Use Merge Periods to Accommodate Breaks and Extend Earning Periods

December 15, 2025

Use Merge Periods to Accommodate Breaks and Extend Earning Periods

Unlocking Student Motivation with Gameful Learning

Instructors everywhere face the same uphill climb: getting students to participate meaningfully—especially in online classes. Despite your best efforts, traditional discussion forums can feel more like boxes to check than places for real learning. What’s the antidote? For many educators, the answer is gameful learning.

What is Gameful Learning?

Gameful learning isn’t about turning your classroom into an arcade. It’s about applying the elements of games—clear goals, meaningful choice, and immediate feedback—to academic environments. Platforms like Yellowdig use points, badges, and accolades to recognize real contributions, making participation feel rewarding, not obligatory.

Why Gameful Elements Spark Engagement

Why do students respond so well to this approach? Because gameful mechanics tap into motivation in ways that rote assignments can’t. When students earn points for thoughtful posts or insightful replies, they're encouraged to dig deeper and share experiences. A little friendly competition doesn’t hurt, either—leaderboards spark engagement and help shy students ease into participation.

Yellowdig’s Approach: More Than Just Points

Yellowdig’s platform is built around the idea that engagement should be authentic, not forced. Points aren’t given for empty “I agree” comments, but for contributions that spark conversation and critical thinking. Students can curate their posts with articles or videos that interest them and receive recognition when others interact with their content. This approach fosters intrinsic motivation—students participate because they want to, not because they have to.

Real Results in Real Classrooms

Instructors using Yellowdig consistently report stronger participation and deeper discussion. One faculty member noted that “seventy-five percent of student questions get answered by their peers,” freeing up their time to tackle more advanced topics. Students say they look forward to checking new posts, sharing resources, and earning recognition for meaningful contributions.

Tips for Making Gameful Learning Work

Set Clear Expectations: Let students know how points are earned and celebrate thoughtful interaction, not just frequency.
Offer Meaningful Feedback: Use accolades and comments to highlight particularly insightful posts.
Encourage Creativity: Remind students they can use links, visuals, or even short videos to make their posts stand out.
Foster Healthy Competition: Leaderboards and weekly challenges can energize participation and keep momentum going.

The Takeaway

Gameful learning turns participation from a chore into an opportunity for discovery and community. With the right design, recognition, and tools, you’ll see students take more ownership of their learning—unlocking not just better engagement, but genuine excitement for the subject.
Ready to see how gameful learning can transform your course? Try out Yellowdig and join a thriving community that believes learning should be as rewarding as it is rigorous.

Audience: This help article is for Instructors, Designers, and Administrators. Students or Learners cannot access these features and settings.

At Yellowdig, we understand there are instances when a course may not have natural weekly divisions. Perhaps instructors would want 2-week periods instead of 1-week, or to provide students with a “week off” for Spring Break or Fall Break without taking away their option to participate openly if they wish.

This is when the new Merge Periods feature comes into play. By allowing instructors and administrators to merge multiple periods, we are able to support these instances and still keep our notion of Yellowdig being a single, semester-long assignment.

To merge several periods into one, go to Settings – Point System – Point Earning Window – click on View/Edit Periods. From there, simply click on the Edit Period button and select the periods you would like to merge, and then click Merge Periods.

You can only merge adjacent periods. You can cancel at any time, and no changes will be made.

The longer, merged periods will be given the same Period Goal as the others and therefore, the Total Goal will be reduced accordingly. Merged periods can easily be unmerged by clicking the Unmerge this period link; just be aware that the Total Goal will increase when you do. Please note that, like start/end dates, merged periods do not copy if you copy community settings from a template community.

💡 Additional Uses

Read here about how to use merge periods to give learners extra time at the end of a community to earn points.

Audience: This help article is for Instructors, Designers, and Administrators. Students or Learners cannot access these features and settings.

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December 15, 2025