Gamification-Based Tools Embedded in the Helios Educational Platform

The educational process was put to a lot of pressure during the last couple of pandemic years. The teaching related activities had to quickly move from a traditional on-site environment to a completely new terrain endowed with various digital facilities. The speed with which the events unfolded, corelated with the large variety of used technologies and the lack of face-to-face interconnection represent new factors that affected both the teachers and the learners. Statistics taken from universities and pre-university institutions revealed that many students encountered difficulties in maintaining a high interest level for the ongoing educational activities. New tools must be added to the current digital environments to motivate the students and to revive their learning drive. Our own approach to on-line or hybrid education has been materialized in a new software platform that, besides embedding all the tools needed by both the teachers and the learners, introduces a series of gamification and social media inspired techniques that helps maintaining the learners' interest for the live or asynchronous educational material presentations, thus ensuring pedagogical continuity.