Benefits of Gamifying Learning on Google Workspace for Education and Automate It

June 28, 20210 CommentEducation Use Cases , How-To , zenphi Use Cases

Are you looking to make distance learning for your students more interesting? If yes, then consider gamifying learning methods for them. Gamified learning is easy if you are using Google Workspace for Education.

Also, automating your gamified activities helps you save time and effort. Imagine creating fun learning activities for your students minus the usual hassle. With automation, you can collect quiz scores and grade their works automatically.

Less than five years ago, the mere mention of automation, AI, bots, and androids conjures images of mechanical lifeforms enslaving mankind. Or of machines and robots robbing us of our job opportunities, at the very least. And I thank The Terminator and I Robot for these silly notions.
 
Not until I got into the tech space and started working for companies like zenphi did I realize fully how much our technology has evolved. And how we have been reliant on AIs and bots all this time. From as simple as searching the web down to getting things done faster, and now, even in the education space, AIs and robotic intelligence work nonstop to aid us.

Automate Your Gamifying Learning Process with zenphi

This piece of technology, especially automation, seeks to liberate our time. It is contrary to some beliefs that AIs are out to rob us of work opportunities. Automating our mundane tasks allows us to focus on things that matter, drive strategies, and push for results. It eases the burden of toiling and grinding away on seemingly unending repetitive and mundane tasks. And Google workflow automation platforms such as zenphi offer that and more.
 
We, at zenphi, know that teaching is a noble but demanding occupation. And that these amazing people are not exempted from manual data entry tasks. It’s part of the job description. But we all know that these tasks are so mundane and repetitive it tends to suck the soul out of you. It also gets in the way of the actual teaching.
 
But with zenphi, teachers can set up automated workflows that can take care of most of their data entry tasks. This way, not only do students get to enjoy their gamified learning but teachers also lessen the burden of manually taking care of everything.
 
Got several quizzes coming up? Let yourself breathe, you don’t have to worry about going through your students’ papers one by one to collect scores and send email notifications. zenphi will do that for you.
 
So sit back and learn in this tutorial how to automate gamification in education. . .

How to Use Google Forms to Automate Gamification in Education

In this example, we will go through a step-by-step process of setting up a gamified online quiz. This workflow will automatically collect scores and award students with level badges. After that, send a “thank you” email to all quiz participants. Here, you will learn the basics of setting up fun online quizzes and automate them. The end result is a more interactive method of teaching without the hassle.

Let’s start with creating the necessary files and documents. This is to assume you have both Google for Education and zenphi accounts.

Using Google Sheets to collect the quiz responses and scores

Once done with the questionnaire, it is now time to create a spreadsheet that will collect student’s scores and other information. Let’s do that by clicking again the + New button and choosing Sheets.
 
Later, we are going to connect this spreadsheet to the quiz form we are going to make next. The photo below is how this spreadsheet will look once we are done hooking it to the form and the response starts coming in.
Gamifying learning automation step 01: Using Google Sheets to collect quiz responses.

Creating the gamified quiz with Google Forms

Go to your Drive, create a folder where you will store all the files you will create for this automated flow.

Within your new folder, create a new Form by clicking the + New button at the top left of your screen. And then start loading your pop quiz questions and their choices
Creating a gamified quiz using Google forms for automated gamifyinh learning process.

If you click the question, you can see at the bottom part the Answer key. You can use it to add a point system and specify the right answer for each question.

Preparing the answer key for the gamified quiz in our automated gamifying learning process.

You can also provide feedback for correct and wrong answers.

Once done assigning points and configuring the feedback, click Responses. Next, click the Sheets icon and select Existing spreadsheet. Hit select. Then, find the “Pop Quiz Responses” we prepared earlier.

connecting Google Sheets and Forms to automatically collect quiz scores for our gamifying learning process automation.

Uploading the quiz badge

Upload your badge of choice and make sure it has a good quality. 

Uploading a high-quality image for your award badge.

Creating a Certificate of Participation template

And the last file we need to create is a certificate of participation template. For this, we are going to use Google Slides. Let’s make sure to enclose in double curly parenthesis the information you want to automatically populate.
 
And don’t forget to be creative with your template!
Gamification in Education

Connecting All the Tools for Gamifying LEarning Process Automation Using zenphi

The second and most important stage of our gamifying learning process automation. Here, we are going to connect all the tools we used earlier.

This way, we can collect scores, send out badges and certificates minus the manual effort.

Generate Certificate Template

Let’s start by signing in to our zenphi account. Follow that by creating a new flow and selecting Generate Certificate Template.

