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Gamification: Motivation Psychology & The Art of Engagement (Udemy.com)

Learn how to motivate and engage anyone by learning the psychology that underpins human behaviour.

Created by: Rob Sutcliffe

Last updated August 2020

Our take

Based on the ratings of 12,521 students, a sample of their written reviews and the syllabus, as the course stood in August 2020. No course pays to be reviewed.

Rob Sutcliffe's course is a quick, talk-led look at why people do what they do and how to use that to motivate students, staff, users or kids. It runs about three hours across 46 lectures. The syllabus moves from extrinsic rewards like status into mastery, meaning, autonomy and community, then finishes by building an engagement plan for one group. Despite the gamification label, it is mostly psychology, not game design. About 38,500 students have enrolled, and the audience list names managers, teachers, designers and parents.

Reviewers like the short lectures, the recap at the end of each video, and Rob's easy delivery. One says he makes them want to talk the ideas over with peers. A student who already knew the field said the new insights only arrived halfway through. The complaints are consistent. It is heavy on theory, and one reviewer struggled to see how it fits a work team. Another says most examples come from computer games, with little on education, and two others wanted exercises or technical tools. A 3-star review says it plays down badges and leaderboards.

Nearly 11,000 of the 12,521 ratings are four or five stars, so most people leave satisfied. The material was last updated in August 2020, but psychology ages slower than software, so that matters less here. Treat it as a short, thoughtful primer, not a toolkit. If you lead people or teach, it is a pleasant few hours. If you build gamified products and want tactics, look for something more hands on.

Best forManagers, teachers, parents and designers who want the psychology behind motivation in about three hours.
Skip it ifYou want badge, points and leaderboard tactics or hands-on tools for building a gamified product.

Pros

  • Short lectures with a recap at the end of each video, which reviewers say keeps it easy to follow
  • Rob Sutcliffe's relaxed delivery makes the ideas easy to bring up with peers
  • Goes past points and badges into mastery, meaning, autonomy and community
  • Ends with a simple engagement plan you can reuse for a real group

Cons

  • Heavy on theory, and one reviewer struggled to apply it to a work team
  • Many examples come from computer games, with little on education
  • No quizzes or exercises, and the last update was in 2020
Very insightful and utilizes good examples. Does a great job of explaining motivational principles in learning and development, and in differentiating the misconceptions of gaming elements vs actual gamification products.
Gavin Gaynair, a student

Listed for all levels. It needs an open mind and a group to test ideas on, not any technical background.

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What you will learn

  • Understand the psychology of human behaviour
  • Motivate your students, staff, customers, users and yourself
  • Build an engagement plan to create change in a community

Course content

10 sections · 46 lectures · 3.1 hours of video

  1. 1Introduction to Motivation and Engagement 2 free previews2 lectures · 10 min
  2. 2The Science of Motivation5 lectures · 20 min
  3. 3Status and Other Extrinsic Rewards2 lectures · 10 min
  4. 4Mastery6 lectures · 25 min
  5. 5Meaning4 lectures · 20 min
  6. 6Autonomy6 lectures · 27 min
  7. 7Community4 lectures · 16 min
  8. 8Building Our Engagement Plan3 lectures · 16 min
  9. 9Example and Reference13 lectures · 40 min
  10. 10Thank You1 lecture · 2 min

Who it is for

The instructor says it suits

  • Managers and team leaders
  • Teachers
  • User experience designers
  • Parents

What you need before you start

  • You must have an open mind
  • You'll need to invest time in the student discussions
  • Ideally you'll have a community to test your ideas on

How it compares

Against the other 53 rated Udemy courses in Design Thinking on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.5 out of 5higher than 56% of them
  • Reviews12,521#6 of 54 by number of reviews
  • Length3.1 hourslonger than 58% of them
  • Last updatedAugust 2020earlier than 81% of them

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Course Description

The Art of Engagement and The Psychology of Motivation is a course that will teach you about human beings and what encourages them to do the things they do. This unique course is inspired not just from text books and science experiments, but from personal, first hand experience. Experience teaching children, managing teams and design applications.

The curriculum is designed to be studied over several weeks, with each video giving you interesting concepts and studies to take away, think about and discuss with the tutor and the other students. You'll be encouraged to bring your personal engagement challenges to this course so we can build an engagement plan together.

If you're an application designer, teacher, manager or parent, the psychology to motivate your people is the same and by the end of this course you'll have built an incredibly simple engagement plan to motivate change in any community. You'll not only finish the course with your engagement plan, but the ability to easily reproduce it any time in the future you need to motivate change in a community.

