You’re looking to gamify your digital learning project. What are the best services to help you do it?

1 Define your goals and audience

Before you choose any gamification tool, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve with your digital learning project and who you are targeting. What are the learning objectives, outcomes, and metrics that you want to measure? Who are your learners, what are their needs, preferences, and challenges? How will they access and interact with your gamified learning project? These questions will help you define your goals and audience, and guide you to select the most suitable gamification tool for your project.

2 Choose a gamification platform

A gamification platform is a software service that allows you to create and manage your gamified learning project with game elements, such as points, badges, leaderboards, quests, levels, rewards, and feedback. Popular gamification platforms for learning include Badgeville, Classcraft, and Bunchball Nitro. Badgeville is a cloud-based platform that enables you to design and implement gamified learning experiences using badges, missions, challenges, leaderboards, and analytics. Classcraft transforms your classroom into a role-playing game where students can create characters, form teams, earn points, level up, and unlock rewards. Bunchball Nitro helps motivate and engage your learners by applying game mechanics to existing learning content. With it you can track learners' progress and performance.

3 Select a game authoring tool

A game authoring tool is a software service that enables you to create and publish your own games for your digital learning project. It can help you design and develop interactive and immersive games that can enhance the learning experience and outcomes of your learners. Popular game authoring tools for learning include H5P, GameSalad, and GDevelop. H5P is a free and open-source tool that allows you to create interactive HTML5 games for your web-based learning project, such as quizzes, drag and drop, memory game, interactive video, branching scenario, and more. GameSalad enables you to create and publish games for various platforms without coding. You can use it to add sound, graphics, animation, and logic to your puzzles, simulations, adventures, and more. GDevelop is a visual programming interface that lets you create and export games for web, mobile, and desktop with events, actions, conditions, variables, and behaviors. Platformers, shooters, RPGs are just some of the types of games you can make with GDevelop.

4 Test and refine your gamified learning project

Once you have created your gamified learning project, you should test and refine it before launch. You need to ensure the project is functional, accessible, engaging, and effective. To do this, you can use various testing and refining tools and methods. User testing is a method of testing your project with real or potential users to get feedback on their experience, satisfaction, and learning outcomes. A/B testing is a method of comparing two or more versions of your project to measure their performance and impact on learners. Analytics is a tool or method of collecting and analyzing data on your project and learner behavior, progress, and performance. Examples of user testing tools include UserTesting, UserZoom, or Userbrain; A/B testing tools include Optimizely, Google Optimize, or VWO; and analytics tools include Google Analytics, Mixpanel, or Amplitude.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?