Leveling up engagement: gamification’s role in creating immersive online events

Abstract Virtual conferences can be easily accessed, promotes audience diversity, and leads to cost reduction. However, motivation and social interaction need amelioration. Gamification is a strategy that uses the structure of games to promote motivation and engagement. The annual student conference was created to promote discussion about the students’ projects and issues found during their studies. In 2021, gamification was implemented to improve the event. Here, we report our experience using gamification in the annual student conference of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute. The construction of the platform involved the student council, the direction of the institute, the journalism team, and the company Ekoá. The gamified platform was built with elements of affective memory of the institute, using clickable icons with the appearance of buildings from the Institute, organized based on their functions. We noticed the number of participants increased from 240 to 759 when compared to the previous year’s remote event. The discussion of science projects was adapted to the remote environment, so that students could expose their difficulties during the pandemic. Activities were proposed to increase social interaction, focused on mental health improvement, and a multi-participant online game was available to boost engagement. At the end, participants answered a voluntary survey to collect feedback. In conclusion, the use of gamification enriches remote events and is a good resource to improve motivation, continuity and social interaction.