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7 Gami.cation Strategies to Engage Your

Online Course Members
Improve Your Members’ Experience and
Participation Level With Badges, Leaderboards
and More

May 11, 2018

By Nathalie Lussier

Leverage gami2cation to revamp your

online courses and drive engagement.
When you were seven years old, if someone asked you to choose between doing
your homework or playing a game, you would have picked playing a game
without hesitation. If however — like many gifted youngsters — you had the
wherewithal to turn your homework from a chore into a game, congrats! You
tapped into the power of gami2cation.

The concept of gami2cation can easily be applied to your online course and is
actually proven to increase engagement and drive referrals — that’s why more
companies are leveraging the power of it. For example, Fitbit incorporated
gami2cation by gifting “badges” to users when they hit certain 2tness goals,
introducing social challenges, and incorporating a visual progress bar.

By adding a fun element to your online course, you are creating motivation and
inspiring engagement in a new, refreshing way. An added bonus is that 80% of
learners show increased productivity with more game-like experiences.

Why Gami1cation?

Taking an online course can be a lot like drinking from a 2re hose. As rich in value
as it may be, it’s often an overwhelming experience offering too much to absorb
with too little motivation to 2nish.

Gami2cation is not about packing more “stuff” onto your existing online courses;
it’s about thinking through the learning experience that you want to create for
your customers. That starts with your end goal: How can you get your
participants to easily learn more and, more importantly, take action on what
they’re learning?
By adding one or all of the following gami2cation concepts to the way you design
your next online course, you’ll raise the bar for your customers and ensure they’ll
keep coming back for more — and tell their friends about it, too.

1. PROGRESS TRACKING ADDS A NEW LEVEL OF MOTIVATION

The idea behind progress tracking is simple: Most people are motivated by
achievement. Why not show people their progress and reward them
incrementally as they move through your course?

In most learning environments, students absorb information on their own — in

isolation. Without indicators of how much they’ve completed and what’s left to
get through, it can be a lonely proposition that many learners abandon or give up
on.
On the other hand, with even the simplest progress tracking module in place,
students can check off the modules they’ve completed — often in a granular way
— giving them the bene2t of referring back to certain lessons in a course, such as
a speci2c part of a video using video bookmarks.

This is a simple but effective way of creating engagement with your online
courses.

2. SOCIAL SHARING INCREASES BUY-IN AND ENGAGEMENT

We saw that giving people a way to track their progress taps into an individual’s
intrinsic motivation to achieve and complete what they start. With a social
sharing component, we can increase the effectiveness even more.

If achieving something is motivating in itself, sharing your success with others is

even more powerful. By adding a social sharing component to your online
courses, you make it almost irresistible for learners to celebrate their successes
along the way … which then inspires them to keep going.

You can do this by awarding badges when students complete modules or mini
courses, and you can implement a “share on social media” button that gives them
the ability to playfully brag about their progress.

The added bonus to you as a course creator is that when students share their
successes with your course, they’re building buzz and organically generating
word-of-mouth marketing for your offerings.
3. UNLOCKING CONTENT BASED ON ACTIONS AND FOLLOWING UP WITH
SLOWER STUDENTS

One tricky course creation decision that online content creators face is whether
to deliver their courses in a “drip” format — where a new module is released on a
weekly basis — or to give access to an entire course up front.

Gami2cation opens the door to the best of both worlds and gives your students
the ability to move through a course at their own pace. If they’re keen students or
they happen to have time set aside to go through your program now, they can
quickly unlock content as they check off the progress items.

On the Zipside, for students who sign up for your course but haven’t reached any
of their progress objectives or interacted with any of your materials, you can set
up automated emails to follow up with them and check in, motivating them to log
in and keep going.
This type of individualized course release schedule means that students get to
learn at the pace that suits them the most, which allows for a personalized
learning experience and, most likely, new potential customers being sent your
way.

4. GAMIFIED QUIZZES PROVIDE INSTANT FEEDBACK

The main drawback of an online course is the loss of immediacy: You’re not
sitting in front of a live teacher who can assess whether or not you’re grasping a
topic or making headway. With new technologies like gami2ed quizzes, you, the
teacher, can build in checkpoints to see how your students are faring with your
course materials.

