How to Motivate Teams with Gamification in LMS in 2024

Updated: February 01, 2024

If you're teaching virtually, you might be worried that your students are not engaged enough with the experience of learning or with one another through this medium.

Some people can engage really well with materials for classes that are delivered entirely online, but this is not always the case. For the learners who seem not to be as engaged as you would like, gamification in your LMS can be a game-changer.

Using the general principles of gamification and gamification tools to help make sure that your students are connecting with each other and the subject matter can make a big impact on your teaching success through an LMS. Gamification works on so many levels that it can help to connect learners with one another, with the subject matter, and with you as their teacher.

What is gamification in LMS (Learning Management Systems)?

Gamification in an LMS applies strategic game mechanics (points, rewards, leaderboards) to increase engagement, motivate behavior, and increase successful outcomes for learners.

Gamification in a learning management system can be used for work and for school-based education with ease. Everyone is pretty familiar these days with the fundamentals of gamification and will interact with them readily. Gamification uses the motivational aspects of gaming and gaming strategies to create engaged and interested learners.

This might be done through the use of friendly competition on leaderboards, through the use of rewards or points-based systems, or through the telling of a story. All of these tools can make it really enjoyable to learn even the toughest subject matter, and you can keep your students from becoming mentally fatigued and bored with ease using this strategy as well.

How to Use Gamification in an LMS

Gamification can be utilized in many ways within an LMS.

The first thing you will want to do is consider the basic elements of gamification to incorporate such as badges, points, and/or rewards for the actions that you want your learners to take. If you already have an LMS in place, take a step back and look at the learning paths provided from a 30,000-foot perspective.

Then begin to look for areas where you can weave the elements of gamification in. Perhaps you break larger subject matter into smaller achievements and goals. Maybe you connect those smaller goals to a reward system. From there you might consider elements like progress bars, leaderboards, and bonuses for extra credit work.

There are many tools and platforms readily available to help you provide a gamified journey for your learners with ease (more on that below).

Examples of Gamification in LMS

Game strategies can readily be applied to the learning environment, and you will probably realize that you yourself engage with these strategies when they are offered through the use of apps or even gaming of various kinds.

1. Reward Systems to Display Learners' Achievements

These might be points-based, they might be physical, or they might be virtual through the use of badges or icons that show that someone has achieved a certain score or success rating, or completion status.

2. Leaderboards that Foster Friendly Competition

Leaderboards make sure that teams can see who is doing what, and they help to foster friendly competition that can motivate more intense effort as well as continued engagement with the teaching materials associated with the class.

3. Progress Bars to Motivate Learners

Being able to see how close you are to completing something can make it really motivating to continue on to finish the task at hand. This can be one of the most powerful tools in the gamification list for teaching processes that involve lots of units and lots of information.

4. Storytelling to Engage Learners

Offering up a story or a reason for completing the tasks at hand can make it much more fun to finish things and meet goals. Storytelling is universally interesting to those who are learning new subject matter, and you can easily use this tool for your gamification needs.

Why Use Gamification in an LMS? Benefits explained.

Gamification offers many benefits that you can use to make your learners really excited about engaging with your subject matter.

1. Reward the Brain

The dopamine hit that the brain gets from succeeding at completing something and from getting a reward can make it much more fun and engaging to study and complete work projects.

2. Increase Team Social Bonding

The social bonding aspect of learning in teams can be made much more relevant through the use of gamification.

3. Create and Reinforce Good Habits

Teaching teams and individual students to engage with the subject matter that they need to learn repeatedly can be a great outcome of using gamification in a learning environment.

Gamification Platforms for LMS

There are some great options that you can use to gamify your online classroom. Being able to set up a gamified teaching platform with ease is a big benefit to using these tools for your teaching goals.

1. Scavify

Scavify has long been one of the leaders in gamified learning, and you can easily work on gamified learning concepts along with team-building fun within the helpful Scavify app. There are few options that are more fun to leverage for gamified team-building, and Scavify can help you to customize all the various options that you want access to with ease.

2. TalentLMS

While aimed more at work teams, this is a great way to help your staff or students learn and get rewarded for doing so. The templates within this platform are easy to use and are highly effective at creating reliable learning outcomes.

3. Edapp

This is a really great choice for all kinds of learning types. You can easily set up fun and engaging gamified learning opportunities with this software that will work for learners of nearly every age. The badges and extra credit offerings within this application are really well-crafted, and the templates are excellent as well.

Gamification of LMSs Can Make Learning More Engaging

There are few things as effective in making it fun to learn as gamification.

Helping your learners to engage with learning materials without struggle and with a sense of fun is very easy when you gamify your teaching. You will love that these platforms can be used to make the learning process more fun and rewarding than ever and that your students will enjoy every moment of their efforts in your class through the use of these tools.

Teaching tough subject matter and making it easier to get through dense learning materials can be much easier if the process is fun and rewarding. Gamification is a very effective tool for this kind of need, and you will be glad that you have upgraded your teaching to include these really effective tools.