Moodle as an eLearning platform using gamification
Moodle is maybe the most used open source LMS nowadays. Many universities, companies and schools provide their teachers with this tool. Moodle is also very popular among teachers because it is free and, moreover, because teachers can create their own online courses. In addition, as there is a big community supporting Moodle, Moodle community tries to allow teachers to follow new trends in education, such as gamification.
Structural gamification focuses in the application of game elements in the learning process in order to motivate learners, taking into account that we do not modify the content. Motivation is the key concept when learning and games designers know how to engage players. Therefore, the main aim when gamifying in Moodle is importing game-elements to our online courses.
There are plenty of game elements to use but, as learning should focus on students, game elements in Moodle should motivate and engage students, not distract them. Student-centred learning should provide instant feedback and allow students to keep their own pace while learning, this is called progressiveness. Moodle includes tools to gamify a course, but setting a Moodle course is more than setting badges or conditions, it needs a plan or story for the students.
Eventually, the features we desire for online courses using gamification are:
- Progressive learning: adapted levels, “maps” to explore the learning, progression bars.
- Social: share activities, comments between teachers or students, social use.
- Instant feedback: remarks, suggestions, hints.
- Rewards: points, badges, leaderboards, certificates.
Latest versions of Moodle provide core (embedded) tools to deal with these features:
Viewing conditions resources, restrict access: It allows activities to be greyed or hidden until some requirements are accomplished.
Conditions to activity completion: The combination of conditions to restrict access to an activity and the condition to activity completion builds a strong system to create several learning levels and implement scaffolding in education.
Badges and labels: To inform about achievement. They should be used to celebrate big achievements and progress. When adding badges to the course, Moodle allows teachers to set criteria, an activity completion rules as well as a message to inform the student why he or she got the badge.
Grade book: tools that Moodle has in order to show grades to students, that is, to track their progress. Teachers can edit grade settings and allow students to show their rank, which is the position in relation to the rest of the class (similar to a leaderboards) or the percentage value of each item (similar to a progress bar).
Activities: quizzes, assignment, workshops and lessons. This activity allows teachers to build quizzes with several types of questions: multiple choice, true-false, short-answer questions and others. When setting the quiz, Moodle lets us choose between different types of feedback either in general, in the particular question or in the answer given. The feedback system allows teacher to set a great number of possibilities.
Assignments: to allow teachers to collect work from students (files), review it and provide feedback in terms of grades and comments.
Workshops: to allow students to grade other students or carry out self-assessment. They will get two marks: one for the work they sent and the other one for their assessment of the peers’ work.
Therefore, teachers assess the work and the way students assess. Workshops, in terms of peer assessment, increase student responsibility and autonomy and provide more relevant feedback to students given by other students.
Surveys, choices, forums and chats: Forum and chat are Moodle activities that allow students’ interaction, that is, to socialize in the course. Teachers can also answer questions that students ask in forums. Surveys and choices provide an ungraded feedback from students to teachers. There are only five pre-designed surveys to choose from and you cannot write your own survey at present. The choice tool allows you to ask any question you like, as long as it is multiple-choice question.