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Professor Ditches Grades For XP System
schliz writes "Like in World of Warcraft, students of Indiana University's game design classes start as Level 1 avatars with 0 XP, and progress by completing quests solo, as guilds, or in 'pick up groups.' Course coordinator Lee Sheldon says students are responding with 'far greater enthusiasm,' and many specifics of game design could also be directly applied to the workforce. These included: clearly defining goals for workers; providing incremental rewards; and balancing effort and reward."
If only I could create some sort of bot to do the work for me so I could then sell those rewards for money...
While there are definite benefits to the XP system, it's a very large departure from the stable and useful 2000 system.
I predict the next step will be a major overhaul of the evaluation system which will be widely hailed as a vast improvement on paper but turn out to be a huge mess and pleasing to no one.
...against boredom of grinding.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
This approach would be great in other courses.
Anatomy class, for example.
Play doctor and get credit.
the question is do they get something like perks/skills/spells etc. for new levels? if not then you can count me out.
Y'all know the Rogues guild will be by far the wealthiest ... answers to Test 4B you wanted?...
Balancing effort and reward doesn't interest most employers. They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward.
If they were to balance effort and reward, they might actually have to (for instance) pay overtime to the programmers who put in 80-hour weeks to meet the deadline...
(Score: -1, Overly Cynical) ;-)
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Kid: "Well, I'm a level 8 Human designer. I'm mostly int and charisma."
Interviewer: "Err, okay... here, roll this 20 sided die. 10 or higher gets you a second interview"
*rolls*
"Sorry, I hope you are able to find better opportunities elsewhere."
*long pause*
"Fireball! Fireball! Fireball! Fireball!"
"Please leave my office."
...in people causing them to be positive about the build-up; the hoarding of score (read: resources). No, really, it is so.
Course coordinator Lee Sheldon says students are responding with 'far greater enthusiasm,'
It's a documented fact that any change brings about a temporary boost in motivation. One should be careful with making generic assumptions based on this change.
Let me make an analogy we all understand. When you meet a girl and she wears these big unsexy undies, you don't really care because she'll look great to you anyway. When she becomes your wife, you'll suggest sexy, minimalistic underwear. And sooner or later, even that won't help.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
I expect him to be grading many papers that are mysteriously smeared with Cheetos residue.
You are now manually breathing.
While I can see how this may make academic courses more appealing to students, I don't understand the extrapolation to "the workforce" - in a good workplace, there SHOULD BE clearly defined goals, incremental rewards and balanced effort and reward. Any decent manager could tell you that.
Sorry I didn't come to class today, I imbibed some sort of malware last night at the tavern searching for "quests" and it slowed down my body and took over root processes and I was unable to login.
Orwell was an optimist.
Ni hao! put something in trade so the teacher doesnt catch on.............
When my (then future) fiancee and I were about 6 months into our relationship, I would give or take away XP points to her based on things she said, and she did the same for me. XP could be awarded based on comedy (adding to CH), how thought provoking it was (adding to INT), or how much of a "OH DAMN" reaction you got (adding to ST). It was an arbitrary system not really based on anything, but XP could be turned in for "favors" of different varieties depending on the XP used, if you know what I mean.
Nothing like two nerds in love :-)
Living With a Nerd
Going through college, I was like a level 50 Suck-up. I was so good at it, that once I got partial credit on a True/False question... I wonder what other sorts of character classes one could obtain at a University Dungeon.
http://www.beanleafpress.com
I was building Vitality!
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
which works great until the prof finds out you found out about the IDDQD / IDKFA cheat.
Experience is not what you take college classes to obtain. Experience happens after graduation, or outside of the classroom. The intellectual frameworks of subjects and mechanisms for reasoning within those frameworks are what tertiary education provides.
