Sunday, September 30, 2012

MOOC on Gamification - Statistics (2)

Quase no fim (Gamification Course) mas o número de inscritos a aumentar ...

"... Students have continued to sign up. We just hit 80,000 registrations, which is truly extraordinary. If you have friends or colleagues who are interested, we expect that the course will run again in the future, but we do not have details yet."

Posted on Fri 28 Sep 2012 5:32:00 PM WEST
 

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

MOOC on Gamification: Written Assignment 2

Resposta ao trabalho escrito (written assignment 2) proposto no curso sobre Gamification do Prof. Kevin Werbach no Coursera (ver também o post com o written assignment 1).


Project Part II: Motivation

You are approached by Ryan Morrison, the mayor of a medium-sized city in the Midwest of the United States.  He has heard that you know a lot about gamification and believes that gamification techniques can transform city government. 

He would like to start with the health of city employees.  The city has 50,000 employees and they happen to have exactly the same rates of obesity as the U.S. average: 34.4% overweight (but not obese) and 33.9% of them are obese.  53.1% of the city’s employees do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity and 76% of them fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity.  The city pays for health benefits for its employees and this cost is a huge part of the city budget.  Economists in Mayor Morrison’s office have estimated that a 3% improvement in the average physical fitness of city employees would amount to a US$94 million reduction in annual city health costs; a 5% improvement would save US$188 million. 

Describe in general terms a gamified system that could effectively motivate behavior change to address the challenge presented above. Specifically, explain how the system would effectively incorporate intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or both.
Your answer should address the fact that this is an internal gamification project, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government.  The system can use any technology (or no technology!), so long as the resources required seem justified by the scope of the opportunity.

Resposta:

The objective of the system is to change the behavior of city employees concerning their health in order to decrease city health costs. So, the system must address two main issues:
- promote healthy eating habits;
- promote physical activity.

For this purpose, employees must attend to specialized advices from nutricionists and medical doctors and follow an adequate diet in order to imporve their eating habits. In order to improve their physical condition they must take part in different physical activities.

First, a main, global and measurable objective must be set. Something like the average weight of city employees must be X pounds within a year or city employees must lost a total of X pounds by the end of next year. Each employee must feel that is contributing to larger objective. Besides this global objective, each employee must set their own individual goals, according to each one's condition, health and interests. Like this, each employee will have a sense of power and autonomy (as defined in self-determination theory) since is able to choose the best approach to meet the challenge.

The main common objective for all employees must be divided into different smaller steps. In each step, the result must be converted to something tangible, beyond the purpose of the system. For example, the amount of pounds lost in a certain period could be converted in an amount of food delivered to homeless people in the city. Like this, employees will feel that are contributing to something larger then themselves creating a feeling of relatedness as defined in self-determination theory.

All activities to promote an healthier life could be done individually or could involve groups of employees. Some activities could also involve employees' families and friends. Like this, each employee will feel that is part of a larger community pursuing the main goal. This also reflects the sense of relatedness.

All of these features incorporate intrinsic motivation.

To put all of these ideas into practice, technology is needed: first, a website/social network must be developed for this purpose (with profiles for employees). An app for mobiles (smartphones and tablets) must also be provided. To measure each employees physical activities, it will be needed some device to collect data (with gps capabilities). The device will then upload the collected data to the website. This is not a new idea. This is what Nike+ is doing with a special watch and other devices. A specific device could also be build. I am assuming that a reasonable budget would be assured for the system considering the predictions on the reduction of city health costs. Another way to measure physical activity could be done by some agreement with gyms that will record employees' visits and activities.

As for eating habits, if employees go to nutritionists and doctor appointments they could be rewarded (using badges as a fixed ratio reward that could be seen in the employee's profile). Healthy meals could also be shared allowing the other employees to vote on those meals. Other game elements like learderboards and points (completing the PBL triad) must be used. These elements must be convertible to tangible rewards like tickets to concerts or sport events. These late features incorporate extrinsic motivation.

Besides extrinsic motivation features, the gamified system must rely mainly in intrinsic motivators.

Grade (10/10): Your grade is 10, which was calculated based on a combination of the grade you received from your peers and the grade you gave yourself.

Peer's comments:

What I liked was,

self → A strategy based on exercise and healthier eating habits. The use of technology (website, specific hardware).
student1 → the strongest idea I found to be the idea of donating weight loss as food to the poor, I liked that a lot
student2 → Clear understanding of the topic.
student3 → well-written, rewards can be converted to food for homeless, concert tickets.
student4 → the system captured both the qualitative and the quantitative aspects of the expected objective
student5 → specific examples of ways to support the individuals goals.

