Gamification Design

Games have become the new normal. The gaming industry is already more powerful than other ways of entertainment like music or movies. An average young person will spend more than 10,000 hours gaming by the age of 21 - somewhat the time that it takes us to master any kind of skill- and yet, there's a huge engagement crisis in many other areas. 70% of US full-time employees are not motivated by what they are doing, kids spend way more time engaged with video games than they do with books, the average attention span in 2012 was less than 10 seconds and it's decreasing every year...

It seems like only games are truly understanding how human motivation really works. But how is that possible? Why are we glued to games? Can we design that kind of gameful experiences in non-game contexts to make them more engaging?

And the most important question: How to do so?

Learning Outcomes

In this course you'll learn the basics of Gamification with a highly practical approach. We'll especially focus on how to design gamified experiences in real life and students will be able to gain knowledge in areas such as: game design, psychology, management, or education. 
Our main goal will be to understand and master the principles of gamification to design experiences that make things more fun and engaging.

Who is this course for?

Do you want your team to perfom better? Are you looking for ways to fully engage happy customers? Do you want to see kids learning while playing? Or are you just looking forward to seeing a better world?

Gamification can be used in many areas and almost any task can be fun and engaging so this course could be great for people like: teachers, educators, managers, C-level executives, health and fitness professionals, psychologists or researchers. So...

Whether you ever asked yourself one of these questions or you just want to know how to make things more fun and engaging, this course is for you!

Prior Knowledge

This is a level 1 course and all you need to bring in the class is a playful attitude! Anyway, having some prior knowledge is always great, so if you already want to start this epic adventure, here are 3 ways you can do so:
- If you want to start reading some books on it: http://www.epicwinblog.net/2013/05/best-gamification-books-where-to-start.html
- If you’d rather learn by doing: http://www.epicwinblog.net/2013/10/the-35-gamification-mechanics-toolkit.html
- And if you like none of them, well, there’s always a way. Go and start playing games!

Assessments and Certification

This MOOC will be based on creative assignments where we’ll try you to learn by doing and after successfully completing those assignments, students will receive their statement certificates of accomplishment if their overall score is higher than 7. Besides, everyone will receive an statement of participation.

Workload

This course will feature weekly videos and creative assignments so you’ll have to spend around 3-4 hours per week, and if you want to know more, we’ll provide you with reading references and plenty of insightful videos, blogs and resources. In addition, there will be live hangouts and local meetups so the workload is actually up to you.

Week 1 (17/03/2014) Games. Game Design. Gamefulness. Gamification
Week 2 (31/03/2014) Psychology and Gamification: Why are games and gamification so engaging?
Week 3 (07/04/2014)The different types of Gamification 
Week 4 (14/04/2014) Defining gamified experiences: Things to know before we start
Week 5 (21/04/2014) Creating gamified experiences: The first steps of the design process
Week 6 (28/04/2014) Designing gamified experiences: Storytelling, mechanics, aesthetics and much more
Week 7 (05/05/2014) Going further than the basics