Gamifying Collaborative Activities in MOOCs

MOOCs can bring together thousands of students with different background in the same course. This fact presents a good opportunity for instructors to design and enact collaborative activities that may involve groups. However, MOOCs present some drawbacks that can hinder the completion of this kind of activities such as the high drop-out rates, the self-paced character or the resistance of the students to abandon their comfort zone. The use of gamification in MOOC contexts has shown potential benefits to enhance students' engagement, encourage students to interact with others and promote activity submission, which can be useful for increasing the completion of such collaborative activities. This paper shows the gamification design, and the first outcomes, of a MOOC that involves gamified and collaborative activities. To carry this out, the course was configured with 15 badges that students can achieve when performing social and optional actions for completing the course.