Learning & LMS
Setting Up Community Channels, XP, and Leaderboards
Turn your course into a community-driven experience with channels, points, badges, and leaderboards.
For many coaching and membership programs, the community — not the course player — is where retention actually happens. This article covers setting up channels and the gamification layer on top of them.
Setting Up Community Channels
- Go to Community → Channels and create a channel with a name and description (for example, "Weekly Wins" or "Q&A").
- Decide whether the channel is scoped to everyone in your academy, or to a specific course/cohort's enrolled students only.
- Channels support posts, reactions (Heart, Fire, Insight, Rocket, Celebrate), and threaded replies.
Configuring Gamification
- Go to Settings → Gamification and enable it for your academy.
- Set XP values for actions you want to reward — posting in the community, completing a lesson, attending a live session, and so on.
- Create levels or ranks that students unlock as their XP grows.
- Design badges for specific milestones (first post, course completion, a 7-day streak) and set the criteria that awards each one.
Leaderboards
The leaderboard ranks students by XP, automatically updating as they engage. This is often the single highest-leverage retention feature for community-driven programs — students who see themselves climbing a ranking tend to stay more engaged than those interacting with a static video library.
Moderating the Community
Admin and instructor accounts can moderate channels — removing posts, managing members — from the same dashboard used to manage courses and students.
Seed the community before launch. An empty community channel feels dead to the first few students who join it. Post a handful of discussion starters yourself, or recruit a few early students to post first, before opening enrollment broadly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can XP and badges be tied to actions outside the community, like live session attendance?
Yes — XP and badge awarding can be triggered through Automation Rules connected to events like lesson completion or live session attendance, not just community posting. See Building Automation Rules.
Can different courses or cohorts have separate, non-overlapping communities?
Yes — scope a channel to a specific course or cohort so discussion stays relevant to that group, rather than mixing every student across your whole academy into one general channel.
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