Objectives

This book covers the following three objectives:

• Understanding the Gamification design process
• Freeing up time to be creative
• Identifying learner progress and providing personalized learning paths

Understanding the Gamification design process

You will learn how to use game elements in Moodle to take learners on a journey of risk, choice, surprise, delight, and ultimately, transformation, and how to create courses that appeal to a diverse range of learners. We will discuss how learners require different types of feedback as they progress through the learning journey. The goal of this feedback is not only to reward and acknowledge mastery of the current task, but also to do the following from Jeff Sandefer's, The Learner Driven Revolution:

"empower people to take ownership for their learning, contribute to a learning community where people learn to set goals, self-organize, and grow as competent and confident people with a deepening sense of agency"

Minecraft has achieved this for a whole generation of children who haven't yet learned to read or write. As educators, we can borrow ideas from video game designers (who borrowed ideas from an ancient line of entertainers and storytellers) to motivate and engage people to complete their learning journey.

Freeing up time to be creative

You will learn how to configure Moodle activities to reduce repetitive administration tasks such as checking whether work has been completed by all the learners, ensuring that the required documents have been received, or meeting audit reporting requirements. The challenge is to use computers to do the repetitive tasks that eat up your time and leave the creative rewarding aspects of teaching to you. You don't have to automate everything, so you are not expected to know how to use every activity in Moodle, rather you will start with what you find comfortable and effective in your context. Once you are convinced that this has really saved your time and that the process has been enjoyable, then you will be challenged to add another activity to your repertoire. In fact, you only have to master three activities to get to the end of this book! You really don't have to learn it all before you jump in and try. You wouldn't expect this from your learners and we don't expect this from you. Trust your instincts! You will know this works when you feel the change in the vibe of the room, or in the after-hours voluntary activities, or the increase in peer-mentoring, and more joy for both you and your learners.

Identifying learner progress and providing personalized learning paths

The full power of placing learning activities within an LMS is that the sequence can create a personalized learning path. Technology in education is often under-utilized as a simple repository of files, when it can be so much more. The Moodle activities you create will automatically create data on learner participation and competence to assist you in identifying struggling learners and plan appropriate intervention/scaffolding. Activities for advanced learners can be revealed according to the criteria you set. The in-built reports available in Moodle LMS not only help you to get to know your learners faster, but also create evidence for formative assessment.