In college, it does not matter so much that you have or have not done something, but how well you did that thing. Grades are a vital, and important part of that evaluation. Just saying that something was achieved or some act performed does not indicate how well it was done. Were the problem set answers copied from the answer key? Were they copied from another student? From sources on the Web? Was there original thought and effort put into it? How is not having an evaluation of the finesse and skill used on an assignment going to provide the necessary feedback to teach the students how to think? College, after all, is not so much learning specific subjects, although that is certainly an important part of it, but teaching the students how to use their brains. Without the assessments of grades, this becomes a far less efficient process. Frankly, Sheldon, the professor in charge of this class, is pandering, and is doing nothing to improve the already lightweight reputation of Indiana University. We are talking about a class in game design, after all, not embedded control design, or real time systems, or higher order languages, or advanced algorithms.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Better than the current system of pushing people up the ranks regardless of their ability and then being shocked when grade 9 students can't tell you what 4 * 9 is.
They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward.
I would say they're interested in getting as much output as possible, for as little expenditure as possible.
They don't mind how rewarding you find whatever they give you---in fact, they want you to be happy (because hiring a replacement if you're unhappy enough to leave is expensive).
And they also don't mind how much effort it requires on your part to make the output, they just want the 500 new widgets every day.
http://www.xkcd.com/189//
cuz we're all just sims in some grander game.
As long as nobody puts on their robe and wizard hat during the interview, I'm happy :)
"As the gamer generation moves into the mainstream workforce, they are willing and eager to apply the culture and learning-techniques they bring with them from games". This sounds like vocational training. I have always thought assignments were supposed to cover the practical side of education. Work could be a game, but how many games have stood the test of time. I work by force, I play by games by choice.
A 50 year grind to max out, random nerfs and level wipes, and the end game reward is a 2-person Winnebago instance in the Florida server.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
when they level up enough to do the boss raid.
> "They're interested in getting the most effort out of their employees for the least possible reward."
That's because we all keep shopping at Wal-Mart. We all want the most we can for our money. Employer's are just meeting the demands of their customers. Since we, "the customer," want as much as possible for the least amount of money as possible, employers must cut costs to meet that demand . . . or die off and leave a more competitive company (one which likely pays it's employees less) to fill our need for cheap products/services.
It worked great until they brought in the George Clooney avatar to fire us.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Wake me from my nap when the boss announces a 20% XP bonus week. I'll work harder that week. Also, do you have any XP bonus items a guy can wear? Girls and their short skirts always get more XP than me.
An RPG style game is typically designed so nobody ever dies, with the XP and challenges scaling more or less with ability. All this will produce is a bunch of kids who perform the same, and get A's (or Legend status).
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Student: "Stand down black knight, for I am Monty, a paladin of great power, pure of spirit, righteous to my core and I will strike you from your stead this day. What say you?"
Teacher: For God's sake student, sit down, I told you there is no XP for roleplaying in this class.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
This is almost identical to management by objective, where every quarter you're given some tasks to complete, and your quarterly bonus depends upon how many you get done. Where I work, the tasks include getting certified in something new, writing white papers, or performing "health checks" for our customers' data centers.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Achievement Unlocked: Class passed.
many specifics of game design could also be directly applied to the workforce
Achievement unlocked! Slept with intern.
There is an excellent, IMO, book called MetaGame, by Sam Landstrom which (as part of its plot) deals with a future society where economic rewards in work and play are based on a system of points based on a sophisticated economic game design.
Its an interesting read, and very entertaining. There's a thesis presented in there that is very similar to this -- that a game-based reward system drives both workers and society to higher levels of productivity *and* happiness.
I have no idea if its available in print, but its a buck or two on Kindle.
I remember reading an article in the Economist about how young people coming through the education system (in the UK) are becoming increasingly difficult to integrate into the workforce.
That article pointed out that the problems with such integration are precisely the "benefits" espoused by the summary above. Namely that new graduates expect ridiculously elaborate and well-defined goals, don't work very hard without specific incentives, have poor social skills and in general lack initiative.
The article (which as a former manager I agree with) made the point that that these individuals are increasingly difficult to manage and motivate. As a manager, I shouldn't have to define an intricate XP based points system to keep my staff interested. I think it is a consequence of TV-led, internet-supercharged instant gratification culture that the notion of short or medium term effort for long term gains is drifting into obscurity.
You don't work hard on assignment X because I'll give you some XP, or even a cash voucher or something. You work hard because you take some pride in both yourself and your work and at the prospect of getting promoted.
Don't want to get promoted, don't want to work hard, don't really want to be at work anyway? Then fuck off out of my team and let me employ someone who does!
