May the Plan be with you! A Usability Study of the Stimulated Planning Game Element Embedded in a MOOC Platform

Goal achievement is a measure of success; this could be particularly true in Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC), which are approached by a massive audience with an enormous variety of needs. Despite the huge number of MOOC users, it is unlikely to find solutions that allow them to pursue their individual goals. To overcome this issue, we have developed a first prototype of the Stimulated Planning (SP) game element, inspired by the implementation intention theory and by our experience with strategy games. In this study, the SP prototype is presented and its performance assessed via a new combination of three methodologies: usability test, eye tracking and the retrospective think-aloud technique. The results are promising and contribute to the field of gamification of MOOC at three levels: at conceptual level, by introducing and interpreting a new theory for gamification design; at design level, by demonstrating that is possible to design advanced gamification for MOOCs; and at assessment level, by applying a new methodology for MOOC gamification design assessment.