Selecting this zenphi automation template will allow you to send out badges and certificates with one click. Once all the responses and scores are in, zenphi will then examine the spreadsheet. It will then pull out names and email addresses and start the emailing process.

Selecting zenphi's Generate Certificate template. This will automate the emailing portion of our gamigying learning process automation.

Hit create and we will arrive at the template configuration phase. We will make sure that all the Connection fields point to the right Workspace account, a.k.a. the account housing all the files we created earlier.

If this is your first flow, click the + button at the corner of the Connection field. Then, select the Workspace account, and authorize.

How to authorize a new Google App Connection withinn zenphi.

In the subfolder field, click the Drive icon. Follow this by selecting the Gamification in Education folder housing all the files we created earlier. And then, hit Use This Template.

Pointing the right folder housing all of our files and templates for the gamifying learning process automation.

This is what the Generate Certificate template will look like. We are going to modify some of the steps and add other actions along the way to gamify this flow.

Here's how the finished gAmifying Learning process automation flow will look like within zenphi.

Read Rows Action

We can find the Read Rows action under Google Sheets in our Designer panel. You can choose to edit the name of the action by double-clicking. And to configure it further, click the gear button.

Drag and drop the "Read Rows" action. It will read all the data within the Quiz Responses spreadsheet.

Let’s point to the right spreadsheet in the File field by clicking the Drive icon. And then, select the “Pop Quiz Response” file from earlier.

Pointing the right spreadsheet so zenphi can read it and retrieve the right set of data. for the Gamifying Learning process automation.

Select the right sheet for the Sheet Name field.

Select the right sheet within the Pop Quiz responses file.

And if we scroll a bit further down, we will arrive at the Rows section. Here we will enable All Rows, and it will return all the row information in our spreadsheet. While the Has Header will treat the first row of our spreadsheet as headers or column titles. And clicking the Load Columns will load all the columns.

We can choose to delete some of the columns and just get what we want to recall later.

Current Date Time

This particular action is under Date Time in the designer panel. What this action does is record the date or time the flow started.

Adding the Current Time Date action into our Gamifying Learning process automation. This will record the current time and date the certificate was created.

Format Date Time

Still under the Date Time section, Format Date Time action formats date and time value to a string. This action will allow you to automatically log the date and time value into any file or document.

Adding the Format Date Time action into the flow for our Gamifying Learning. This zenphi action will turn the date time value into the format you want.

When configuring this action, click the parameter icon in the Date field. And in the tokens panel, click Current Date Time and select Result.

Configure the Format Date Time Action by selecting the Current Date Time result in the tokens panel.

Foreach Item

The next building block of our Gamifying Learning process is the Foreach Item. And it is under the Control Flow tab. This action goes through each row of our spread when we need to recall information.

Dragging and dropping the Foreach Item action into our Gamifying Learning process automation flow. This action will go through all rows within our Pop Quiz Responses file to retrieve and paste data untill all rows are taken care of.

To configure Foreach Item, open the gear button. Then, click the parameter icon in the Collection section. And when the tokens panel slides in, click Quiz Responses and select Rows.

Dragging and dropping the Foreach Item action into our Gamifying Learning process automation flow. This action will go through all rows within our Pop Quiz Responses file to retrieve and paste data untill all rows are taken care of.

Generate Slides

This action will automatically generate the certificates using the Slides template. Each certificate will then be imported as a PDF file. Note that we changed the name of the action for the sake of naming convention.

Adding the Generate Slides action into the Gamifying Learning process Automation flow. This will generate the certificates to be given to the participating students.

Next, we will open the settings section by clicking the gear button. In the File field, click the Drive icon. And then, select the Certificate of Participation template from earlier.

Configuring the Generate Slides action by pointing the right template file.

And if we scroll down a bit further, we will arrive at the Destination File section.

Configuring the file destination of the newly generated Certificates for our Gamifying Learning process automation.

In click the Drive icon in the corner of the Destination Folder field. And then, select the Subfolder we created earlier. This folder will house the certificate we are going to generate later.

Ponting the Destination folder for the newly generated certificates.

Click the parameter icon in the New Document File field. And then, select Full Name[D] under Loop Through Responses. This will name the generated PDF file with the name of the student.

Configuring the name to be assigned to each generated certificate for our Gamifying Learning processs automation.

In the PDF section, let’s enable the Generate PDF button. This means that every document we generate using the Slide template will be imported into a PDF file.

Enabling the Generate PDF button. This will import all generated certificates into a PDF file before they are sent out to the students.

