Level up! block

Understand Student Activity - The report shows instructors the experience and level of the students in the course. This gives them an understanding towards how active the students in their course are as well as which students are more and less active.

Reward progress - Students are given a sense of constant progression as they gain experience and levels. Each level rewards students for their activity in the course.

Encourage Friendly Competition - The ladder is a leaderboard that encourages competition by ranking students on the amount of experience and levels they have gained.

Student learning experience - This is a new take on improving student engagement by incorporating familiar game features. The game like aspects and progression of Level up! help to improve motivation, encourage engagement and activity of students. Instructors can customise this block by uploading custom icons and writing levels to improve the engagement of the course.

To add a Level up! block to your course:

1. On the course home page, click Turn editing on. 
2. Using the "Add a block" block on the left hand side, add the Level up! block.
   

To set up the settings of the block:

1. Click on the settings button in the Level up! block.
   
2. The settings can be used to control how the block behaves, appears, whether the leaderboard is active and how the cheat prevention feature functions. These are some important settings to look out for:
   
   • General: 
     • Enable points gain: Determines whether people can earn experience points in the course. This can be used to freeze point gain.
     • Enable level up notification: Determines if a pop up will appear to congratulate the student every time they level up.
   • Ladder: The ladder is a leaderboard ranking students on their experience points and level
     • Enable the ladder: Determines whether the students can view a leaderboard.
     • Anonymity: Determines whether the students will appear anonymous on the leaderboard
   • Cheat Guard: The cheat guard is a simple mechanism that prevents cheating experience points by limiting the experience a student can earn from actions within a small period of time.
     • Enable cheat guard: Determines whether the cheat guard is active or not
     • Max. actions in time frame: The number of actions that will count towards points in the period of time. Depending on how the tasks that give points are set up, this may need to be changed so that normal users do not get limited by the cheat guard.
   • Block Appearance:
     • 'Title' and 'introduction': Set the title and introduction displayed on the block
     • Display recent rewards: Determines if the block will display a list of recent actions that gave the student points

To set up the levels that students can achieve and the experience points required to reach them:

1. Click on the settings button in the Level up! block.
   
2. In the menu bar towards the top of the page, click on Levels.
   
3. Change the Level Count setting to what you want the maximum number of levels to be.
4. In the General Section, click show more.
   
5. Change the Use the algorithm option to determine how the experience needed to reach each level is calculated. Choosing Yes will use the Algorithm base and Algorithm coefficient to determine the experience needed for each level.  Choosing No will allow you to directly input the experience needed per level.
   
6. Input level descriptions for each level. These descriptions will be displayed on the Info screen for students to see.
   

Instructors can set up which events or actions give students experience by setting up rules:

1. Click on the settings button in the Level up! block.
   
2. In the menu bar towards the top of the page, click on Rules.
   
3. Click on Add a rule to begin adding a rule.
   
4. Input the points you want the student to earn when they complete this rule in the 'points are earned when:' input box.
   
5. Click on the conditions drop down box to select how conditions can be met to give points.
   

6. Click Add a condition. A pop up will appear with 4 different conditions:
   It is recommended for new users to use the 'Specific event' and 'Activity or resource' conditions.
   

   • Specific event: Any general type of action such as viewing an activity of a certain type or posting in a certain type of activity. These events are not linked to a specific activity.
   • Activity or resource: The completion of a specific activity or resource
   • Event property: Specific events can be selected by directly inputting the events details. Event details for events that have been achieved can be viewed in the Log section of the Level up! block menu.
   • Set of conditions: This is a condition that is made up of many other conditions. Using this is recommended for more experienced users and allows for complex rules to be created.
7. Repeat step 6 to add more conditions for the rule.
8. Repeat steps 3 to 6 to add more rules.

The instructor can directly set or change a students experience points by:

1. Click on the Report button of the Level up! block.
   
2. Navigate to the student whose experience points you want to change. Click on the gear icon beside the student's entry.
   
3. The student's entry will appear on top of the page. Change the Total input box to the desired amount of experience.
   
4. Click Save changes.