I need ideas on simple gamification for a course

There seem to be a lot of ideas, it may be difficult to get an avatar that the user can relate to so the superhero may work better, I would use a male and a female. 

Not sure what the relevance of moving up the floors in a hospital would be as in the real world they would be unlikely to do this.

The aim of gamification is to show progress and achievement, I would map out the course first and then look where you can add achievement and show progress.  Can you break the content down into short tasks that the user can achieve?

 Be careful as just adding some of these elements into a standard course will not make it any better.  Ideally the visuals, the content and the gasification elements are all cohesive and draw the user into your environment and aid learning rather than being a bolt on that has no added value.

Hi Tin,

Glad to help, but I need a bit of clarity first....   What do you mean by an "on-boarding annual refresher" course?  

 I ask because in my experience on-boarding courses are typically one-and-done to get the new employee on-boarded and integrated into the culture successfully. So perhaps your on-boarding course has a different purpose.....  understanding that purpose might help drive you towards more engaging content.

It in an on-boarding course as they "the client" put it about learning new principles and some didactic knowledge about a few topics. Which they think can also be something that they can go back to if the users wanted periodically (annually) to refresh on those topics.

From out intimal meeting it was clear that they were thinking of some topics being relevant to a few roles and the other topics relevant to the other roles. So although I like the ideas of superheroes but I need to have at least 1 for each role so a total of 5 at the minimum, I was then thinking of branching each superhero character on their own path and the info they will get will be slightly different than lets say the second superhero who has a different role.

Ok, I see that moving up floors in the hospital in not very relevant, but I was trying to think of a background that could also represent moving up or progressing.

So need ideas for that.

If you have 5 roles, I really think you need 10 avatars (male female).  Although you could just have a male female avatar and you personalise other bits for the role.

I would avoid using badges unless they actually achieve them, such as pass assessment, get top marks on assessment, I always look at badges as a way to get users to try harder or retry courses, they may get bronze for just passing but they may retake to try to get gold.

Instead of floors of the hospital, why not upgrade the avatar? When the learner completes an activity or a section, they gain a new power or piece of equipment (this could even be used to help them in the next section). You could make more of a 'game' out of the module by only rewarding them with an upgrade if they 'pass' a section - this could be as simple as a single multiple choice question. This would mean at the end of the course some users would have a more 'complete' hero than others. If they were able to print or share this in some way, it could be a good way to drive completions and enthuse the audience with a bit of healthy competition.

Think you might be making an awful lot of work for yourself including so many potential avatars though. You could profile the course for all those different user groups but only use one superhero (or two if you want to split by gender).

I think badges or level-up only means something if they needed effort to be obtained. So think about to create a challenge to be overcomed in each topic. As said before, it can be simple as a single multiple choice question, but you can empower it if add and story to the background of the question.