I just posed the question today to our management, “Why do we use Moodle?” Possible answers are “So only those who have paid have access to our courses”. “So we can track what the participants do”. “So we can have authentication for accreditation purposes”. Mundane reasons to lock everybody up in a learning dungeon, I say. Hey, I so relate to that registration problem. I got round it at…Read More

I just posed the question today to our management, “Why do we use Moodle?” Possible answers are “So only those who have paid have access to our courses”. “So we can track what the participants do”. “So we can have authentication for accreditation purposes”. Mundane reasons to lock everybody up in a learning dungeon, I say. Hey, I so relate to that registration problem. I got round it at…Read More

Natasha, OK I cheated. I just went and “Looked Inside” on Amazon and so I’m judging The Nudge not by its cover but by the first few sample pages. I came across Automatic and Reflective cognitive modes and thought immediately of Barbara Oakley and her focused and diffuse thinking (A Mind for Numbers) and Rudy Rucker and his cosmic and robotic modes (The Big Aha!). Seeing the same thing…Read More

Following Lisa’s lead of drawing on established wisdom that is still relevant today I offer *Designing Virtual Worlds* by Richard R. Bartle New Riders 2004. Through his involvement with MUD 1 and other early text based worlds Bartle had access to a massive (like really massive) amount of user data which he and his colleagues analysed and leveraged, feeding it back into their designs…Read More

We deliver (oops… offer) our online courses on Moodle. But only yesterday I made a preposterous proposal that we could dispense with it for a particular new programme and just make it available on a wide-open WordPress site in blog format. We have the luxury that our programmes are self assessed, not formally assessed. The future of more distributed and open learning lies (I believe) in…Read More

You make a great point Jolanda. Yes was the word that jumped into my head when I read that. It’s great to exchange these ideas while we’re in this conference, but it’s another thing to apply them when faced with deadlines and resistance from programme managers. Crafting subtle use of game mechanics into a course takes time and care. To try and combat this I am now thinking in terms of…Read More

You make a great point Jolanda. Yes was the word that jumped into my head when I read that. It’s great to exchange these ideas while we’re in this conference, but it’s another thing to apply them when faced with deadlines and resistance from programme managers. Crafting subtle use of game mechanics into a course takes time and care. To try and combat this I am now thinking in terms of…Read More

I too have focused on gamification and usually say ‘covert game mechanics’ because I like to incorporate the thinking under the radar, rather than overtly apply points, badges, and leaderboards. I like to use graphing techniques to design multipath learning through a ‘landscape’ and I think in terms of costs and values which are like the small incremental rewards for achievement of game…Read More

Yes, sounds a bit like what anthropologists call ‘participant observation’. It’s hard to know how we might design for people in whose daily activities, events, and rituals we were not truly immersed. However, online students are a polyglot and disparate body of people… do we need to come up with some kind of lingua franca and a universal design for learning?

Kick if he starts snoring. That would be a good thing to have on my badge. Not that this conference is going to be for one minute boring… in fact it may be the best thing we get to attend all year! Go Joyce! Big ups for the presenters! Yay! See my badge at https://twitter.com/possiblyb9/status/863943460499345409 and I’ll be tweeting with my ol’ haqr handle @possiblyb9

Kick if he starts snoring. That would be a good thing to have on my badge. Not that this conference is going to be for one minute boring… in fact it may be the best thing we get to attend all year! Go Joyce! Big ups for the presenters! Yay! See my poster at https://twitter.com/possiblyb9/status/863943460499345409 and I’ll be tweeting as @possiblyb9 my old haqr name from before The Wall…Read More