Gamifying MOOC's a Step in The Right Direction?

Abstract

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) are gaining in popularity in recent years. However, there are certain well-known drawbacks of MOOCs like lack of student motivation, student engagement, and high dropout rates, which cast doubt on the success of MOOCs. Gamification, on the other hand, uses the concept of games but applied to a non-gaming context primarily for improving the motivational level of the users. Gamification is seen to have positive effects in a number of application areas like marketing, tourism, and even education. The primary objective behind this work is to investigate the current state of gamification as applied to MOOCs and check if it is a step in the right direction. For this purpose, a systematic literature review is conducted following the PRISMA standards and results analyzed.