Standardized outcomes yet personalized delivery

Standardized outcomes do not require standardized delivery. Technology should give teachers more choices and the freedom to teach the way that feels right to them and reduces their workload. Teaching from a pre-made course can feel restrictive and can take away the fun and responsiveness of being a teacher. In this book, you will learn a progressive development approach to create a Moodle Course that does not assume that everything will be set up before day one of the course. You will set up a framework, which can be filled in with detailed activities over time. Most teachers start with a series of learning outcomes but do not have the time available to plan every assessment and activity for the entire semester. Even if they did, they would miss out on including current news and events, encouraging learner-inspired projects, and responding to the skills and interests of the new batch of learners.

You could use a pre-assembled Gamification platform, such as Badgeville or Classcraft. This system may have a shorter learning curve and may be easier to set up than a blank Moodle Course. However, like any software wizard, you will become frustrated when you are locked in a system you can't alter, or the changes you require can only be made site-wide instead of at the course/class level. In some circumstances, pre-made Gamification software would meet your needs. However, this book presents Moodle as being a worthy technology to explore the range of game elements available for you to assemble in any order that you need. Moodle is already the world's most popular learning management system globally used in 225 countries with 68 million users. You are invited to contribute extension code or ideas to this successful open source project to keep it evolving.

In my experience, Moodle is the most versatile Gamification platform for education. Teachers can reduce their administration load, increase learner completion rates, and make the process more fun and rewarding for both themselves and their learners. As you try out each activity, you will see how the social constructionist pedagogy underlying Moodle — that we learn by doing, collaborating, and communicating — is closely aligned to game design principles. If you want to become a master of Gamification and continue to teach in your own style, then, in my opinion, Moodle is the best Gamification platform to invest your time in learning.