What could have made this submission better was...

self → A better explanation about the use of extrinsic motivation and how city employees could benefit from it.
student1 → You are clearly passionate about the subject. A lot of what you are writing about is, in my opinion (and who the hell am I anyway) more about possible awareness campaigns that about implementing a gamified system. I understood the task to be about creating motivation in getting people to exercise. You took a track of driving hard to get people to see nutritionists, medical doctors etc. It's going to be hard to get people to see the fun in that. I see bits an pieces of good ideas, I think you could build a more coherent whole with what you have here.
student2 → There were too much steps. A lot of division into steps made the assignment somewhat boring.
student3 → it's good!
student4 → it was ok
student5 → clearer organization and structure of the paragraph, introduce the type of motivation at the beginning instead of revealing at the end of the examples what type of motivation you have been talking about. This is sometimes referred to as "burying the headline" and can be avoided.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Vídeo (4m53s) com uma entrevista a Sally Reynolds na 2012 EDEN Annual Conference (Porto):


Question #1: "What is your advice for university professors, decision-makers how to deal with the new generation of learners?"

"You should not make assumptions", afirma Sally Reynolds a propósito das diferenças entre a Geração X e a Geração Y (ver este post). A propósito da existência de nativos digitais, Sally Reynolds recorda que a investigação recente indica que não se deve generalizar. A maior parte dos utilizadores das redes sociais situa-se na casa do 30 e 40 anos. A abordagem ao ensino deve ter em conta as circunstâncias específicas de cada um e não ser baseada em generalizações a partir da geração a que o indivíduo pertence.

Question #2: "Where do you see the role of private and public institutions in learning settings in the future?"

As instituições públicas e privadas são complementares e não deve existir qualquer divisão entre as actividades de umas e de outras.

Question #3: "What are you looking forward to the most and what do you find the most interesting feature of this conference up to now?"

Sally Reynolds apresentou na conferência a rede MEDEA: "how do you build a network of execellence in european context?" Sobre os conteúdos da conferência Sally Reynolds destaca a discussão Geração X vs Geração Y. Sobre a conferência em geral, destaca a qualidade das apresentações, a possibilidade de interagir com os outros participantes e a beleza do local.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Mais um vídeo (17m46s) - Changing the Game in Education - com uma apresentação de Gabe Zichermann na TEDxBerlin em 31 de agosto de 2012. Zichermann fala sobre um mudança de paradigma na educação onde os jogos surgem com um papel fundamental para motivar e envolver os alunos na aprendizagem.


No vídeo é apresentada (aos 4m) mais uma definição de gamification:

"engaging users, changing behavior with the best ideas from games, loyalty and behavior economics. "

Para explicar o sucesso que o uso de jogos e de game thinking na educação e também na formação profissional, Zichermann apresenta alguns exemplos:
No vídeo é referido o conceito de fluid intelligence, a capacidade necessária para resolver problemas em contextos não familiares, ou seja, perante situações novas. Zichermann defende que os jogos contribuem para o desenvolvimento deste tipo de inteligência e usa como exemplo os jogos Dual N-Back.

O vídeo termina com uma referência a três conceitos chave (os 3 F's), presentes nos vários exemplos fornecidos e que são essenciais para motivar e envolver pessoas, tanto no setor da educação como noutras áreas:

Feedback

Friends

Fun
 

Friday, September 21, 2012

MOOC on Gamification: Written Assignment 1

Resposta ao trabalho escrito (written assignment 1) proposto no curso sobre Gamification do Prof. Kevin Werbach no Coursera.

Project Part I: Definition

You are an employee of Cereals Incorporated, a large manufacturer of breakfast food products.  Your supervisor, Madison County, approaches you because she knows you recently took a course on gamification, which she has heard will revolutionize marketing.

She tells you that Cereals Inc. is about to release a new line of ready-to-eat breakfast pastries, and she wants to know whether to use gamification as part of the marketing strategy.  The breakfast pastries will be aimed at the 18-35 age bracket. Surveys show members of this demographic often skip breakfast because they don’t want to eat the typical cereals of their youth, and they are too active to cook their own breakfasts.  Market research indicates that the pastries are likely to appeal more to women than men by a 65%-35% ratio. Cereals Inc. has a 35% share of the overall breakfast food market, but only a 10% share of the fragmented ready-to-eat segment. 


Provide as many reasons as you can why gamification could be a useful technique to apply to the situation your manager has presented to you.  Explain why these reasons address the specific scenario provided.
  At this stage, focus on the problem rather than the solution.  In other words, describe the goals of the project, not the particular game elements or other techniques you plan to use.