Games are nature’s way of learning. Like dogs play, to train for the real world, so do we.
And their greatest aspect, is that they are fun. Because success and learning is supposed to be fun. After all it’s the basis of survival and winning the game of natural selection.
Only schools fucked that one up. Because as they are today, they were originally invented by Bismarck, because he wanted something like military drill, but for kids. (Yeah, how fucked up is that?)
So getting back to games, to a solid motivating balance between too hard and too easy, rewards, and all the stuff that makes you *want* to win the game, and makes you have *fun*, is the best one can do for human education.
So I applaud this idea, of using MMORPG concepts for school-like “education”. Which until now is more focused on training us to be good little mindlessly obeying automaton drones, like soldiers.
Maybe that will make kids think outside of the box and come up with their own smarter ways again.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
This is actually amusing, since I'm going to be using a "serious roleplay" game in my seminar course this fall. The Reacting to the Past project has created a number of detailed scenarios where students take on a historical role and then try to achieve their victory conditions. The one I'll be using models the debate in the British Royal Society over awarding the Copley medal to Charles Darwin in 1864. Some students will be only interested in the award itself, others will be trying for separate objectives such as getting women elected to the society or endorsing scientific study of prayer. Most of the grade will come from how well they perform, but there are additional points for specific achievements.
There's a growing recognition at least in higher ed that games can be really quite useful for teaching and learning- I've also used simple simulation games to model things like the economics of the steel industry, and we have a couple of economists who built entire chunks of their curriculum around multi-player games in classrooms.
I predict the next step will be a major overhaul of the evaluation system which will be widely hailed as a vast improvement on paper but turn out to be a huge mess and pleasing to no one.
Well that and plenty of people complaining it is the same old shit, due the lack of quests. Unless the dungeon masters, uh managers, recognise this will simply cause the people to move on to the next environment where quests are implemented.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
until the company merger nerfs your job class after 30 years of subscription and your retirement gets ganked.
Thats a fantastic idea - I would definitely trial something like that (bit different) at the workplace.
Wouldn't game design students be kind of self-selecting to be open to such an idea?
Not saying it's bad, but it's not exactly a surprise, either.
www.worldofchorecraft.com
If I've got a fourth grader, I give him a math test on memorization of the multiplication tables. He turns it in with a quarter of the problems wrong, he gets a D. Then a month later, I give him a test on multiplying double-digit numbers. He gets a quarter of the problems wrong, he gets a D. Then I give him a test on division, three-digit numbers divided by one digit. He gets a D.
This kid leaves the fourth grade, and he pretty much forgets the little that he did learn in my class. He spends most of the next year playing catch-up.
Let me suggest the curriculum for a fourth grader's math assignments. I'm going to give this kid a test on the multiplication tables, but I'm going to give it a week earlier than the other teacher did. If this kid gets a quarter of the problems wrong, then he has to respawn and go fight the boss aga-- er, he has to take another multiplication tables test a week later. He keeps taking one of those tests once a week until he gets at least a 90% on it, even if the other kids have moved on to start taking other tests.
If this kid can't get ever get a 90% on these tables, he gets an F in math for the semester. If he passes the tables test, his grade levels up to a D.
Then I give this kid a test on double-digit multiplication. He has to take it again and again until he gets a 90% on the test. When he does, he levels up to a C in math for the semester. This might take him so long that he doesn't ever really get to the long division test, although I'll still give him some assignments to pick up on the basics of it.
The kid in the first example never really got a strong handle on any of the subjects I taught. The second kid knows his expletive'ing multiplication tables and has a good handle on multiplying numbers, even if he never got a good shot at the later stuff. The first kid got a D in math, the second kid got a C. Which kid do you think knows more about math?
Alternatively, I give one student that tables test, and he gets an A on the first try, a week earlier than the others. I tell this kid, okay, you can beta test the new dungeon that the devs are working on-- er, you can start looking ahead at some of the new material. Or maybe you can actually only get to a B in this class by doing the three main quests, so if you want to get to an A, you'll have to do at least a few side quests. Here, why don't you solve the puzzles in this beginner's programming book, since it's tangentially related to math? Or you could grind the goblins in this basic accounting sheet, teaching you to balance a checkbook?
