Gamification

Your vocabulary word for the day is "gamification", "the use of game design techniques, game thinking and game mechanics to enhance non-game contexts" (Wikipedia). The field of gamification was kicked off just over two years ago by this video.

Now Coursera, a group of 16 universities (including U of T) that organizes free online courses, is offering a gamification course. On the first day of registration, 65,000 students from 147 countries signed up, and registration will continue for another week or so. Here's a report from our roving reporter Tom Berend, who is taking the course.

"When I signed up, the messages were streaming into the discussion board at about three a minute. It has slowed down, but even today it is one every two minutes - more than anyone can read. An empty search returns 8805 results, which I think is a good estimate for the number of postings and, while there are many 'hello' postings, there are also serious discussions on every topic you can imagine and the tone is always polite, serious, and professional.

"A few days ago, they added a link to MEETUP, and already thousands of Courserians have started making arrangements for group meetings, including 50 of us here in Toronto. It makes perfect sense. Face-time is desirable but too valuable to spend listening to the instructor read from his powerpoints, and opinions typically offered in classroom discussions are more useful if they are seasoned a bit first. So we will do the traditional learning part online, and move the face time to a pub."

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