I have been using Class Dojo as a platform to Gamify my classroom this year. Class Dojo is great for
allocating points easily and quickly to individuals in your class for what ever you set it up for. I have taken principles from some of my favourite games.
- Leveling up
- Gaining XP
My system uses 6 Levels. I have used chess pieces and colour to show the progression of levels. Each level needs an increasing amount of points to level up...
There is also some prizes and lollies associated with levelling up.
When the reach the max level of King and get all the points with it they can choose:
A. to choose a different custom avatar and keep scoring points infinitly
OR
B. Trade in all their effort for a little Prestige = restart with the same avatars with a star in the corner, very similar to online first person shooting games like Call of Duty.
I gave out XP (points) for:
- Task completion
- On time to class
- Good idea/question
- Quality of work
- Task completion on time
This whole idea worked great for engagment. It made really tangible rewards for getting work done on time or improving work for an external reward. The best part is give out XP cost me nothing. They craved the status and recognition of what they have achieved. It did get time consuming, ensure I added the correct points and made it fair for the entire class. Manually updating the Avatars took some work as well.
Overall using Levelling up and Gaining XP as principles for gamification in the classroom as awesome and I will be using them again. The only things I might change is try to adapt the system to make the managing of it easier, perhaps by give some students ownership of the point allocation.