So what's this course about? It's important I think to start with a set of learning goals, especially because gamification is a novel concept. It's not something like introductory physics where it's obvious what a course is going to teach you about. So there are four things that I hope that you will get out of this course, if you stick with it all the way through, watch the video, do the homework, and so forth. The first is to understand what gamification is. The second is to understand how it might be valuable. The third is to learn how to do it effectively, and the fourth is to understand some specific, concrete applications of gamification. So, let me say a little bit about each of those. What is gamification is not obvious. Gamification is a new concept, and, in many ways, it's misunderstood. So, we'll talk a lot about understanding just what gamification is, and what it isn't, as well as some of the history and some of the context for this emerging business practice. Then we'll talk about how gamification can be used and why it might be effective. And notice I say here might be. Gamification is a powerful tool. And I'll give you lots of examples of companies and other organizations that are successfully applying game mechanics and applying other lessons from games to address their problems. But it's important to have some measure of skepticism, to realize that gamification isn't right for every problem. It's not, by any means, a panacea. And furthermore, doing gamification requires you to understand how to do it well and that's why we have this third learning goal, to talk about how to do gamification effectively. You can understand how gamification might be relative to a problem but you need to understand the different techniques, the different components that you can use, and the pros and cons of different forms of gamification in order to know how to do the right sort of thing when faced with a particular situation. And finally some applications, there will be examples running throughout the course. Some of them in for profit business context. Some of them in non-profit social impact kinds of contexts. But we'll look towards the end of the course at some specific domains like Inside the Enterprise and For Social Good, where there are particular issues that come up with applying gamification. It's important to note, this is not a technical class. There are no technical prerequisites. There's not going to be any coding involved. It's also not a full blown game design course. So, there's no requirement that you be familiar with any of the technical or aesthetic aspects, artistic aspects, of being a game designer, we’re going to talk about some of those concepts in the course. Because in order to do gamification effectively, even just as a business person, you need to understand something about game design. But there are no detailed prerequisites involved anyone who has a basic kind of understanding about online services, and about digital technology, will be fine understanding this course. I mentioned all of the stuff behind me on the bookcases, keep an eye on it. You might notice some changes. Some things that look different from video to video and if you really notice what's going on you might notice something else, from time to time, appearing back there and who knows, maybe a message. Now, this course is novel in a few different ways which I wanted to highlight here at the outset. The first, obviously, is this new method of open online delivery. That's something that has been used in certain experiments for the past few years but has really expanded greatly only recently. So this is a new way for me in teaching and probably for you a fairly new way in learning this kind of material. But this course in particular has some other aspects that distinguish it even from other courses that use this mechanism. The first is that gamification is a brand new concept. As I’ll talk about, it has roots that go back many years. And it’s going to draw on some very old concepts in psychology, and management, and so forth. But gamification as a phrase to describe what I’m going to talk about is really only a couple of years old. And as I said, just understanding what gamification is, is not universal today. So we're going to have to start by learning what the concept is to begin with. The third thing that's new is that this is a new course. I've taught on this subject in person at the Wharton School at Penn. In fact, I think that I offered the first class on gamification for business that had ever been offered anywhere at any university. But for this massive open online version on Coursera, I rebuilt the course entirely from scratch, to take advantage of some of the unique aspects of this new kind of online environment. And finally, this course is about practical knowledge, which may be somewhat different from some of the other courses that you take. On an open online platform that focus on understanding concepts. This is not necessarily about theory. There's a lot of theory that we'll touch on that goes in to concepts we discuss in the class, but this is a course, ultimately, that is designed to give you some practical knowledge. That's designed to help you understand how gamification is used today in the real world and how you potentially can be someone who uses it yourself. Now as we go along I'll point you through various lengths and other information if you want to dig deeper into gamification concepts. But one resource in particular that many students find helpful is my book For the Win, How Game Thinking Can Revolutionize Your Business which I co-wrote with a colleague, Dan Hunter. It's not a required text. You don't have to purchase it in order to take the course, but I hope that you will take a look and consider it. Students often find that the book is helpful because it's laid out in the same basic structure as the course, and expands upon it with additional examples and frameworks that you can then take with you after you finish up the. It's available in e-book form on all the major e-book platforms and also in paperback. It's also now available, in addition to English, in Spanish and Japanese translation with a number of other translations in the works. If you go to the link at the bottom of the page, the Wharton Digital Press link, it will give you a list of retailers to purchase it in e-book or hard copy format in various countries around the world. I hope you will at least take look at the book and consider it as a useful resource to deepen your understanding of gamification.
