Educators and students celebrate inaugural Level Up Awards in milestone for gamified learning
Queen Mary University of London has hosted its first Level Up Awards, recognising students and educators who took part in a pioneering initiative to transform teaching through gamification and data-driven learning design.
The ceremony, held on 15 April 2026 in the newly opened ITL Building, celebrated those participating in modules piloting "Level Up" - a Moodle-based plug-in that introduces game-like features such as experience points, milestones, and digital badges into the academic experience. The initiative is designed to make learning more interactive and motivating by embedding reward systems and progress tracking directly into course modules.
The awards form part of a wider project titled Empowering Educators to Embed Learner Engagement Analytics in Curriculum Design, led by Usman Naeem, Reader in Computer Science Education and Vindya Wijeratne, Senior Lecturer . Funded by the Queen Mary President and Principal's Fund for Educational Excellence, the project spans all three of the university's faculties - Science and Engineering, Humanities and Social Sciences, and Medicine and Dentistry - reflecting its institution-wide ambitions.
At its core, the project equips educators with tools to adopt learner engagement analytics and rethink traditional teaching approaches. Early results from the pilot modules are encouraging, with findings suggesting that gamification techniques can significantly boost student motivation and participation.
During the ceremony, educators Jayne Dennis, Mahesha Samaratunga, and Marc Roth shared their experiences of implementing Level Up in their teaching, while students Avni Dhokia, Zhang Lin, Marlon Pires, and Dan Bachmann offered perspectives on how the system has shaped their learning. A number of module organisers were also formally recognised for their contributions to the pilot, including Patricia McGettigan, Richard Grose, Arash Valipour, Chris Jones, Mouna Chetehouna, Georgy Petrov, Kashaf Junaid, Tim Fulton, Rosemary Kathleen Clyne, Tomas Lukas, and Sevil Yesiloglu. Their inventive use of themed badges and levels - with names ranging from "Chromo Champs" to "Ethical Guardian" - brought a creative and distinctive dimension to course design.
The event concluded with project co-ordinators congratulating participating students, emphasising that their enthusiasm and engagement had been central to the initiative's success.
With interest growing across the institution, the Level Up Awards are expected to become a recurring fixture as more educators adopt the platform and gamified learning continues to expand throughout the curriculum.