Our MOOC on Serious Gaming, revised edition

In April 2016, we published our MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on the international MOOC platform Coursera.org. This open, international course is about serious gaming, including its theoretical backbone (a.o. theories of play, theories of persuasion), its contemporary practices, its promises and to what extent the field has been able to fulfill these. My colleague Dr Mijke Slot and myself are the principal developers. With this MOOC we aimed to reach an international audience of a diverse background. In four years, we had approximately 100.000 visitors, and close to 30.000 students are participating actively. In 2020, we partially revised our MOOC to make it even more accessible for those who want to learn about serious gaming.

‘You can lecture, but can you teach?’

Indeed, I lecture a lot, but my educational efforts are very much inspired by my motivation to be a good teacher. That means sharing my enthusiasm for the scientific content (theories, research) in an interactive setting. Students are there to learn, but founding class discussions on their (prepared) contributions increases the quality of a class session. The interactive learning environment based on weekly assignments in IBCoM’s international classroom has shown to be a productive and inspiring didactic format.

My courses in BA and MA

As an alumnus of the Center of Excellence in University Teaching (University Utrecht) I am keen to apply what I learned there. I consider it a privilege to be the first to introduce first year students to theories and research by teaching them the Introduction to Human Communication. It includes a wide range of topics related to interpersonal communication and mediated communication. Our course  is a nice piece of teamwork.  Our efforts are very much appreciated by students. The course helps them to position themselves in the vast field of media and communication research.

In the one year MA Media, Culture & Society and the two year Research Master in the Sociology of Culture, Media and the Arts I teach courses that are 100% embedded in my expertise. For example, my MA Seminar Participating Audiences or my Research Workshop on User Generated Content. Supervising MA theses is among the most inspiring duties I have. Over the years, my MA students and I have been able to rework the thesis material turning it into an international publication (for example, Jansz, Avis & Vosmeer, 2010; Jansz & Martis, 2007; Jansz & Revis, 2009; Hafner & Jansz, 2018).

Previously, at the University of Amsterdam I taught Philosophy of the Social Sciences to BA-2 students in Communication Science. It was a rewarding challenge, year after year. My Social History of Psychology course at Leiden University provided an excellent testing ground for developing our Blackwell book (Jansz & Van Drunen, 2004). And last but not least, the introduction course by Niko Metaal and myself was taken to another level by our collaboration with Phil Zimbardo (Stanford, USA) and Mark McDermott (East London, UK) (Zimbardo, McDermott, Jansz & Metaal, 1995).