Gameful Pedagogy and Collaborative Learning a Case Study of the Netsx Project

This case study paper introduces and discusses NetsX, a semester-long research project developed around gameful design principles to encourage peer- to-peer collaboration and engagement. The paper situates NetsX in recent scholarship on higher education game design, collaborative learning and the use of online tools in teaching and learning. It discusses how gameful principles were used to design a low-cost, highly iterable curriculum that incorporates freely available online resources, namely Google Docs, Wordpress, and Wikipedia. The paper concludes by discussing current limitations and future possibilities for NetsX, proposing that the project be expanded to make the visual components more gameful, and to make student contributions easier to track, navigate and search in a graphical user interface.