As part of the Centre’s innovation fund we explored last year the added value of ‘gamification for development’, the integration of game elements into existing learning and training products to maximise their effectiveness. The results of these experiments are documented on the online portfolio http://gamification.itcilo.org/. There you will find 6 examples of gamified learning products in the areas of Market System Facilitation, Informal Economy, Employment Policies, Learning Methodologies. Two other examples regarding Sexual Harassment and Green Behaviours will be soon published.

After this experimentation phase, we think it’s now time to scale up this learning journey and we don’t want to do it alone. In collaboration with GIZ, UNITAR, CINTERFOR and thanks to the contribution of other valuable experts we want to engage YOU in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The objective of this collective networked learning experience is not only to share what we have learned already but to build upon this knowledge and crowdsource on interesting ‘gamification for development’ cases globally. 

If your organisation or institution is interested to explore the added value of gamification than joining this MOOC might be an excellent opportunity to transform your ideas into practice. The course will run over an 8-week period and will start on the 11th of April. Signing up is FREE and can be done here.

Before the MOOC starts on April 11th, we invite you to have a look at the MOOC Flyer which provides background information, details of the team, learning objectives and IT requirements.

A Facebook Community Page is also live: like the page and stay tuned with the latest news and information regarding the MOOC.

This MOOC adventure is for the Centre an interesting opportunity to assess the learning and knowledge sharing potential of the MOOC format in order to scale and to increase our outreach potential. In addition to this, it i salso an interesting experiment towards introducing game elements and features within an online learning environment: informal rewards, revealing content techniques, challenges and peer-to-peer collaboration will be some of the features that characterize the learning environment.

Last but not least, MOOCs are also in line with our strategic goal to become a more digital and connected training Centre which supports our learners with 21th digital literacy skills that are highly needed in this complex and fast changing societal context.