Plantyn

Scoodle Play educational platform

4 minUTE read

Using gamification to make educational content more entertaining and engaging for children.

Educational content and homework exercises can often be composed of relatively dry material that fails to engage and motivate learning in children. By placing a layer of gamification over the top, designed to encourage pupils to carry out homework exercises by rewarding them with achievements, we can prompt increased participation in educational exercises.

The addition of rewards and incentives can enhance online digital content, making it more popular and effective.

Plantyn, a division of Infinitas Learning, is a renowned Belgian publisher, providing educational resources for primary, secondary, and higher education. Scoodle is the Learning Management System (LMS) used to deliver this educational material to schools and Scoodle Play is the gamified educational hub layered on top of the LMS that rewards students for completing digital learning activities. Students earn coins for completing learning activities and use these to customise their own avatar, adding new outfits and personal items, they can send stickers to classmates, and can earn rewards in real life for their entire class.

A game screenshot

Students have a range of choices to customise their avatar

When we built Scoodle Play, we tied it into the existing Scoodle LMS architecture and systems. All the educational exercises and existing content are delivered by Plantyn’s LMS, with all sensitive user data held securely on their servers. We were able to deliver the gamified layer without requiring access to any of this information, nor did we need to rebuild their teacher portal or management systems. The ability to build on top of existing backend architecture means we can use the system already in place and enhance the content currently being delivered by making it more popular and effective.

A game screenshot

Students use the coins earned for completed exercises to personalise their locker area

Scoodle Play was built to be a stable, sustainable platform that allows users to access content from web browsers and apps from the Google Play and Apple App stores. The same profile is used across each so that the student can use the web browser and the app, and it all contributes to the same learning profile that the homework is set through.

A game screenshot
A game screenshot

The student’s avatar changes depending on whether the answer is correct or wrong

During the Covid-19 pandemic, like much of the world, schools in Belgium were closed. Teachers transitioned their students from the traditional learning environment to Scoodle Play, set more homework, and encouraged them to complete more exercises.

Quotation marks

The team at fish in a bottle has not only created a successful interactive educational environment but has also shown an unwavering commitment to enhancing and evolving the platform over time.

Head of Engineering – Infinitas Learning

Traffic on the Scoodle Play education hub increased approximately sevenfold in a single day. However, due to careful engineering and robust testing, the servers scaled appropriately, the APIs linking the Scoodle LMS and the Scoodle Play Hub handled the increase in traffic, and the user experience remained unchanged for both teachers and students.

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