Coursevo: A Multimedia Online Learning Platform to Support Onlife Communities and its Extension with Gamification Facilities

Abstract

Coursevo (http://coursevo.com/) is a multilingual multimedia information system for managing courses, supporting learning processes and learning communities through the Web. Its multi-tenant architecture supports multiple instances of the underlying server infrastructure using the same core to serve the needs of multiple communities. An advantage of Coursevo in comparison with other eLearning systems is the emphasis that is given in the use of multimedia as a powerful learning means. Learning activities using multiple media can be more effective than doing it through a single medium (such as text), but what is important is combining media effectively. Coursevo is used in several vocational training and life-long-learning initiatives to establish and continuously support Onlife Communities. An Onlife Community is an aggregation that emerges in hyperconnected spaces when humans engage with other humans as well as with machines and natural entities in mindful interactions with sufficient human feeling to form webs of personal relationships. The paper presents how Coursevo is extended with gamification facilities to enable game-based learning scenarios within the context of the GAME IT project and beyond.