Avatars

Delphinium includes an avatar system designed to help students celebrate and to give positive feedback for progress in the course. It encourages students to do more work at higher quality by unlocking avatar options when students earn more points. Avatars also allow students to express their individuality in a fun and creative way in a course. This helps students integrate the course experience into their learning identity. In addition, when courses also use the leaderboard, students can share their avatars with each other and build "social presence" in a course. This includes the ability to "like" each other's avatar. This helps students connect with each other and can improve engagement in a course.

Note: Experience has shown that not all students will create an avatar, but those that do can have a lot of fun expressing themselves.

Description

Current Avatar - Your current "Avatar" is displayed a box.

Note: The Delphinium Configuration AI will create a default avatar for students the first time they load a Delphinium page. Students can then select other options and colors.

Avatar Level - Your "avatar level" is displayed below the "avatar" and indicates how many option levels a student has unlocked.

Note: Unlocking option levels give students access to more avatar options.

Points Remaining Till Unlocking Next Level - Students can unlock the next avatar level by earning this number of points in the class.

Edit Your Avatar

Click the Edit Avatar button below the "current avatar" to launch the "avatar editor" window.

Editing an avatar involves selecting a "body type" and "body parts".

Select a "body type" from the top left of the "edit avatar" window.

Note: By default, there is only one body type—a monster.

There are two rows of "body parts" tabs. The "top row" includes icons indicating broad categories of body parts, like face, body, extras, and bonus. The "second row" includes sub-categories. For example, the face category could include the following sub-categories: eyes, noses, mouths, and ears.

Each sub-category tab displays "part tiles" for each available avatar part option.

Mouse over a locked part tile to view how many points a student needs to earn to unlock that level's "part tiles".

Click a part tile to add it to your avatar. It will appear on the "avatar body" to the right of the "edit avatar" window.

Click Close or "X" to close the "edit avatar" window.

Coloring Avatar Parts

Your current avatar is displayed on the right side of the "edit avatar" window.

Click a avatar part in the "current avatar" to change its color. The current color of the "avatar part" will appear in the "color picker box" below the "current avatar".

Click the color picker box to display "color selector sliders" that will allow you to adjust hue, saturation, value, and transparency of the "avatar part".

Note: Changing the color of very dark colors like black often also requires you to also adjust the "value slider" to a lighter shade. For example, when you change a black avatar part to red, it might still look black until you increase the "value slider" because it is very, very dark red.

Levels and Locked Avatar Part Tiles

Each "part tile" includes a "level badge", a small circle with a number in it, to indicate the required points level a student needs to earn to unlock it. "Level badges" on currently locked "part tiles" are dark blue-gray.

Note: Depending on how many points a student has, some "part tiles" may be locked.

"Avatar tiles" are assigned to one of 10 levels. Level 1 avatar tiles are open at the beginning of the course. Other avatar tiles are unlocked as students earn points and unlock more avatar levels.

Share and "Like" Avatars

If the Delphinium layout also includes the "Leaderboard" component, then students can view each other's avatar by mousing over students' rank tiles in the leaderboard.