Gamification: Ejemplo nº 2

Antes no lo he explicado, así que aprovecho para contarlo ahora (los courserianos veteranos os podéis saltar este párrafo): El curso tuvo una duración de 6 semanas. En cada semana se daban dos temas, y al acabar la semana se hacía un examen tipo test, correspondiente a la materia de esos dos temas (realmente el examen lo puedes hacer desde el primer momento de la semana, pero existe ese límite o plazo de tiempo de 7 días). 

Para hacer el examen no tienes límite de tiempo, salvo el de la semana, y puedes repasar los vídeos y pdf de cada tema. Que nadie se confunda y piense que eso lo hace mucho más sencillo. El curso está diseñado para que aprendas. En ese sentido está también diseñada la Evaluación del mismo. Eso significa que al repasar y darle cuatrocientas vueltas para responder al examen, vas a aprender bastante más de lo que ya tenías asimilado. En alguna ocasión ya he comentado (aunque todavía de pasada, todo llegará), lo que @jmruiz me enseñó acerca de La evaluación como aprendizaje (sí, es el título del libro (1) que me prestó para ilustrarlo). En este curso parece que lo han tenido en cuenta.

Pues aparte de esos exámenes, hubo en total tres ejercicios escritos "a desarrollar", que son los que os estoy pasando como ejemplos. 

Este que os copiaré ahora es el segundo ejercicio del curso de Gamificación: 

Enunciado:

Project Part II: Motivation

You are approached by Ryan Morrison, the mayor of a medium-sized city in the Midwest of the United States. He has heard that you know a lot about gamification and believes that gamification techniques can transform city government.

He would like to start with the health of city employees. The city has 50,000 employees and they happen to have exactly the same rates of obesity as the U.S. average: 34.4% overweight (but not obese) and 33.9% of them are obese. 53.1% of the city’s employees do not meet the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines for aerobic physical activity and 76% of them fail to meet the Guidelines for muscle-strengthening activity. The city pays for health benefits for its employees and this cost is a huge part of the city budget. Economists in Mayor Morrison’s office have estimated that a 3% improvement in the average physical fitness of city employees would amount to a US$94 million reduction in annual city health costs; a 5% improvement would save US$188 million.

Describe in general terms a gamified system that could effectively motivate behavior change to address the challenge presented above. Specifically, explain how the system would effectively incorporate intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, or both. Your answer should address the fact that this is an internal gamification project, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government. The system can use any technology (or no technology!), so long as the resources required seem justified by the scope of the opportunity.

Format: Maximum of 500 words. A normal answer will be 2-3 paragraphs of text, and/or a set of bullet points. Your submission should be self-contained (not requiring the grader to view any outside materials) and should provide sufficient details for the grader to understand the basis for your statements.

Resolución:

In order to develop this project, we take profit of the fact that all city employees have internet connection available and a user and password assigned to access to this city´s intranet. So this will be an internet-based initiative. At this scale of city (50,000 employees) this will be the most effective and the cheapest.

Every PLAYER (each one of the city employees: So it´s Internal Gamification system) will have access to a plattform that contains a WIKI created and developed by the players.

This wiki will be focused on two main topics: Nutrition and Physical activities. Both of them independently considered, but having in mind that there exists one clear relationship between them.

As in every wiki, this one will be entirely written by its autorized users (50,000 people), and will consist on a compilation of articles about good nutritional habits, and healthy physical training routines.

Conveniently indexed, you can propose modifications or additions to every document of the wiki. Wiki´s scope is that players will search and study, and finally write his/her proposal of contribution to this knowledge base. But the story doesn´t end here: you can vote the other´s entries, so there will be a ranking score of the most valued articles. This ranking score will help you to find the more useful articles, so you can read and follow (if you decide so) its guidelines. The ranking score will help too on giving feedback to the writer.

Related to motivation, it´s important to remark: (we try to focus on INTRINSIC motivation, because of its
effectiveness):

• The fact of search, study and write down your own findings about the two topics (good nutritional habits, and physical activities) is related to INTRINSIC motivation, because you take direct profit of those findings, that for sure you find useful to apply for yourself.

• The ranking score works as a "pat on your shoulder" system, to encourage you to keep on with your study. It also makes you pride of your contribution, so this if a kind of different reward, this is EXTRINSIC motivation. (A system of Points, Badges and Leaderboards will be implemented)

• FEEDBACK with FINAL results: Publishing monthly updated statistics on obese people (INTRINSIC motivation).

• COMPETENCE: You get the knowledge required to ACHIEVE your fitness. And you get this knowledge not only writing something in the wiki, but also reading other´s job, and voting them. This is INTRINSIC motivation.

• AUTONOMY: There isn´t a proposal of activities previously written by experts. So YOU are the one to CHOOSE and propose. This makes sense in the way of Self Determination theory for INTRINSIC motivation.

• RELATEDNESS: As a part of the community of city employees, when you write something into the wiki, you are helping them (and helping yourself) on finding their best fit by acquiring good nutritional habits and good physical routines. This is INTRINSIC motivation, as Self Determination theory explains (You do it (also) for the benefit of the GROUP).

Referencias: 

(1) PÉREZ Gómez, Á., SOTO Gómez, E., SOLA Fernández, M., & SERVÁN Nuñez, M. J.La evaluación como aprendizaje, Córdoba, Junta de Andalucía, 2009.