There’s a tendency to want to make quizzes or tests that reZect the types of
assessment exams we all took in school, but the idea behind using gami2cation
to quiz your students is to motivate them by showing them how much they’ve
already learned.

You can combine a quiz with social sharing or unlocking badges, too, which gives
students something to look forward to after completing a challenge. You can also
use quizzes as a way to unlock the next piece of content in your course. This
provides your learners with instant feedback on their understanding of the course
concepts.
5. WRAP YOUR COURSE INTO A COMPELLING STORY

There’s a reason that the entertainment industry is a billion dollar business: We’re
endlessly fascinated by stories. We love a good storyline in a movie, a book or a
video game, so why would an online course be any different?

This is where you can get creative in designing your course. You can craft a
narrative for your students to go through as they unlock course modules,
complete challenges or quizzes, and share their victories on social media.

The way you design your course interface also matters. If you’re creating a
course where the student plays the role of a young orphan who needs to learn
how to book Zights across the globe to 2nd his parents, you can drop Easter eggs
and hints throughout your membership site with tidbits about where to travel
next. Your curriculum can focus on how to book Zights using airline points or
round-the-world tickets.
You can also design your online course to have a “choose your own adventure”
feel so that learning modules aren’t sequential but rather recommended based on
the individual’s needs.

6. EARNING POINTS FOR TAKING ACTION AND LEVELING UP WITH BONUSES

If there’s one thing that video games have trained us to love, it’s earning points
and rewards. With gami2cation, you can reward your students for the actions
they take by giving them points or credits.

These points can be redeemed for bonuses such as bonus footage or advanced
course materials. Depending on your course topic, you can even offer bonus
done-for-you resources or access to other perks that can only be unlocked with
points.

This type of point system has been found extremely effective in many industries,
from hotel chains to retail stores. There’s something fun about rewarding your
most active and engaged customers with more goodies, and it’s never been
easier to implement a points system than in today’s digital age.

Bonus tip: You might also want to think about implementing a leaderboard to
showcase your top students and to tap into learners’ competitive sides.
7. INCREASING CHALLENGES AND BUILT-IN ACCOUNTABILITY

One way to increase students’ con2dence in their learning abilities is to give them
ways to win while ramping up the challenges you present over time.

For example, you may start with a simple topic and quiz, which gives a student a
boost in morale. Then follow that with a more advanced topic, giving students the
ability to test their newfound skill levels.

Just as a video game increases in complexity, you want to design your online
course to match the new abilities of your learners as they continue to absorb
more information and master more skills.

Another way to foster con2dence in your students is built-in accountability. You

can use quizzes or social sharing for that, but the way that you create your
course curriculum can also play a role. An automated email that checks in on
students’ progress and asks them to reply if they’re encountering any di^culties
along the way works wonders in keeping learners accountable.
These are just some of the gami2cation strategies that are sure to take your
online course experience to the next level, all while driving more course sales and
strong word of mouth.

3 Comments Sort by Top

Add a comment...

Luigi Cappel
Great ideas.
Like · Reply · 2 · 45w

Ontraport
Thank you, Luigi! Which tip resonnated with you most?
Like · Reply · 35w

Mojca Brubnjak
I have similar ideas for my " course" actualy I will apply it for guiding the tourists. Thank you
for your efforts.
Like · Reply · 34w

Ontraport
Mojca, that's a great idea! Gamification isn't limited to online courses — it can add
engagement and excitement to all kinds of customer experiences. What are some
of your ideas on implementing these strategies to guiding tourists?
Like · Reply · 1 · 34w

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About Nathalie Lussier

Nathalie Lussier is an award-winning entrepreneur, international keynote speaker,

and author who has been making web sites since she was 12 years old. She
graduated with a degree in Software Engineering and a job offer from Wall Street,
but she turned down this job to start her own business right out of college. Her
bootstrapped startup AccessAlly, has been featured in Entrepreneur and is
inspiring a culture of intuitive small business marketing software across the
globe. Nathalie has been featured in Forbes, Inc., Fast Company, Success
Magazine, Entrepreneur, Venture Beat, Mashable, Business Insider, Yahoo!
Finance, and Under 30 CEO. She's the creator of the hit 30 Day List Building
Challenge.

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