Games Based Learning MOOC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZGCPap7GkY

Scott Nicholson mentioned Sebastian Deterding in his post about the difference between educational games and gamification. This is an hour long google talk by Sebastian entitled Meaningful Play Here is an excerpt from the abstract "In this talk, researcher and designer Sebastian Deterding provides an overview of the current gamification movement, its most troubling blind spots, the motivational powers of games, and how to design for a playful experience that is truly meaningful to its users."

Your comments on the video are invited. What do you see as the implications for an educational environment?

When I first saw this video, I was inspired. Deterding's work was the core that led me to pursue meaningful gamification as a research area, and the theoretical framework I wrote about meaningful gamifcation (along with a 15-minute talk I presented at Games, Learning and Society 8.0 earlier this year) can be found at

http://becauseplaymatters.com/blog/2012/6/13/a-user-centered-theoretical-framework-for-meaningful-gamific.html

As a preconference for GLS, Deterding ran a workshop focusing on gamification for education. He brought together 12 people who had competed for slots based upon our engagement with gamification. Everyone there had experience with it, and we spent the day in a World Cafe model (where you brainstorm big questions, discuss them, and iterate) talking about some of the hard questions when using gamification in education.

Some of the things we selected as important issues and fought about about were:
- Issues of privacy. Gamification systems tend to have public elements, so there is more information shared about students than may typically be shared.
- Forcing students to engage with the games. Some students are not gamers and don't learn well through game spaces. Is it appropriate to require all students be engaged
- Assessment and gamification. Is it appropriate to assess student performance through a game model? And, how do you assess the gamification itself?
- Dealing with the administrative overhead. Gamification adds a lot of extra work.
- How can extrinsic rewards boost intrinsic motivation?


So far, there isn't a report from that preconference day, but I'm sure there will be.

scott, Great presentation; thanks for sharing. I am interested hearing about how your fall class progresses.
For some reason the url in the post got jumbled. Here it is again.
http://becauseplaymatters.com/blog/2012/6/13/a-user-centered-theoretical-framework-for-meaningful-gamific.html

This was an interesting presentation. I think he may have mis-used the term "easter egg," but that's fine. From personal experience I know that just grinding to level up is no fun and from a service point of view (i.e. checking into a movie, liking a product, checking into a location) may not be representative of real actions. In the first days of Foursquare I checked in like a maniac to local establishments, from the comfort of my own home ;-) I got a lot of points, but they were not that useful to me, and of course I wouldn't brag about the badge. This got pretty boring pretty soon, and a week later I stopped using Foursquare.

Then GoWalla came out with their "Passport" metaphor and I started using GoWalla (and cross-posted to 4sq) whenever I went somewhere as a method of keeping track of my own locations (I thought it might be interesting for any descendants to track my day to day life)