Product & platform case study
Gamified retention with Ball State Achievements
Business problem
Ball State needed to improve persistence and four-year completion for Pell Grant students, not only in the classroom, but in the “college experience” activities that correlate with success: student orgs, career programs, recreation, and campus resources students already had but under-used.
Role
Gunnar was on the Emerging Technologies and Digital Corps build team named in national press, co-developing the native mobile clients and cloud-backed achievement platform with student developers under Jonathan Huer’s organization, in partnership with Student Affairs (Kay Bales, project lead). He contributed full-stack leadership on a product that let campus units author achievements without shipping new app releases, while Digital Corps students executed across disciplines.
Stack & approach
Native iOS and Android apps distributed through the public stores; a cloud administrative backend where units such as University College, Recreation Services, Career Center, and Student Life created and deployed achievements; in-app “Bennies” currency redeemable for bookstore and campus rewards. Funded in phases through Next Generation Learning Challenges and Educause (beta fall 2013; native rebuild over six months; multi-year program from fall 2014). Built in-house with Digital Corps, not outsourced.
Tradeoffs
Gamification had to nudge behavior without reducing college to points-chasing. The team emphasized campus-provided rewards and engagement with existing services rather than cash prizes alone, and treated the program as a multi-year experiment, measuring credit hours, GPA, and engagement alongside qualitative student affairs goals. Retiring the app years later does not erase what it proved about in-house mobile delivery at a public university.
Outcome
Roughly four hundred Pell recipients engaged in the first full year; early reporting cited higher credit loads and GPAs among active users versus non-users. Campus Technology recognized Achievements with an Innovator Award (2015, student systems and services), alongside national coverage including a featured team profile naming the Emerging Technologies builders. The product later left the app stores, but it remains a reference example of student-affairs-driven, technically ambitious mobile work.
Ball State Achievements sat at the intersection of policy (retention for low-income students), product (gamified tasks and rewards), and platform (multi-tenant achievement authoring). That combination is why it earned press and awards, and why it belongs alongside later enterprise AI work as proof of shipping hard, multi-surface software with real stakeholders.
Further reading (public): Campus Technology feature, Aug 2015 · BSU Innovator Award press release, Jul 2015 · Jonathan Huer on the build team and NYT mention, Dec 2014