Lab attendance rose by 2,000%, student engagement became more visible, and lecturers could intervene as soon as students began to fall behind when Level Up XP was introduced across several high-enrolment Moodle courses at Queen Mary University of London. Read on to learn how Level Up XP turned gamification into a tool to support learners and track progress.

Large Classrooms Present Challenges for Lecturers and Learners

Dr Usman Naeem, a Reader in Computer Science Education at Queen Mary University, regularly teaches more than 300 students in a single course. While he makes an effort to learn every learner’s name, assessing each student’s progress individually is a real challenge.

University class sizes have grown worldwide due to financial pressures and rising enrolment. Many instructors lack the training or confidence to manage the larger data sets created by these student numbers, which can lead to students falling behind. As class sizes increase, learning outcomes tend to decline (Larcinese et al., 2010).

Level Up XP at Queen Mary University

To address this, Dr Naeem implemented Level Up XP in his “Fundamentals of Web Technology” course for more than 300 students.

Working within Moodle, he structured the course around levels, badges, and XP, so students could see their progress as they completed formative assessments, encouraging deeper learning of the course topics.

At the start of the course, learners were given a clear introduction to Level Up XP: what it is, why it’s used, and exactly how they could earn points. The points system was meaningful, signalling which activities mattered most. For instance, in part one of the course, watching a video or attending a live session earned around 10 points each. Attending voluntary lab exercises was worth 60 points. Students progressed through different levels by collecting points.

Importantly, progression to next week’s material was not blocked by Level Up XP. Students could still access all materials without advancing levels, but the points and level system helped them track their progress and added a fun element to the class.

Certain milestones emerged as strong indicators of success. For example, no student who achieved level 6 in the class has failed the course. Dr Naeem shares this benchmark with students from the outset, giving them a clear reference point to guide their progress.

Instructors can customise Level Up XP in several ways, including assigning points to activities and setting progression goals. He also combined Level Up XP with the Moodle badge feature to create custom badges. By earning and displaying badges on their profile, students could celebrate their success.

Dr Naeem designed his badges around classic films and the topic content, adding a personal touch that offered students a glimpse into his interests. This not only humanised him but also made him approachable to his first-year students.

Motivation Beyond Grades

Students collected points and progressed through levels even though XP did not contribute to their final grade. In Dr Naeem’s course, lab attendance is optional and ungraded, yet once participation was tied to XP, attendance rose to levels he had not seen before.

In 2023/24, before implementing Level Up, about 3 students attended each lab session. After using Level Up XP, attendance rose to an average of 63 students per session.

Some students were driven by friendly competition and wanted to maintain a strong position on the leaderboard. Others responded to practical rewards, such as priority in selecting exam slots and invitations to a real-life Level Up event where students with high XP were honoured for their success.

In student feedback, 77% reported a positive impact on their motivation through Level Up XP.

Dr Naeem has also helped foster cross-module collaboration, in which work completed in one course can contribute XP in another, a novel way to connect learning between different departments. This approach helps students connect learning across subjects and see how skills transfer between areas.

Easy-to-use Support Signals For Lecturers

Using Level Up XP gave Dr Naeem a quick way to spot patterns that could signal that a student needs support. He also observed a measurable correlation between XP and final grades, with higher XP generally associated with stronger outcomes.

Low XP scores after the first couple of weeks proved to be a reliable early warning sign, often indicating that a student had missed key activities. This made it easier for the student support team to intervene early through check-ins. Instead of having to dig through large volumes of data, XP offered him a simple way to identify students who might need help.

Scaling Level Up XP to Other Courses

Because Level Up XP is relatively simple to set up and monitor, other lecturers were open to implementing it in their courses.

Dr Naeem and his colleague, Dr Vindya Wijeratne, are currently spearheading a project at their institution to share their approach with educators across various disciplines. Similar to Dr Naeem, Dr Wijeratne has also been implementing Level Up XP into her courses that accommodate a large student body.

Dr Naeem and Dr Wijeratne are running internal workshops and one-to-one sessions with educators across the institute to help design curricula that include engagement markers and Level Up. They also plan to share their findings at upcoming academic conferences.

Twelve courses across three faculties at Queen Mary University, Science and Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Medicine and Dentistry, have already adopted Level Up XP, with more expected to follow.

All instructors who have implemented Level Up XP in their courses plan to do so again in future teaching.

Under Dr Naeem’s guidance, Level Up XP has evolved into a system spanning multiple modules. It drives engagement in optional labs and provides both students and staff with a real-time signal of academic risk.

The gamified elements have improved both engagement and outcomes without adding pressure on students or increasing administrative workload for teaching staff.