Resposta:

Gamification can be an usefull marketing technique in to promote this product because:
- Consumers can share in a social network that they took their brekfast and that they are ready for a new working day. In this way, they will be more likely to take some time to eat breakfast
- Consumers should be rewarded for regularly having their breakfast. For example, they could get some virtual award if they have their breakfast in the 5 working days of a week. They could also be rewarded (with a different award) if they also have breakfast on weekends. In this way, consumers will be motivated to have breakfast regularly.
- Since breakfast pastries are not the healthiest food they can get, if they combine them with fruit or juice, they could get another reward. An application could be provided to track what they eat: consumers fill in what they eat and the app show the number of calories of that meal and compares to reference values. The app could rate consumers choices and give them points if they made good choices. Consumers can get recognition for their choices by sharing their achievements in a social network.
- With the application, they could invite friends and co-workers to also share what they eat at their breakfasts. Each user could then check his/her performance compared to the others. In this way thay will be more engaged with the product.
- With the app, consumers could also vote in their prefered kind of pastries (if the product will have different kinds). They could see what other users are voting. With this, consumers loyalty will be improved.
- Since the product is aimed to 18-35 age, it is expected that most of them have a smartphone. The product boxes could provide a QR Code or similar for users easily download the app.
- Since most consumers will probably be females, social aspects will be more important than competitive ones.

Grade (10/10): Your grade is 10, which was calculated based on a combination of the grade you received from your peers and the grade you gave yourself.


Thursday, September 20, 2012

MOOC on Gamification - Statistics

As estatísticas sobre as actividades dos utilizadores do curso MOOC sobre Gamification do Prof. Kevin Werbach no Coursera, são impressionantes:

"Approximately 10,700 students successfully submitted Written Assignment 2. This compares to 12,800 submitting Written Assignment 1. Over 43,000 students have watched the lecture videos online, out of 77,000 registered students. "

77.000 estudantes registados? É obra ...

"Coursera is committed to making the best education in the world freely available to any person who seeks it. We envision people throughout the world, in both developed and developing countries, using our platform to get access to world-leading education that has so far been available only to a tiny few. We see them using this education to improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in."

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Gamification by We Play

 A We Play é uma empresa que desenvolve a sua atividade na área do marketing que recentemente apresentou uma nova definição para gamification


No post colocado no blogue da empresa, onde a definição é apresentada, é também analisada a definição mais corrente do conceito: "integrating game elements and game dynamics in non-game contexts." O autor do post faz uma análise desta definição:
  • Game elements tudo o que faz parte de um jogo (videojogo, entenda-se) e que é visível para o jogador (points, quests, social graph, levels, progress bar, avatars e resources).
  • Game dynamics as técnicas usadas no design de jogos. Inclui as regras e restrições que usam elementos de jogos para criar um ambiente gamificado.  As regras e restrições, para um dado conjunto de elementos de jogos, definem o percurso do jogador desde que inicia o jogo até que o termina.
  • Non-game contexts: são as situações no mundo real, fora do mundo dos jogos ou ambientes gamificados. Nesses contextos, o post destaca: P2P (peer-to-peer), B2C (business-to-consumer), and B2E (business-to-enterprise). O contexto P2P tem a ver com o lado social dos jogos e a forma como as comunidades podem mudar comportamentos se forem aplicados elementos de jogos. No âmbito do curso do Prof. Kevin Werbach, correspondem às três diferentes formas de aplicar gamification: behavior change, external gamification e internal gamification.
O post da We Play é o primeiro de uma série sobre o tema (apenas está publicado o primeiro):
  1. The Definition of Gamification – We Play’s own working definition of what gamification is
  2. The Best of the Best – A highlight of the most successful Gamification examples
  3. Tailoring Gamification for Your Needs – How to find out if gamification is right for you and how to make it work
  4. We Play’s Gamification – How We Play uses gamification to influence fan engagement
  5. Future of Gamification – The potential of gamification

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Gamification Platforms (2)

Na sequência de um post anterior sobre plataformas de gamification, segue-se mais uma plataforma (sob a forma de um SDK) para usar e integrar com aplicações para dispositivos móveis: SessionM.



A plataforma é sustentada por quatro elementos de jogos (designados no site da SessionM por mecânicas de jogos): achievements, points, status e reward. Os rewards (prémios ou recompensas) podem ser tangíveis. O status é conseguido através de subidas de nível conforme se vão obtendo pontos ("mPoints" - mobile points) e ganhando acesso a novas conquistas (achievement unlocked).

A empresa posiciona-se na área do mobile advertising mas a plataforma aparenta ser uma ferramenta interessante para aplicar elementos de jogos em aplicações móveis. Resta dizer que a plataforma é gratuita.


Friday, September 14, 2012

Researcher for I&D Project

Um projecto em que estou envolvido - schoooools.com - procura um investigador brasileiro (ou residente no Brasil) que esteja na área de aplicação de badges em contextos de gamification. Como este blogue tem muitos leitores no Brasil, se algum deles estiver interessado ou conhecer alguém que esteja, por favor deixe os contactos num comentário de resposta a este post.

A project with which I am involved - schoooools.com - is seeking for a Brazilian researcher (or resident in Brazil) working in the ​​application of badges in gamification contexts. As this blog has many readers in Brazil, if there is someone interested or know someone who might be interested, please leave the contacts in a comment in reply to this post.