Wondering how we might add game-like elements to eduMOOC ...

[Fred]

I'm in the middle of reading Jane McGonigal's "Reality is Broken" so
of course I'm thinking about games and how some gaming environments
are characterized by extremely rapid learning (see John Seely Brown's
recent thoughts on World of Warcraft). So, in a nutshell, how does one
"level up" in eduMooc?

[Maureen Mulcrone Boland]

I'm really awful at gaming, but how about a treasure hunt of annotated
links. The way you 'win' is if people like/comment on each link.

[Alexandra Pickett]

I LOVE this idea. i have been recently smitten with http://gameful.org/

not sure how one would "gamify" this MOOC...

alex

[Steven Crawford]

One more resource that a collegue sent me today:

“This Game Sucks”: How to Improve the Gamification of Education
http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume46/ThisGameSucksHowtoImprovetheGa/222665

--Steven

[Steven Crawford]

A great way to gamify the course would be to somehow build a system
where you score participation points. 5 points for posting an
introduction, 5 points for starting a new thread, 5 more points for
every five posts that thread generates, 1 point for responding to a
thread, 1 point for every tweet with the hashtag, some amount of
points for creating something for the course, etc.

Then have a three leader boards: overall, weekly, and daily.

That would be a simple way.


Another one would have been to turn the course into an alternative
reality game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game)
that had us participating in a story to "save an institution" by
creating a MOOC and going out and gathering materials, resources, and
literature to support our decisions. There would have to be a team
element.

Gotta stop here. BTW, I finished reading Reality is Broken by Jane
McGonigal (http://realityisbroken.org/) yesterday so this topic is
definitely on my mind right now.

--Steven

On Jun 28, 9:25 am, Alexandra Pickett <alejandra.pick...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I LOVE this idea. i have been recently smitten withhttp://gameful.org/

[Fred]

Steven,

Some great ideas in your post. The "somehow build a system" though
raises a whole bunch of questions that we could spend most of the 8
weeks investigating.

Perhaps McGonigal provides a clue on how to proceed. She quotes
Bernard Suits as having the most convincing and useful definition of a
game ever devised.

"Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary
obstacles."

So we would need to devise some unnecessary obstacles and get everyone
to voluntary try to overcome them.

Following on the WOW model, maybe we could all be assigned to guilds
(which would help alleviate the anonymity of a 2000+ member course)
and guilds could be given difficult goals to reach that require active
participation by all participants?

Hmmm? Help? Ideas?

Fred

[Jose I. Icaza]

Hi - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2487-The-Skinner-Box

nice video of why NOT to make extreme use of points, badges, and other Skinner treats on games of any kind.  Towards the end the author mentions other alternatives to make games engaging. How to apply the advice to a MOOC? That's homework...

On the other hand I love ARG's and McGonigal's games.

--jose 

[Sandy]

Steven,
Although I like the idea of gaming the MOOC, it seems we'll have
enough posts, tweets, threads to wade through without egging on the
competitive ones! Although I do like the points for replies
generated, which might encourage posting of meaningful threads.
Sandy Hale
http://myfirstmooc.blogspot.com/

On Jun 28, 2:45 pm, Steven Crawford <srcra...@asu.edu> wrote:

> > > "level up" in eduMooc?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Murray Turoff]

The simplest thing you need to get started is a discussion system
where the instructor can create a separate discussion and then be able
to assign pen-names to each of the students and then those pen names
represent roles and you can use any role playing game design or design
your own. This is existed on the EIES system at NJIT when it was
first created in 1976 and which existed to the late 90's and was used
for a great deal of early use in classes and many other online
learning applications. we used to have a recreational conference
where the users could choose their own pen names and keep augmenting
their experiences in their adopted roles in a story that was seeded by
the moderator to provide a starting plot.

if you want to see papers references look at my first message for a
list of relevant papers on teh web.

On Jun 28, 7:53 am, Fred <fredbart...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Maria Droujkova]

A couple of gamification questions.

1 - Are members of this MOOC on Gameful? Let us keep in touch:
http://gameful.org/members/mariadroujkova/
2 - What are some free and open tools one can use to gamify a course?
This can be valuable for many other courses, if only we can figure it
out together. I searched for a while and could not find anything
immediately usable.


Cheers,
Maria Droujkova
919-388-1721

Make math your own, to make your own math.

