Exploring Engaging Gamification Mechanics in Massive Online Open Courses

Introduction Massive online open courses (MOOCs) are a current trend for creating online courses for equipping learning institutions to obtain a free and high quality teaching initiative with relevant visibility on the Internet (Johnson, Becker, Cummins, Freeman, Ifenthaler, & Vardaxis, 2013; Pellas, 2014). MOOCs refer to web platforms that allow millions of learners to access various instructional materials and resources without the constraints of time and place, and additional learning opportunities to supplement traditional classroom instruction, such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX (Lin, 2010; Stoel & Lee, 2003). MOOCs are interactive, online learning tools that support the learning of specific concepts by enhancing, amplifying, and guiding the cognitive processes of learners (Altbach, 2014). MOOCs use the increasing popularity of social networking services (SNSs) such as instant messengers (IMs), Facebook, and Twitter, to facilitate increased social interaction and engage millions of teachers, learners, and parents (Lin, 2010). The learner-learner and learner-instructor interaction created by MOOCs is central to knowledge acquisition and the development of learner cognitive skills, and that interaction is intrinsic to effective instructional practice (Lee & Hammer, 2011; Tobarra, Robles-Gomez, Ros, Hernandez, & Caminero, 2014). MOOCs are an alternative to traditional models of face-to-face education, and have even been viewed as a threat to traditional educational institutions and professionals (Millard, Borthwick, Howard, McSweeney, & Hargood, 2013). Thus, the development of MOOCs has received considerable attention from both educators and learning-technology developers. MOOCs have been an increased focus related to learner participation of MOOCs, given rising tuition costs and concerns regarding learner success and retention rates (Pappano, 2012). Although MOOCs are rapidly developing and gaining enormous popularity, most of them fail to help learners to remain focused on learning content and lead to relatively poor learning efficiency and effectiveness. This phenomenon occurs because most MOOC designs do not provide learners with an engaging experience. Certain researchers have mentioned that MOOCs must enhance learner digital engagement, which refers to the learning and everyday engagement of learners with available technologies in their learning ecologies, including both daily life and school contexts (Gurung & Rutledge, 2014). Therefore, improving learner digital engagement is critical to the development of MOOCs. Certain studies have proposed gamification as a potential solution to alleviate this problem (Grunewald, Meinel, Totschnig, & Willems, 2013; Skiba, 2013; Dicheva, Dichev, Agre, & Angelova, 2015). Gamification incorporates game mechanics into nongame settings to increase user engagement and enjoyment of a product or service, and to encourage users to perform certain behaviours (Hsu, Chang, & Lee, 2013). Gamification essentially functions as entertainment that causes learners to enjoy actively participating and engaging with others, such as through reputation points, rewards, and goal setting. Kapp (2012) indicated that gamification is crucial to the development of learning technology because numerous elements of gamification are based on educational psychology and techniques that instructors have been using for years. Simoes, Redondo, and Vilas (2013) developed a learning platform for K-6 learners, and suggested that education is an area with high potential for applying gamification because it substantially promotes learner motivation and engagement with the learning platform. Sung and Hwang (2013) proposed a gamification mechanism for course websites to improve the learning performance of learners in their learning attitudes, learning motivation, self-efficacy, and learning achievements. Because of the importance of gamification to learner engagement, certain popular MOOCs such as Coursera, Udacity, and edX effectively attract and maintain learners through various gamification designs such as rewards and badges. …