Let’s go and configure the Tokens Mapping section. If you remember the double curly parentheses({{}}) we added in our Certificate template? The value we are going to add will populate the blank fields inside the curly parentheses.

To get the right value for {{full_name}}, click the parameter icon. And under Loop Through Responses, let’s select Full Name[D].

Google Workspace for Education and Automate It

And for the value of {{date}}  select Result under Format Date Time.

Configuring the value for the date field inside our certificate template. This will automatically add the date the certificate was generated in your desired format.

Send Email Action

This action will allow us to automatically send emails and also attach a file(s). And with the Foreach Item in place, it will send emails to the right recipients until all rows are done.

Let’s configure this action by clicking the gear button.

Google Workspace for education

In the To field, select Email[B] under Loop Through Responses.

Configure the "To" field by selecting "Email[B]" under Pop Quiz Response in the token panel.

In the Subject field, select Full Name[D]. You can also choose to input some details or a few words.

COnfiguring the Subject field of the automated email of our GAmifying Learning process automation.

For the Email Body, we can write simple greetings and praise for the student receiving the Certificate of appreciation.

Lastly, we need to configure the Attachment section. This will automatically attach the Certificate to the outgoing email.

Configuring the Attachment field of the automated email of our Gamifying Learning process automation. This will automatically locate the right certificate before the email is sent to each student.

Lookup Rows

Lookup Rows allows us to at multiple rows of our spreadsheet and retrieve the value we are searching for. This action is not part of the flow template, so we have to drag and drop it to the flow itself. Also, we need to make sure that we place this action outside of the Foreach Item Loop(faint dash lines).

Adding the Lookup Rows action into the Gamifying Learning process automation flow. This zenphi action will lookup all rows and retrieve the data we specified.

Select the right Google Workspace account in the Connect field.

In the File field, click the Drive icon and find our Pop Quiz Response file from earlier.

The Connection field should be pointed to the right Google Workspace account housing the files created for the Gamifying Learning process.

Again, let’s make sure we are pointing to the right sheet in the Sheet Name field by clicking the parameter button. Then, select the right sheet where all the form responses are loaded.

Making sure that the right sheet name is pointed in the Sheet name field.

In the Configuration section, let’s make sure to enable Has Header. It will treat the first row of our Pop Quiz Responses spreadsheet as headers or column titles. And if we click the Load Columns button, it will automatically retrieve all the column headers in the spreadsheet. It will also include their corresponding values.

In the Search Column field, let’s select Score[C] and input 13 in the Search Value. This means that when the flow runs, it will look at our spreadsheet and retrieve the rows that have the value of 13 in the Score[C] column.

Benefits of Gamifying Learning on Google Workspace for Education and Automate It

Let’s go down a bit further and we’ll get to the Retrieve Column section. Here, we will delete the rest of the column headers aside from Email[B].

delete the Column values you don't want zenphi to retrieve.

Log To History

The next action we are going to drag and drop is Log to History. This action will record the rest of the actions’ sequence into the log stream.

The Log to History is very helpful when we need to retrieve a value or doing debugging tasks.

Adding the Log History to the gamifying Learning process automation flow. this will record the subsequent actions into the system.

Foreach Item

Again, let’s drag and drop another Foreach Item action into our flow and then configure.

Adding another Foreach Item action into the Gamifying Learning flow. Configure this action properly by selecting Row under the Lookup Rows action int the tokens panel.

Get File Content

The Get File Content action found under the Google Drive tab will read and retrieve files. Let us drag and drop this into the flow, right inside Foreach Item’s area of responsibility, and then configure.

Adding the Get File Content action into the Gamifying Learning flow. This action will read and retrieve files inside your Google Drive.

In the File field, let’s click the Drive icon and select the badge we uploaded earlier.

Send Email

Lastly, drag and drop Send Email action and configure.

Adding another Send Email action in the Gamifying Learning flow. this action will send out the reward badge to those who scored at least 13 out of 15.

In the To field, select Email[B] under Foreach Loop.

In the Subject and Body field, we can manually input the text we want to include in the outgoing email.

Configuring the Email body of the reward badge email.

Lastly, the Attachments field. Let’s click the parameter icon and select Payload under Get Badge/Get File Content.

This will retrieve the Reward Badge file and attach it to the email.

Configuring the Attachment field of the email. This will automatically attach the reward badge to the email.

Hit Save and Publish once you are done configuring all the actions and ready to test it.

Once all the actions are added and correctly configured, hit the Save button and Publish your gamifying Learning process automation.

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