The Gamification course on Coursera, by associate professor Kevin Werbach (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania), has ended. The course got 80,000 registrations and it is expected it will run again in the future. It was a very interesting experience, making me think about using gamification in the news media. In fact, we already use game elements in the media, but there is so much more which could be done.
Professor Werbach is about to publish the book For The Win: How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business. Okay, the title sounds very hype-like, but having participated in the course I can testify that Werbach is not advocating simple, manipulative techniques to be applied in whatever context. On the contrary, we learned how crucial it is to analyze the situation and to think hard about the objectives and the impact gamification can have on people and how important self-determination is.
I guess most of us watched the 2010 presentation by Jesse Schell:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DLwskDkDPUE%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US%22%3E%3C
However, there was another video we had to watch (and which was used extensively for the ‘final exam’), the futuristic film Sight by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lK_cdkpazjI%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US%22%3E%3C
The video choice was illustrative for the ethical preoccupations of the course.
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