Driving to the Finish Line

This past week I finished up the content for the Gamification  Design Framework module and started doing more research to finish up the Game Elements and Player Types sections. After creating the frameworks section I realized that I really needed to approach game elements from the perspective of motivation, which I only briefly addressed when I first set it up. Almost every article that I read addressing game elements and motivation referred to Daniel Pink's book Drive. After watching his TED talk  I realized that in order to do this topic justice I should probably read the book. Since it is the last week of the semester and I have lots of grading to do I am not going to be able to read the book right now. Based on this I decided to declare myself done for the semester. I plan to finish up grading and set up my summer class this week, take a week or two off then start reading drive and revisiting the sources that I found and see if I can't pull together the Game Elements and Player Types sections. I have some great ideas for what to do with it now, I just need to pull it all together.

Reflection

I have learned so much this semester about gamification and building a course from the ground up. There is still a lot of work to do to get it into shape but we have come a long way. For every article that is referenced in the course there are probably 4 or 5 that I read for background and decided not to include. I have also played games and watched hours of videos. I am very excited to see how this all comes together and I think that when it does it is going to be great.

The Future

Although the semester and practicum are done, the course and the learning are not, so I will continue to work on this until it is complete. I will finish the Game Elements and Player Types modules and finish creating the assignments. Molly and I will need to put our heads together to figure out how to make the course feel like a cohesive unit, but that will have to happen when everything is there. We also want to gamify it, so we will be applying what we have learned. The hope is that the program will have enough students that this can be offered as an elective by Summer 2017, so there is a deadline, but it is a reasonable one.