Gamification - Points and Badges

OppiaMobile awards points and badges to users based on their usage of the app and content.

The points system is essentially a measure of engagement with the content - however it doesn’t really give a picture of how much was understood. The badging provides confirmation that all the activities have been completed and that the user has met at least the pass threshold for each quiz included in the course.

Points System

Points can be customised down to individual activity level, there are 3 levels of points:

  • Activity Level Points - points which are defined for a particular activity.

  • Course Level Points - points which are defined for a particular course. Each activity will use these points, unless an activity has had custom points set up.

  • Global/Default Level Points - if neither course nor activity level points have been defined, then the global/default points will be used.

Global/Default Points

By default, points are awarded as follows:

  • 100 – creating an account

  • 50 – downloading a course

  • 20 – first time a quiz is attempted

  • ? – depends on percentage score for a first attempt at a quiz. E.g. if the score is 75% on the first attempt, 75 points will be awarded

  • 50 – bonus for getting 100% on first attempt at a quiz

  • 10 – each subsequent attempt at a quiz (max. once per day per quiz)

  • 10 – completing an activity (max. once per day per activity)

  • ? – video views – points are awarded for how long the video has been have watched, 5 points for every 30 seconds watch, up to a maximum of 200 points. A bonus 20 points are given for the first time in a day a particular video is watched

The points system is designed to encourage users to return to the courses regularly and engage in the activities.

To update the points see Customising the Gamification (Points and Badges)

Badges and Completing Courses

Every activity has the concept of ‘completedness’. The definitions of activities being completed of each activity type are given below:

  • quiz - a quiz is completed if the user has obtained at least the pass threshold for the quiz.

  • text/webpage - the page must be open for at least 3 seconds. Clearly this is not a very effective measure of testing whether the user has fully read and understood the page content, however, currently it is the only way of measuring that we currently have. We advise ensuring that the quiz questions provide an effective measure of understanding the content.

  • video - video/media files are embedded within text/web pages. The user must have the video running for at least the length of the video. This may not correspond exactly to saying they have watched the whole video - for example they may pause, fast-forward/rewind, and so have the video open for the required time, but not actually have watched the video from start to finish.

  • feedback - the user needs to answer all the questions

  • file - the user simply needs to have opened the file

Course completed badge options

There are 4 options for the method to award a course completed badge:

  • all_activities (default) - All activities must be completed, including all quizzes passed and all media viewed

  • all_quizzes - All quizzes need to be completed and passed

  • final_quiz - Only the final quiz needs to be completed and passed

  • all_activities_plus_percent - All quizzes need to be completed and passed, and a percentage (default is 80%) of all other (non-quiz) activities completed. This percentage is configurable in the settings.

To update the badge award method, or to change the percentage for the all_activities_plus_percent method see Customising the Gamification (Points and Badges)

Note

The badge awarding is performed by the Oppia cron task, so for badges to be awarded, please ensure that the cron task is set up to run regularly.