How do you take gamification past just fun and make it truly engaging? The Chronicle for Higher Education might have the answer. Recently they highlighted a tool developed at the University of Michigan called GradeCraft. It aims to go beyond superficial additions like points, leaderboards, and badges, and move gamification into more complex designs like narrative, identity play, challenge, a sense of belonging, autonomy, and support for competence (see infographic).

Some of the GradeCraft features include:

• an assignment weighting system that allows students to establish unique grading schemes
• interactive rubrics and quick grading features
• a badging system that encourages the recognition of student achievement in a way that can be shared amongst students
• opt-in leaderboards
• custom levelling system
• analytics displays to help students and instructors track and understand progress

Read the Chronicle’s article about GradeCraft.

And for those brave souls you can always install it yourself!