I have this idea. Stupid little things can increase engagement in online communities and classrooms. Things like “rewards”, “awards”, games, points, and the like.
I spent Friday night working on a simple game for BuddyPress that creates a high-score board. The game simply counts how fast you can click a square 10 times. It then takes your time and compares it to other members’ times in a public “high-score board”.
This concept has been used since the beginning of the digital age with arcade games and has been taken to a new level with Facebook games, which let you compare your high scores on Bejeweled and other games with your friends’ high scores.
This concept, of course, is totally stupid, but the results are staggering. People enjoy Facebook more because of these features. They spend more time on Facebook, become more engaged with Facebook, and buy into the brand a bit more on account of these stupid games. They also have something to talk about with their friends when they see them in person. Amazing.
Application
I have a friend who is running two classrooms on the BuddyPress platform. We were talking about the Facebook game/high-score phenomenon over pizza one day and decided to apply this concept to his BuddyPress classroom communities. Coincidentally, he is also planning on writing his doctoral thesis on the effectiveness of online communities as classrooms.
My hypothesis is that the simple addition of stupid, competitive games to BuddyPress will get students of his class engaging more. It will help them learn faces, and it will help them start conversations when they meet up in person once per week.
It is the quality of these person-to-person interactions that make or break classrooms, imho.
So, just in time for the 2011 Spring semester, I plan on releasing a gaming plugin for BuddyPress that includes a single game with a high-score board. My hope is that teachers will demo this plugin out and provide some feedback. I might also include an add-on for Heavy Analytics so that teachers can track student progress in the game.
What do you think?
From Toby’s Blog
- How Digital Ocean Cost Us Thousands of Dollars in a Single DayHere’s the rub for me: My belief is that bad stuff happens, and you need to own it. Digital Ocean definitely did not own it in this case. I wonder how the original founders of Digital Ocean would have reacted had they been in charge… For example, wouldn’t it be nice if an actual human… […]
- Where uncertainty exists, don’t order specific.4 Idiot Case Studies with 2 simple age-old business lessons. The post Where uncertainty exists, don’t order specific. appeared first on Toby Cryns, WordPress Trainer in Minneapolis, MN.
- “Now THAT was a good meeting!”A single effective meeting can change the course of history for a company. Imagine if you could lead effective meetings EVERY DAY! You can, but it takes curiosity & practice. This article is a good place to start your journey to a more effective you. The post “Now THAT was a good meeting!” appeared first […]
More posts from themightymo.com
How to merge multiple .csv files via command line
Today I downloaded 29 csv files with tax information. I could import those files 1 at a time into WooCommerce, but wouldn’t it be nice if I could merge them first and then only import a single file? The unix command is simple – just navigate to the folder with all the csv files and…
15 Best WordPress Support and Maintenance Services for 2023: Ensuring Your Website Stays in Top Shape
Small business owners and non-profit leaders know that keeping your website secure, fast, and fully-functional is critical to success. Here’s the unspoken truth: You can either learn how to do all that tech maintenance and development stuff yourself, or hire someone else to do it. But let’s face it, doing it yourself isn’t always the…
How to Whitelist SEM Rush IPs in Cloudflare
Alright, I’m going to show you how to whitelist a set of IPs on CloudFlare. In our case we use SEMrush and we want to make sure the SEMrush has full access to our sites.
From Toby’s Blog
- How Digital Ocean Cost Us Thousands of Dollars in a Single DayHere’s the rub for me: My belief is that bad stuff happens, and you need to own it. Digital Ocean definitely did not own it in this case. I wonder how the original founders of Digital Ocean would have reacted had they been in charge… For example, wouldn’t it be nice if an actual human… […]
- Where uncertainty exists, don’t order specific.4 Idiot Case Studies with 2 simple age-old business lessons. The post Where uncertainty exists, don’t order specific. appeared first on Toby Cryns, WordPress Trainer in Minneapolis, MN.
- “Now THAT was a good meeting!”A single effective meeting can change the course of history for a company. Imagine if you could lead effective meetings EVERY DAY! You can, but it takes curiosity & practice. This article is a good place to start your journey to a more effective you. The post “Now THAT was a good meeting!” appeared first […]