Today, we’re excited to announce Schoolhouse Points (SP) and Badges—as well as public profiles for everyone!

We were inspired by gamification techniques on other platforms, like Duolingo. Gamification is using game-like elements in experiences that aren’t typically categorized as games—like learning a language, or getting free, high-quality peer tutoring. These elements have the potential to help users feel more engaged, rewarded, and motivated to reach their goals.

In response to our Q4 goal of finding ways to make Schoolhouse a place where more users want to come back to, we launched points and badges to reward our community for their commitment to learning, and motivate them to continue making Schoolhouse what it is today.

You can now get Schoolhouse Points (SP) for taking actions on the platform: attending sessions, giving tutors feedback, completing certifications, tutoring sessions, and more. You’ll also receive badges for achievements such as attending 25 sessions, or referring 5 friends. Check out the "My Achievements"section of your dashboard to see them in action!

In this launch, we’ve also opened public profiles to all users—not just tutors! We wanted to make sure everyone in the community could wear their achievements loudly and proudly, so all users can now share a public Schoolhouse profile that features their points and badges.

Plus, we took into account everyone’s existing history when assigning points and badges—hopefully a pleasant surprise for our current active community members!

About Schoolhouse Points (SP)

You’ll be rewarded with SP every time you complete important actions on our platform! Here’s a precise breakdown of what actions yield what points.

General Actions

Tutor-Specific Actions

There is no limit to how many times you can receive points per action. For example, if you successfully attend 500 sessions (as in, actually joining the Zoom call), you’ll receive 500 points!

About Badges

Badges are rewards for achievements—example, attending 25 sessions. They’re based on certain milestones, so you can only get each badge one time. They work alongside points; for example, if you attend 25 sessions you’ll receive an “Out of This World” badge on top of receiving 25 SP as normal!

Badges

What’s next?

This is just the beginning of our journey to motivate our community and celebrate their achievements.

Here are a few possibilities on our radar:

• Improved leaderboards and community features
• A leveling/ranking system
• Streaks to build habit
• Prizes and raffles
• Tutors directly awarding points to learners

What are you excited to see? Have thoughts on how to improve this feature? Take our survey (and get +5 SP for it)!