[nilgün keskin]

Game like elements to Edumooc is absolutely effective for users ! But the sending messages should be meaningful. This is a important point!

Bests

Nilgün

2011/6/29 Maria Droujkova <drou...@gmail.com>

[Rebecca OGM]

I love the idea of gamifying the MOOC, guilds for groups, encouraging
initial posts to get through the first awkward stages of contributing
before meaningful posts start coming out everywhere – strategic
thinking, problem solving... What about the visual aspect, I know
this is getting carried away. Free and open tools are essential for
sharing and cooperating with.

BTW, this is one of my first posts!

Rebecca OGrady-Marshall

http://kamelyanproject.com

[buf...@verizon.net]

Gamifying is a Superidea....I am in! 

[buf...@verizon.net]

so lets form a gamifying study group.....what should we do 

[buf...@verizon.net]

I just signed up for gameful.....now how do we start a Games Study Group?

 

Norman  

[Fred]

Rebecca,

I'm interested in the visual aspect you bring up. eduMooc seems pretty
text heavy to me so far. What about something for all us visual and
auditory learners.

Here is a possible challenge? What if we ask mooc participants to
throw up... perhaps that should be rephrased... what if we ask mooc
participants to upload to YouTube -and share a link to- a brief video
in which they explain what the number one goal is they hope to achieve
by participating in eduMOOC?

Anyone want to go first?

Fred

On Jun 30, 10:49 am, buf...@verizon.net wrote:
> Gamifying is a Superidea....I am in! 
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> On 06/29/11,Rebecca OGM<kamelya...@gmail.com>wrote:I love the idea of gamifying the MOOC, guilds for groups, encouraging

[buf...@verizon.net]

isnt mcgonigal great!!! Every played her World Without Oil? Great Stuff! started a page on the wiki for games....that is a level up to me:)

http://edumooc.wikispaces.com/gaming%20and%20online%20learning

 

leave some impressions on Reality

 

Norman

[buf...@verizon.net]

Hi Fred, Norman Constantine here. How does one level up anywhere? I am trying to form a gaming study group. Wanna help?

 

Norman  

[Fred]

Hi Norman, Happy to help with a gaming study group. Where are you
doing this? Fred

On Jul 2, 5:30 am, buf...@verizon.net wrote:
> Hi Fred, Norman Constantine here. How does one level up anywhere? I am trying to form a gaming study group. Wanna help?
>
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> Norman  
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> On 06/28/11,Fred<fredb...@gmail.com>wrote:I'm in the middle of reading Jane McGonigal's "Reality is Broken" so

[Fred]

Well since no one else took the bait I created a video in which I
share my number one goal for participating in EduMOOC (I keep wanting
to put a # in front of EduMOOC) and uploaded it to YouTube here:
http://youtu.be/3VnwHOBcySk I had to learn a bunch of new things to do
this (all of which were easy and manageable at my skill level) so I'd
say I just leveled up in the EduMOOC game. Hope others will join
me. :-) Fred

On Jun 30, 7:08 pm, Fred <fredbart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Rebecca,
>
> I'm interested in the visual aspect you bring up. eduMooc seems pretty
> text heavy to me so far. What about something for all us visual and
> auditory learners.
>
> Here is a possible challenge? What if we ask mooc participants to
> throw up... perhaps that should be rephrased... what if we ask mooc
> participants to upload to YouTube -and share a link to- a brief video
> in which they explain what the number one goal is they hope to achieve
> by participating in eduMOOC?
>
> Anyone want to go first?
>
> Fred
>
> On Jun 30, 10:49 am, buf...@verizon.net wrote:
>
>
>
> > Gamifying is a Superidea....I am in! 
>
> >  
>
> >  
>

> > On 06/29/11,Rebecca OGM<kamelyanproj...@gmail.com>wrote:I love the idea of gamifying the MOOC, guilds for groups, encouraging

[Fred]

I hope that at least a few others will make brief videos about their
EduMOOC objectives and share them on YouTube. Most of us are in the
education biz and are used to standing up in front of people and
performing. It is only a little challenging, but fun, to do a short
performance for the video camera. Also good practice dealing with
uploading to YouTube, etc.. Thanks for considering.

