Gamification

I talked a little bit about Gamification in my last post. I've made a course about it from the end of August until middle of October through Coursera and I found it really interesting. 

Games are powerful things.

Gamification is a new business concept, which is growing up fast nowadays. We will say that Gamification is the "Use of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts." And we can learn about psychology, design or strategy from them. What can we get with Gamification? Make a task, whichever it is, more engaging, motivate people, enjoy doing things that, otherwise, could be boring.

Think about points, badges, avatars... and many examples will come to your mind. Do you know Foursquare? Stackoverflow? There are many different examples of gamification everywhere these days. Some people use Gamification for their customers, others for their employees (Microsoft, eBay...), and other, just to motivate people, in a healthy or educational way, for example.
 

When we talk about Gamification, we can never forget the magic word: fun. Mary Poppins said, wisely, "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and - SNAP - the job's a game! "

Do you want to know if Gamification is right for you? Kevin Werback, our Gamification teacher in Coursera, told us about four important points to take into account when you are thinking in applying Gamification:

• Motivation: Where would you derive avalue from encouraging behavior?
• Meaningful choices: Are your targer activities sufficiently interesting?
• Structure: Can the desired behaviors be modeled through algorithms?
• Potencial conflicts: Can the game avoid tension with other motivational structures?

Before you decide to using Gamification, think about these questions. And remember that Gamification is not as easy as it seems. You need techniques, you need to know different concepts, you need to understand many different and important things to get a successful result. If you get into a bit depth about Gamification, let's take a look at gamification.org or gamification.co, or if you prefer books, our Coursera teacker, Kevin Werbach, wrote one: For the Win.

What is Coursera?

Do you know Coursera? If you don't, you have to.

What is it?
Coursera is a website where you will find free online courses about the subject you probably have been dreaming about and with the support of some of the best universities in the world: USA, Canada, UK or Switzerland, among others.

How does it work?
Once you create an account, free account, you can start searching your course: they're offering right now 204 different courses with many different topics. You can search by category or by University or by your own words.

They give you the basic information about each course: a small text with the course's description, a few questions, answered by the responsible of the course, and a short video as well. All the courses have a beginning date and a duration in weeks.

Did you find your course? Sign up! For a few weeks, you will see short video lectures on different topics and you will also have assignments to be submitted. You will do quizzes related to the videos, that will give you a score. Your assignments will give you another score and they will be checked by your peers, or sometimes by the course's staff, it depends on the course, they will tell you the conditions in each case. With both scores, you will get the final score. Some of the courses will give you a certificate if you reach a minimum percentage, such as 80% or 70%.

You will find more general information about the Website and even about their pedagogy here: http://www.coursera.org/about 

My personal experience.
I've done two courses, and I will tell you, I'm in love with Coursera.

First, I've done Gamification, by the University of Pennsylvania. The teacher was Kevin Werbach. We learnt about this new concept, which is growing up very fast nowadays. I'll tell you more about in another post, but giving you a resume: "Gamification is the application of game elements and digital game design techniques to non-game problems", it's a huge and very interesting world.
 
Back in the course, it lasted about 6 weeks. The teacher was very nice and made the lessons easy to see and listen. Finally, you needed at least 80% of the score to get the certificate and... I got it! 91,1% of happiness :)

Now, I'm finishing Human Computer Interaction, by Standford University. It lasts 9 weeks and the main teacher is Scott Klemmer, although it also have teachers assistants. In this case, Spanish speakers, (just like me :D) have the oportunity of doing their assignments in Spanish.

At the moment, I'm doing the last assignment, which is ending tonight, and then, after checking my peers' work, I'll wait to know if I'll finally get the certificate, crossing fingers!. I'll tell you more about the course in another post.