Introducing Live Challenges

As a kid, eating your veggies was the worst. However, it was necessary! So, our parents made it a game. They took a spoon, spilling over with broccoli, and pretended like it was a fighter plane. And we, like Godzilla, ate it all up. As you grow older, you dread long hours of studying more than eating your veggies. It’s an isolated activity that students consider boring and taxing. As a learning app, we knew we wanted to change the attitude towards it. If students thought of learning as fun from the get go, it would be a game changer. So we asked ourselves, how do you break the monotony?

The answer was right in front of us; gamification! Over 25% children in India spend 1 to 3 hours playing video games every day. Gamification, when used well, not only makes learning social and engaging, it even acts as a motivator.

The missing component of gamification

We looked long and hard at what we’d been doing so far. We already had features in place that gamified learning. In a particular feature,‘Challenges’, students could take a test on any chapter and then challenge their friends. However, there was a gap. Only after their friend had played the challenge, would they know how well they did in comparison. The gratification was delayed. Though they could attempt a challenge that had already been taken by other users, it wasn’t as exciting. The critical component of a game is playing live within a timeframe. That was missing.

Our experiment: A live time bound challenge

Thus began the experiment of ‘Live Challenges’. We set out to make Challenges a social gaming zone. It was time to explore a different dynamic of competition, where a user could challenge another user to compete real time.

A Live Challenge for each subject, would comprise of 10 questions with a time limit of 25 seconds for each question. As soon as they select their answer, their marks would increase. When the opponent answers, they would be able to see their opponent’s marks change. Once both the answers are in, the right answer, as well as, the opponent’s answer would be highlighted. Marks would be rewarded for the correct answer and speed. As soon as the 10 questions are over, a winner would be announced immediately.

The results: Playing tens of challenges at a stretch

We rolled this out to a few users and quickly saw activity increase. We conducted a survey and found out that, students loved using Live Challenges for revision. The quick feedback not only helped them understand where they were lacking, it also gave them an understanding of where their competition stood. However, the best part of Live Challenges is that, it’s addictive. You can’t just play one Live Challenge, each game motivates you to play and learn more! A student claimed, ‘I have won 10 Live Challenges in a row and I’m motivated to learn more’. This was the moment we knew we had uncovered the path to making learning fun.

We released the feature to all our students and waited with bated breath. Turns out, the survey wasn’t our only finding, our numbers corroborated the story. Earlier, 6000 Challenges were attempted everyday on Toppr, after rolling out ‘Live Challenges’, that number shot to 15,000. Another finding was that, the students returning to Challenges had increased by 2x.

What’s next?

With the view to create a social gaming zone, our next step is to release various games that familiarise students with subjects and help them become experts at it. Vocabulary and Mental Math are two games with this objective, but it’s just a start. Soon, users will be able to play games on every subject in their syllabus! That’s not all, they can track their daily, monthly and overall rank on the Leaderboard. No matter which game they play, it will help them learn better.