How To Gamify Online Learning Experiences With the Intellum Platform

Are you looking to improve learner engagement and decrease your abandonment rate? Intellum’s new-and-improved gamification feature will help you achieve both goals. 

Studies show that e-learning gamification features, like points and badges, improve learner engagement.

But not all gamification is created equal. 

At Intellum, we believe that reputation-based gamification is most effective. 

What is reputation-based gamification?

Most forms of gamification are about earning XP (experience points). When a learner completes a course or training activity, they earn points, and those points accumulate over time. Learners may earn a top spot on the leaderboard, but what do those points actually mean? What do they translate into in real life? 

It’s not like you can post to LinkedIn: “I earned 5,000 points!” Nobody knows what that means. 

Reputation-based gamification isn’t about earning points—it’s about building your reputation in specific skills. It’s also about upskilling, skills mastery, and improving your professional career in a measurable, meaningful way.

Reputation-based gamification allows learners to tell their LinkedIn network, “I can demonstrate competency in project management.” 

In other words, it allows learners to build or improve their professional reputation.  

How does Intellum’s gamification feature work?

From the learner’s perspective:

‍With a new and improved learner profile page, learners can see how much reputation they’ve earned toward each skill. ‍

There are there icons at the top of the learner profile:

1. Total reputation 
2. Credentials earned 
3. Trophies earned 

Companies can choose to enable “gold,” which learners can redeem for prizes like gift cards or branded apparel. If gold is enabled, learners will also see how much “gold” they’ve earned at the top of their profile—plus a button that lets them cash it in via a branded e-store.

While total reputation earned can be found at the top of the learner profile, the Skills section displays reputation earned broken down by skill. For example, a learner who earned 10,000 total reputation points can easily see across which skills they’ve earned that reputation and by how much:

• 6,000 reputation points in x skill
• 3,500 reputation points in y skill 
• 500 reputation points in z skill

While reputation is ongoing and can be built over time, credentials are fixed. Credentials show mastery of a topic and are awarded after learners complete specific, sequenced course content. 

Within the credentials section, learners can click on any credential they’ve earned to see the date of completion and the credential ID.

With a touch of a button, learners can share their credentials on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook to build their external reputation at scale. Or, they can click to email or print certifications.

At the bottom of their profile, learners will find challenges. They can complete time-based challenges to earn a trophy (or gold, if it’s enabled).

Underneath “active challenges,” learners will see their two most recent active challenges. If a learner clicks the “explore challenges” button, they’ll see all available challenges.

From the admin’s perspective:

‍With a new and improved administrator dashboard, admins have complete control of how to deploy gamification to learners. ‍

Intellum enables admins to apply game mechanics to course content. 

In order for learners to earn reputation, the admin must first enable Reputation then assign courses the appropriate difficulty level: beginner, intermediate, or advanced. This action determines how much reputation a learner can earn by taking a given course.

• Beginner courses = 100 reputation points
• Intermediate courses = 250 reputation points
• Advanced courses = 500 reputation points 

Note: If a course is tagged with multiple skills, learners will earn 100, 250, or 500 reputation points for each tagged skill. For example, if a beginner course has three skills tags, learners will earn 100 reputation points for each skill (300 reputation points total). ‍

In the below graphic, you can also see how simple it is to enable reputation, enable gold, or start a new challenge.

Admins have the power to define which skills learners will earn by completing learning content; skills aren’t pre-loaded. After defining skills, admins must assign skills tags to each course. Without those skills tags, the platform won’t award reputation. This was intentional: when reputation is attached to specific skills, learning is more meaningful. 

Most organizations choose to display gamification achievements to all learners because learners benefit from seeing which skills—and how much reputation—their role models and peers have earned. However, admins can decide whether or not to share achievements.

Finally, gamification was built with scalability in mind. Viewing learner participation and rewards earned is a breeze. Effortlessly measure the success of your learners, content, and education strategy with deep analytics and reporting.

Can organizations use gamification with all learner personas?

Absolutely. Gamification enhances your employee, customer, and partner education initiatives. 

Employee education

Gamification helps employees build their external reputation. They can share earned credentials on LinkedIn—or Credly (we offer an optional integration). Enabling employees to share earned credentials can be good for your employer brand; more and more, candidates look to work at companies that invest in their employees’ development. Moreover, development is necessary. Our recent survey of 445 workplace education professionals revealed that 12% feel they lack the knowledge and training they need to succeed.

‍Gamification also helps employees build their internal reputation. They can share their skills reputation or credentials with their manager and say, “I’ve gained experience in this specific skill, and that’s why I should get this promotion or raise.” And similar to the above point, education improves employee retention; when a company helps its employees build relevant skills to move up the ladder or increase their pay, they’re less likely to seek work elsewhere.

“If I get a certification in Jira through Atlassian University, I can then say to my manager, “I’d like to lead the next development project.” - Leah Zillner, Associate Product Manager at Intellum

Customer education

‍Gamification helps customers build their external and internal reputation. Like employees, customers can share their achievements with their peers or managers in order to build a stronger personal brand, secure a promotion or raise, or beef up their resumes. 

Gamification also helps customers better utilize your product. Or maybe customers learn to better utilize your product, which in turn enables them to make a bigger impact at work and earn a raise. As you know, the more ROI a customer gets from your product, the less likely they are to churn—so it’s a win-win all around.

Partner education

‍Gamification enables partners to sell more and better represent your brand. Lots of people equate partner education with building sales skills. But education helps partners to build brand knowledge, too. But of course, you need to encourage partners to return to the learning destination and complete their training. This is where reputation-based gamification comes in.

For example, Cricket Wireless is using Intellum’s new gamification feature to train partners about the devices and accessories the company offers:

“Gamification [within Intellum] provides a platform where learners are encouraged to challenge themselves and their peers with friendly competition,” says Alyssa Morris, Associate Director of Design for Cricket Wireless. “It is essential in driving continued growth through training, which in turn leads to increased sales and customer satisfaction.”

Simplify your learning solution.

Many companies are dealing with an abundance of tools. And this is an expensive problem that creates duplicative work. In today’s economy, education teams don’t have space for unnecessary tools and duplicative work.

Since gamification is built within the Intellum platform, there’s no need to bolt on a separate gamification tool. Intellum is a single destination for all your organizational education needs.