Welcome to GradeCraft!

The learning management system that helps instructors build gameful courses & encourages students to focus on the craft of learning

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What is “gameful learning?”

Gameful learning is a pedagogical approach inspired by techniques and methods found in well-designed games. It utilizes concepts such as:

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Earning Up

Flip the framework of your course so that everyone starts at zero: students earn their way up to success as they complete milestones.

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Increased Autonomy

Empower your students to make choices about when and what type of work they want to do: they choose how to demonstrate their learning.

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Freedom to Fail

Design learning opportunities for students to take risks and explore without the fear that their grade will suffer.

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Tangible Progress

Students can see their progress at any time. Levels, unlocks, and badges provide feedback and support motivation to keep working.

Want to learn more about Gameful Pedagogy?

Check out these featured resources from GamefulPedagogy.com

What is Gameful?

Learn more about the core elements of gameful learning

Read more

Getting Started with Gameful

Learn how to implement gameful design in your course

Get started

FAQ’s

Frequently asked questions about gameful pedagogy

Find your question

Example Syllabi

Example syllabi from courses using gameful pedagogy

View examples

GradeCraft supports your gameful design

Our tool helps you utilize gameful methodologies and apply them to the design of your learning environment. We do this through state-of-the-art Learning Management System (LMS) features such as:

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The Points Planner

The Points Planner enables students to set clear goals for themselves and plan their work in your course. They decide which assignments they want to work on, set a goal for how they expect to do, and ensure that they are building toward success in the course as a whole.

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Learning Analytics

Data helps you keep track of who is making progress and who may need more support, and helps students stay informed about their own work. By allowing students to see analytics independently, they can then take charge of their own success.

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Flexible Rubrics

Rubrics show students concise expectations you have for their work. You can design your rubrics to help deliver clear, consistent feedback to your students. Our rubric feature is flexible: you can enter different amounts of points that can be achieved for each criterion, and more.

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Leveling System

Customize the leveling scheme to match your course design—declare what point thresholds equate to earning grade levels, and match the level names to a hierarchy relevant to the coursework itself.

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Badges

Badges can be used to recognize student achievement on a specific assignment or their excellence more broadly in your course. Badges are flexible: you decide how they’re awarded, and how they relate to student progress.

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Leaderboards

Students can choose to participate in anonymous, team-based leaderboards if they enjoy competition, or opt-out if they don't. As the instructor, you control if leaderboards appear at all.

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Unlocks & Gating

Games don’t start with a final boss battle—the same is true for learning: we want learners to acquire foundational knowledge before they move on to more complex work. With unlocks, you can determine what work must be done before students unlock additional opportunities.

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Integration with Existing Platforms

We know that integrating with other platforms is key, so we support Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) 1.1 as both a Tool Provider and Consumer. Your data is your data—and should always be available to you to download and dig into.

GradeCraft supports you!

We believe your effort as an instructor shouldn’t be spent trying to figure out how a system works. We work with instructors to make sure GradeCraft is as easy to use as possible so you can create a rich learning environment for your students.

We are constantly working to improve our grading features in response to instructor feedback. Rubrics? Yup. Analytics? Got it. Downloadable data? Always. What’s next? That’s up to you!

Ready to get started with GradeCraft?

Are you an instructor who believes learning should be gameful?
Do you want to get started with your gameful course design?

Sign up now!

Learn more about GradeCraft

Want to learn more about the research behind GradeCraft, the team that built this tool, or just curious about how this all began? Learn more about us


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