UPenn’s Coursera course on Gamification by Prof. Kevin Werbach finished last week with a peer-assessment of the third assignment in a series of three where the course’s content was direclty applied.

I thought the course was well structured and accessible. The first few weeks spent some time defining what Gamification actually means.

In a rough sense, gamification was presented as more than just badges and leaderboards slapped onto any old problem. A gamified system is one that address a specific objective, its participation is voluntary and has a healthy dose of fun. The fun part is hard to articulate but we know it when we see it.

There was a brief visit into psychology for a few lectures elaborating on the main point that one must consider participants’ motivations when designing a game, with intrinsic motivation preferred to extrinsic.

The lectures built up to presenting the 6D framework for designing games. It was co-developed by Kevin Werbach and although at a glance it may seem simple, a lot of complexity can lie beneath it. Here is a good post on it.

I have Werbach and Hunter’s book For The Win on my to-read list now to see if it delves deeper into some of the underlying concepts

All in all another great coursera course that will certainly help me with my research.