Glossary

Please note the terms that we are being used throughout the documentation.

A mission is a generic term that encompasses any mechanism giving objectives to a learner. Missions take the form of quests, achievements and challenges. The documentation will use the term mission to refer to the three of those without needing to mention them individually.

A quest is a type of mission that contains a storyline, a couple of objectives and optionally some outcomes.

An achievement is a type of mission that contains a single objective.

A challenge is a type of mission that contains a couple of objectives, some outcomes, that is typically limited in time, and can be set to be recurring.

The lifecycle of a mission refers to the different stages that a mission can be in. A mission is firstly assigned, then started, then completed and finally ended. Each of these represent a different stage which influences the relationship between a recruit and their mission.

Recruit refers to learners, or any user, that has been assigned to a mission. Essentially, any person partaking in a mission will be considered to be have been recruited for that mission. Using the term recruit allows us to freely refer to a learner or user without making the assumption that they have been recruited for a mission. Similarly, in Moodle, learners only become learners when they are enrolled in a course.

Rewards is anything offered, shared, or sent to the learner as they complete their mission. The concept of reward is subjective and both the instructor and learner may view those differently, but in the context of the documentation we refer to something that the learner is meant to view as a reward.

Side effects typically refer to logic that is triggered at the end of a mission that is not directly associated with the mission itself. For instance, automatically adding a learner to a group after they completed a mission is considered to be a side effect.

Outcomes is the generic term used to refer to rewards and side effects. In other words, the outcomes of a mission are triggered when the mission ends, and they take the form of the rewards and side effects defined by the instructor.