On Jul 2, 10:14 am, Fred <fredbart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well since no one else took the bait I created a video in which I
> share my number one goal for participating in EduMOOC (I keep wanting

> to put a # in front of EduMOOC) and uploaded it to YouTube here:http://youtu.be/3VnwHOBcySkI had to learn a bunch of new things to do

[Jenny]

Hi Fred,
I haven't read McGonigal's book but I was thinking this past week on how a MOOC could be thought of as a game. I don't play Farmville but if that game can maintain as much popularity as it has, then certainly a MOOC can. In Farmville you construct your own world (learner control), are offered rolling enrollment and unrestricted access (flexible schedule), confront constraints that make use of critical thinking skills such as "OMG, stop the car, my dog will die if I don't login and feed him!".  (learning goals and benchmarks) and are positively reinforced when you engage with other farmers (learner presence and engagement). You get farm bucks as an external reward and your own success at PBL as an intrinsic.(Intrinsic and extrinsic rewards for learning)

To me Farmville offers some of the same psychological benefits as a MOOC, except that a MOOC is better. You actually get smarter!  Now in the case of Farmville, well.... :-)

Jenny

[Fred Bartels]

Jenny,

Great comparison between Farmville and MOOCs!

So in Farmville the central element is each user's farm. The growth and care of the farm are what drives the game. What might the farm equivalent be for each user of this MOOC? Learning is the obvious answer, but I feel that, like in Farmville, it would help to somehow have a visual shareable representation of that learning.

Fred

PS Hey Jenny, what about doing a video introduction?

[Jenny]

Of what, me or MOOCville?

Jenny

[Fred Bartels]

Well how about you explaining MOOCville? 

[Jenny]

We need to work on that together. Your thought of creating a concrete edifice of our personal learning is of course....the eportfolio! But that crosses the boundaries of privacy and intellectual property etc.  What else could we challenge MOOCville players to build, badges like the Girl Scouts? A virtual campus housing the individual accomplishments as structures or books? Something like second life?

 

Jenny

[Fred Bartels]

Jenny,

I wonder if for MOOCville the issue you raise of privacy and intellectual property is perhaps not as applicable as in other learning environments? There are no formal assessments in MOOCs and for many participants -if not most- credit is not received for participation. A key element of MOOC-based learning seems to be sharing. Sharing one's thoughts, ideas, reflections, discoveries, syntheses, etc.. Another key element seems to be making connections, both with other learners and with various bodies of knowledge/content repositories. 

A participant's virtual farm/garden should represent how they are doing on at least these two key elements of MOOC-based learning (there are probably others but I'm not seeing them at this moment). The representation, as others pointed out earlier in this discussion, would need to take into account quality -as judged perhaps with some sort of PageRank algorithm- as well as quantity.

So for instance, graphical representations of one's MOOC related tweets could vary in size based on how often they have been retweeted or favorited (is that a word?). Other types of contributions could be handled in a similar fashion. Of course, each iconic representation should bring up the original when tapped. 

It would be awesome to also have a representation of those who have connected to or commented on or reshared your contributions. Perhaps a list sorted by frequency of reference?

This "garden" of course models two key factors determining academic status in higher education: the quantity of one's publications (contributions) and how often those publications are cited/referenced (connections) by others working in the same subject area.

Perhaps other MOOC participants with graphic skills and knowledge could sketch up some prototypes of a MOOCville garden/farm?

Happy Saturday morning.

Fred

[Rebecca OGM]

Hiya,

Here's an animoto I made with some images of me and some things I'm
hoping to get out of eduMOOC. Sorry, I'm a bit slow to catch the bait
here. My objectives are to do with collaboration, creativity, moving
forward etc.

http://animoto.com/play/13x23d01MFmxnZDRl3KQKA


Fred - I enjoyed your video the 'getting outside' instead of inside,
it was also good to see a face!!!

On Jul 3, 12:14 am, Fred <fredbart...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well since no one else took the bait I created a video in which I
> share my number one goal for participating in EduMOOC (I keep wanting

> to put a # in front of EduMOOC) and uploaded it to YouTube here:http://youtu.be/3VnwHOBcySkI had to learn a bunch of new things to do

[Fred Bartels]

Rebecca,

Awesome! Wish you would also do some video of yourself talking, as I think it helps with the social presence, but a great start!

So that makes two of us who have "leveled up,"common people, let's get some more posted. Use that technology!

Thanks Rebecca!

Fred