Gamification: a new key for enhancing engagement in MOOCs on energy?

Gamification is an innovative educational strategy that uses elements of games for educational purposes, including the completion of appealing challenges to increase student levels of engagement and learning. The objective of this research is to assess the effects of gamification as a teaching method used in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) about clean and conventional energy. This research is part of the project “Laboratorio Binacional para la Gestión Inteligente de la Sustentabilidad Energética y la Formación Tecnológica” [Binational Laboratory for the Intelligent Management of Sustainable Energy and Technological Formation]. A total of 4819 participants enrolled in the course, 621 passed the course, and 647 completed the gamified challenge. Results showthe impact of gamification on the cognitive, social, and emotional dimensions, where more than 90% of the participants agreed about feeling more motivated and challenged than when using traditional teaching methods. Therefore, the use of this methodology in online teaching could be very impactful in personalizing and enhancing the learning opportunities of massive, open online courses.