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Instructor Details

Rob Sutcliffe

It's been 10 years since I started working in elearning. I understand the limitations and the possibilities of online teaching. I'm excited for the future and I'm amazed at what we can do right now.

It's been 15 years since I first taught a class. I spent three years teaching english in Seoul. I loved seeing the progress of my students and I loved knowing they were having a good time in my class. I learnt about how to write a solid lesson plan the only way I believe anyone can... by seeing the results right there in front of me.

It's been 20 years since I first designed and built a website. I remember learning dreaweaver and flash while I was a student and been hooked on the power it gives us, even then I didn't know how far it would go. I've dedicated my life to building and designing web apps to the highest standard and now I want to pass that on.

It's been 35 years since I started school. and I wasn't that good at school truth be told. I had dyslexia and couldn't keep up, having overcome that and managed to find ways to teach myself the skills I need to get some fantastic jobs I'm confident I can explain things in a way everyone can understand and, knowing how much I struggled to learn, I can be very patient in explaining how things need to be done.

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Reviews

4.5

12,521 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By George Franco Antunes on 12/22/2025

I have been studying this topic for quite a while, but I love to study it again with different teachers. This one, at first, since I already know a lot about the topic, did not seem to offer me any new insight, which was I was aiming for, but halfway through the course I could get new insights and starting applying them to my industry. Fantastic! I recommend.

By Anonymized User on 4/5/2023

Great course that really goes in-depth with all the psychological things that should be focussed on when thinking about gamification. Instead of just implementing badges and a leaderboard. I also really liked all the examples in the last section. This section includes both good and bad examples, which also tests if you remember all the theory in the chapters before that.

By Anonymized User on 6/19/2021

This is an absolutely brilliant course, way better than all the other non-technical courses I have taken on Udemy. It is straight to the point, no-BS, and each point is carefully and properly reasoned out with numerous examples to demonstrate the points raised. Brilliant! Love this instructor and his course! Hoping he'll make more psychology related courses!

By Anonymized User on 5/26/2021

Negative: over-detailed, hard to follow all the examples and what to do or what to avoid Positive: Presentable and comfortable delivery tone

By Ala Ahmadi on 2/9/2021

I think this course can benefit anyone, but especially those who spend a considerable amount of time in the digital/online world. The instructor is knowledgeable and summarizes each video at the end of it, which I like a lot. One recommendation would be to add links to related articles. I'll review everything again and search for different articles in the future. Thank you for the great lectures ^_^

By Kamand Faramarzi on 6/9/2020

I've enjoyed this course. It's certainly an eye opener and wants to make you think about how you can motivate others and yourself for the simple things as well. Examples and apps were mentioned that I had no idea about. It certainly has deepened my knowledge and liking for this subject/ topic. Lastly, thank you Rob. The choice of content, examples and words were very good and definitely very engaging.

By Sayan Dey on 4/17/2020

Companies use badges, leader-boards and points to their success. In fact, they are advocates of this mode of engaging stakeholders or customers. But here, it seems the message is those rewards are not good. The course is more philosophical than business as this is centered on the intrinsic rewards which are easier said than done.

By Ralitza Stratieva on 12/22/2019

I really enjoyed this course. Even though Mr Sutcliffe spoke about some things I already knew of, he shed a completely different light on the concepts. I went into the material thinking it would be a good research/business course, but I was surprised that it really made me consider what is important to me as a person and what my relationship with social media is. I definitely recommend this course to anyone looking to learn about the right ways to motivate people. P.S. I also enjoyed the visuals - they were not too distracting, but were pleasing and added to the learning experience.

By Andrei Gusakousky on 10/2/2019

I get this course just to learn gamification for further applying this knowledge in app development, but finally I got more, then expected. It was a good course, there are many examples and answers to the questions, which are bothering us. While watching through this episodes I found the reflection of my inactions in some aspects of my daily basis, and it makes you to think and discover what do you really want. Thank you

By Anonymized User on 7/16/2019

Because i learn a new things that i did not know that are very important for an example when u tell people to do things for something like money they do them with out even hesitating. and i also learn that people sometimes they just need to kill their ego so that they can gain more self confidence,self-esteem,self-respect act in order to do things correctly

I always enjoyed psychology and this video does a very good job explaining terms through interesting examples.

I thoroughly enjoyed this course. It was practical and very engaging. Including the example and reference section was very thoughtful. It helped to see the practicality of the course with regards to technology/application dev.

Showing 12 of 62 reviews

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Overall Score : 90 / 100