When I was "down under" recently for the KM Australia 2015 Conference in Melbourne, Natalie Denmeade and I met for coffee to explore areas of collaboration in the future. I was struck by Natalie's incredible passion for eLearning, applications of instructional technology, and most importantly, Gamification in the education process. Natalie has developed and demonstrated keen analytical capabilities, relationship building capacities, and a thirst for new knowledge that really impressed me. I have come across very few individuals who have her intellectual skills, leadership and team building drive, as well as her sensitive emotional intelligence.
My biggest surprise, once we began to talk, was Natalie's kind invitation for me to write the preface for her new book, Gamification with Moodle. I was exceptionally humbled. First, regardless of my grey hair and beard, I consider myself a Gamification apprentice—well, maybe more like a Sorcerer's Apprentice; but I think you get the idea. Second, Natalie has developed an incredible reputation in the Gamification field and the educational applications of gaming. Finally, Natalie is much more of a technical aficionado than I could ever be, especially with Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle.
Natalie has been working as a freelance educational Gamification consultant and Moodle administrator for many years. She has developed significant visibility as an educational transformation thought leader—what I would refer to as a disruptive "edupreneur". One of her publications, the Moodle for Motivation Tool Guide, has been distributed globally and translated into four languages. Natalie participates and leads many global communities-of-practice. Recently, her work included a project with Dev4X.com that will have a significant impact on villages where limited IT and Internet access is available.
Natalie has framed an exceptionally useful DIY approach to Gamification within the Moodle LMS. Her templates, advice, lessons, and learning strategies permit an instructor to experiment with direct application of Gamification techniques in any Moodle course. Such a rich knowledge repository of learning will dramatically reduce the amount of time and efforts required by an instructional designer to create a usable Moodle course. The performance increase for a Moodle-based instructor will be dramatic, and well worth the investment. However, her universal recommendations and framework can actually be embedded in many other LMSs. Instructors using Blackboard, CANVAS, Angel, or Desire2Learn, to name but a few LMSs, can benefit immensely from the applied and actionable knowledge contained in this text.
The application of Gamification within a Moodle course can create a significant experiential journey for both the learners and the instructor. Anyone reading this book has already gone over to the "dark side" and realized that in order to increase engagement, collaborative learning, and continuous learning, we need new, quicker, and agile approaches to embed Gamification mechanics and techniques within our courses.
We also respond better to micro-learning within an eLearning environment. Natalie's writing style and organization of the text facilitates an instructor's experience of gamifying a Moodle course, without overwhelming the teacher. Natalie's guidance throughout this book relies upon activities that are micro-learning-based, feature short-term lessons, projects, and coursework designed to provide the instructor with the chunking of the information and a scaffolding of the learning experience.
It has been my honor and privilege to be associated with Natalie's monograph filled with a wide range of "knowledge nuggets". Natalie has proved again that she is a critical thought leader in education and Gamification.
Michael J. D. Sutton, PhD
Wizened Ol' Fart, architect of experiential learning through Gamification, simulation, and serious games.
Boise, Idaho, USA, October 2015