Gamification with Moodle: Use game elements in Moodle courses to build learner resilience and motivation

Standardized outcomes do not require standardized delivery. Technology should give teachers more choices and the freedom to teach the way that feels right to them and reduces their workload. Teaching from a pre-made course can feel restrictive and can take away the fun and responsiveness of being a teacher. In this book, you will learn a progressive development approach to create a Moodle Course that does not assume that everything will be set up before day one of the course. You will set up a framework, which can be filled in with detailed activities over time. Most teachers start with a series of learning outcomes but do not have the time available to plan every assessment and activity for the entire semester. Even if they did, they would miss out on including current news and events, encouraging learner-inspired projects, and responding to the skills and interests of the new batch of learners.

You could use a pre-assembled Gamification platform, such as Badgeville or Classcraft. This system may have a shorter learning curve and may be easier to set up than a blank Moodle Course. However, like any software wizard, you will become frustrated when you are locked in a system you can't alter, or the changes you require can only be made site-wide instead of at the course/class level. In some circumstances, pre-made Gamification software would meet your needs. However, this book presents Moodle as being a worthy technology to explore the range of game elements available for you to assemble in any order that you need. Moodle is already the world's most popular learning management system globally used in 225 countries with 68 million users. You are invited to contribute extension code or ideas to this successful open source project to keep it evolving.

In my experience, Moodle is the most versatile Gamification platform for education. Teachers can reduce their administration load, increase learner completion rates, and make the process more fun and rewarding for both themselves and their learners. As you try out each activity, you will see how the social constructionist pedagogy underlying Moodle — that we learn by doing, collaborating, and communicating — is closely aligned to game design principles. If you want to become a master of Gamification and continue to teach in your own style, then, in my opinion, Moodle is the best Gamification platform to invest your time in learning.

You will learn how to use game elements in Moodle to take learners on a journey of risk, choice, surprise, delight, and ultimately, transformation, and how to create courses that appeal to a diverse range of learners. We will discuss how learners require different types of feedback as they progress through the learning journey. The goal of this feedback is not only to reward and acknowledge mastery of the current task, but also to do the following from Jeff Sandefer's, The Learner Driven Revolution:

Minecraft has achieved this for a whole generation of children who haven't yet learned to read or write. As educators, we can borrow ideas from video game designers (who borrowed ideas from an ancient line of entertainers and storytellers) to motivate and engage people to complete their learning journey.

You will learn how to configure Moodle activities to reduce repetitive administration tasks such as checking whether work has been completed by all the learners, ensuring that the required documents have been received, or meeting audit reporting requirements. The challenge is to use computers to do the repetitive tasks that eat up your time and leave the creative rewarding aspects of teaching to you. You don't have to automate everything, so you are not expected to know how to use every activity in Moodle, rather you will start with what you find comfortable and effective in your context. Once you are convinced that this has really saved your time and that the process has been enjoyable, then you will be challenged to add another activity to your repertoire. In fact, you only have to master three activities to get to the end of this book! You really don't have to learn it all before you jump in and try. You wouldn't expect this from your learners and we don't expect this from you. Trust your instincts! You will know this works when you feel the change in the vibe of the room, or in the after-hours voluntary activities, or the increase in peer-mentoring, and more joy for both you and your learners.

The full power of placing learning activities within an LMS is that the sequence can create a personalized learning path. Technology in education is often under-utilized as a simple repository of files, when it can be so much more. The Moodle activities you create will automatically create data on learner participation and competence to assist you in identifying struggling learners and plan appropriate intervention/scaffolding. Activities for advanced learners can be revealed according to the criteria you set. The in-built reports available in Moodle LMS not only help you to get to know your learners faster, but also create evidence for formative assessment.

Take a few minutes to set up categories in your gradebook as the first step to keep scores throughout your course:

The parent category will calculate the total in a variety of ways. At first, you should keep it as simple as possible with the Natural default option (older versions of Moodle call this Sum of Grade). Moodle 2.8 hides advanced options. Even so, the options are endless and can be overwhelming. For now, keep with the simplest approach until you face a need for a different calculation.

Figure 1.6: Set up a category for Week 1 and another for Week 2 and so on

Switch views back to your Grader report using the drop-down menu. Notice that each week can be collapsed or expanded to see weekly tallies of points earned, for example, Week 4 total (see the following screenshot):

Figure 1.7: Add categories to your gradebook for each week so that you can tally the weekly scores automatically

From now on when you create an activity, you can place it in these pre-defined categories:

Figure 1.8: Each weekly total can be expanded or collapsed using the + sign next to the heading

When you create new activities, you will be able to choose which grading subcategory they should be placed in. At the very least, having activities in the two categories of Graded and Ungraded makes the gradebook more accurate for learners. We will place a few activities within each week. This is a flexible approach because you can have any number of activities within a week and use the gradebook as a calculator. It also allows you to back up the whole course and reuse it next year with a weekly session plan starting from your chosen date. Also, this way you don't have to change due dates on assignments and quizzes each term.

The first time you attempt this in your class, you may prefer to use paper or a simple spreadsheet over a three-week test run to build your own confidence in the process.

Figure 1.9: In the versions prior to Moodle 2.8, choose Simple view to add the categories. Change the total to Sum of grades. In Moodle 2.8, this is called Natural scoring

Figure 1.10: Show both the real value and percentage in the gradebook while you are planning your course scoring system

In this chapter, we used the Moodle gradebook to organize groups of activities into categories. Earlier versions of Moodle offered many options to cater to the different needs of schools around the globe. Moodle 2.8 offers a much simpler interface and layout. From now on, every activity can be placed in the correct category on creation. This will save you time and make your gradebook more accurate.

Keeping the gradebook accurate makes it easier for your learners to get a clear feedback on progress. Hide any elements you don't need by clicking on the little eye icon. You can hide the course total completely, if it is misleading in the final result. Students can access course grades by a link in the ADMINISTRATION block. If you don't need to use the gradebook, then use the Moodle course settings page and change the gradebook to be not displayed.

The next chapter will inspire you to start thinking like a game designer when you start adding activities in your Moodle course. There are simple and quick changes you can make that will have a powerful effect on learner engagement.