Digital University Introduces Digital Badging and Gamified UX

With the rise of the term digital transformation within DoD organizations over the past few years we were also introduced to a few other topics that have been seeing a rise in adoption primarily in the commercial industry. Here in the DoD, we have not seen many attempts to introduce these topics but here at Digital University we have fully embraced both Digital Badging and Gamification. In short, gamification can be described as game-like elements in a product or service for the purpose of increasing engagement. The most common examples of these are badges, leaderboards, challenges, and point systems. Recent studies done by Zippia, TalentLMS, and EHS Today have shown that employees are 60% more engaged, 60% more productive and 33% prefer gamified training overall. Digital University takes advantage of gamification in 4 different ways: Digital Badging, Leaderboards, Visual Progression, and Rewards.

The goal of Digital Badging is to provide users with shareable certifications of completion & mastery. This works on the user side when they want to show they are capable of completing a new job function within their unit as well as on the leadership side with being able to go into a user’s learner record to see if they completed a mandatory training module. Today, badges are earned through the completion of courses and other training, but our long term goal is to use badges as a way to certify a user’s mastery of a topic via assessments. Once fully rolled out badges will be shareable via the user’s social profiles (i.e. LinkedIn) and through the internal military learner records.

The goal of the Leaderboard is to give the users a chance to rack-and-stack and see how they stack up against their peers. This gives the users an added incentive to come back and be the best on the platform. Learners will receive points for completing training then they will be able to go to specific leaderboards to see how they match up with peers in the same learning path.

The goal of Visual Progression is to give the learner a visual representation of their progress through a current course they are taking and an indication of their mastery level. The updated progression bars in each course adds motivation to users to complete the training. The platform also provides visualization of completing plans, assessments, and assigned levels of mastery so the learner always knows how far along they are in a specific track.

The final method of gamification is a Rewards system. The goal of the rewards is the one that I think DU is most proud of and this is to provide learners with opportunities to expand and apply the knowledge they learned based on the completion of training. As learners complete different training plans we will provide them with different learning opportunities in the form of internships, hackathons, and invitations to special events.

Overall we think that badging and gamification will not only make for a better experience for our users but also increase the platform's longevity with users coming back day after day to polish their skills.

If you would like to get involved with Digital University check out the links below.

Click the link to signup individually here:?Digital University

Click the link to fill out a survey for your organization:?Survey