MOOCs & Gamification

The title alone should advance your game of buzzword bingo.  In the education space both MOOCs and Gamification are getting a lot of buzz.  However, I'm not sure if most that talk about it have taught or taken an open online course or have designed a game or applied gamification to their organizational objectives.

To better understand MOOCs, I decided to take a course on... wait for.... GAMIFICATION.  Turns out it's a great course "taught" by Kevin Werbach from Wharton. The course is delivered by Coursera.  I'm impressed with the content and the interface of the online course.  Frankly, it the course structure is that different from courses I worked on at Capella University ten years ago.  The key difference is that in the massively open structure, the instructor does not grade the student -- all grading is done by peers or algorithms on quizzes.   The video lectures are great but the homework is not challenging or rewarding. I give Professor Werbach credit to make himself available -- he holds periodic office hours via Google Hangouts

From a scale standpoint, you can have thousands of students in a course at one time.  Pretty cool!  I still feel that there's something missing by not having critiques or feedback from the professor.  I trust that the technology will get better that peer grading will improve.  Right now there's a fairly simple rubric and not much incentive for graders to put much effort in the critique.  In general, I believe that's because there's not much riding grades, as its not for credit.  There are options for a Statement of Accomplishment or Certificate, which represents the monetizaton play for Coursera.  If you didn't know, the courses are free. So if you have the time (see, nothings really free), I think MOOCs are a great way to get introductory/survey level knowledge in a content area.  As we better understand what the technology is to enable, we will have more powerful MOOCs.  In the meantime, I don't think they are replacing our confidence in traditional education and workforce certifications and degrees.  I don't deny that we continue to embrace ways to advance knowledge through "the guide on the side," there is still a role for the "sage on the stage."  More compelling than MOOCs may be what we learn from a "hole in the wall computer."

What are your thoughts on the future of MOOCs?