At this year’s OEB conference, we will be talking about how we have used gamification within our recently developed MOOCs. Generally speaking, we have found gamification to be useful to increase learners’ engagement in online contexts. This is particularly interesting in MOOCs, as some learners may find it easy to feel that a MOOC is a disconnected way of learning, where you are by yourself trying to learn something. Added to this, many learners register for courses because they might like them, and test the first bits to see if they will remain engaged. With this perspective, it became clear to us that besides making sure the contents and learning objectives are clear and well achieved, we need to make an additional effort if we want to keep the learners onboard. That’s when gamification kicked in for us, as the use of its elements and techniques are meant to reinforce engagement.

We expect the drop-out ratios to be at least below average, as studies have suggested that higher engagement and interaction with, and between, learners tends to increase the rates of course completers. It is easier to drop a course when there is no attachment or engagement to it, just like it is easier to leave from a friendly reunion if no one is talking to me. I don’t feel any social belonging or positive pressure to continue interacting, as I’m almost completely detached from it. With gamification, we want to make use of social influence and relatedness, amongst other drives, to help learners achieve the objective they set out with when enrolling, which was probably to at least learn something.

Using gamification as a strategy for learning materials tends to a certain increase in development costs, but then so do having better professors, the best case studies, cutting-edge technology, and a long etcetera, and this does not stop us from using them as much as our budgets allow. Gamification, in this case, is aimed at keeping the learners engaged with the course, learning more and better, and remaining excited about what is coming next so that we can significantly increase the rates of completion and future registration. With our current MOOC platform, our courses are continuously offered every two or four weeks, and happy course completers encourage future learners to register and engage. Hence, the strategy of additional investment in gamification is also aimed at better completion rates that improve the learning and the engagement, and also allow us to continue to offer great learning experiences and content.