

A badge carries no weight in an inspection, and neither do points. When an achievement has to stand up to scrutiny, you need a certificate: it fires on a success condition, not on a gamification rule.

Going further

• Rewards analytics: the badges actually awarded, and the ones nobody ever reaches.
• Activity formats: Battle mode is switched on at capsule level, and a whole badge category depends on it.
• Notifications: what brings the learner back to a badge within reach or to a revision session.
• Common problems: engagement: when a reward does not fire.