I'm sure the actual logistics of this method would require a bit of work, but I'd like to see it tried out in practice once.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
I wonder what the PvP system would be like...
In general, worthwhile work is difficult and rewards don't come easily. Part of what is called "experience" is having the concentration span and application to have a long term goal and follow through with it. Do we really want to encourage our youth away from this? It seems to me it will deprive them of an important part of their education.
I really think this is a very good idea. Its a very nice way of measuring knowledge and makes it hard to coast through school on charm alone.
By splitting the points up in segments where for eg. perfect knowledge in a specific area gives 5 points you can force students who wants more points to cover the whole curriculum. It becomes much harder to ride on narrow knowledge. Grades becomes so much clearer than today and its really easy to pinpoint areas where more work is needed.
HTTP/1.1 400
I am a professional teacher. I have seen both grade-based assessment and competency-based assessment (i.e. experience-point based assessment). Both have their advantages; both fit different scenarios.
When you have several low-level distinct points that need to be conveyed, competency-based training is ideal; however, when you want to know if someone not only knows a fact, but is able to implement it on the go, or teach it to others, multi-dimensional grading comes into play. Unfortunately, when we have multiple variables of how well someone has learned a fact or a skillset, we, as teachers, are still expected to compress a multi-faceted evaluation into a one-dimensional grade. Just as you can't compress strength/agility/vitality/intelligence/luck/maxHP/maxMP/attack power/defense power into one single number (I have Dragon Quest V open in front of me right now) (barring, of course, a system which allows an absurdly high amount of numbers), we can't be expected to compress a full evaluation of years of education into a 2 (P/F) or 5-point (A/B/C/D/F) projection.
Effectively, the more evaluation, the better. Unfortunately, when a professor lectures 300 students, it simply is not practical for him/her to write an essay about each one outlining the total skillset.
Let me make an analogy we all understand. When you meet a girl and she wears these big unsexy undies, you don't really care because she'll look great to you anyway. When she becomes your wife, you'll suggest sexy, minimalistic underwear. And sooner or later, even that won't help.
I still don't understand. =(
Need I say anything else?
In the real world, we call this form of incentive "Money", not "XP".
Will there be a good PvP system implemented ? I get bored really fast with PvU(niversity) grinding :P
superexp.cn is gearing up4 the new semester! 1000experience points just $19.99! 1million 4 jst $29.99 safe and secure payment. delivery in hours!
Business took a page from science and said, "If I can't measure it, it doesn't exist."
I think of science saying something much closer to "If I can't measure it yet, I defer judgment until I can, and try to enable that. If it's inherently unmeasurable, I defer judgment forever."
Business people tend to not measure, and also not try harder at measuring, because they don't know the payoff of measuring harder, because they never measured that either, because [...].
All you have to do is find a Succubus, tame it, and you'll earn your degree in a day. It is said that whenever you have sex with it you gain as much XP as it is required for the next level.
Beware of the Vampire, however. It will drain your XP and you may lose your degree then.
I knew for a long time that education and gaming were going to mesh to not only help people learn better quicker but also because the degree of intense amusement when you achieve something, such as rewards. I play WoW, and the reason is I enjoy the gratification you get from being able to turn in quests and see yourself advance in the game.
You can link this type of mentality through any other field in life, such as business, marketing, even math and construction.
I think making school a little more like real life not only helps push that mentality in our young ones, but also uses a medium they are quite familiar with to transfer the required knowledge. Go to youtube, and see the do it yourself videos on how to change an alternator on a car, or install some floor tiles for your bathroom.....it's all there, why not education as well.
I guess the only thing would be to set up school centers made purely to challenge the tests and be able to say you passed x grade.
When someone wants to pass the bar (lawyers), they do not need to prove all the courses they have taken, merely pass the exam based on knowledge. I think this is more of the model we should push, and so be it,add a reward schema in the middle to help during the learning process.
I hope this guy pushes this very far, and hopefully gets a revolution going within the schooling system, we desperately need it!
Enough with dropping the passing grade, for chr*sts sake, just make it so cool to do, that all students will WANT to learn that sh*t and then be able to pass with 90%, just like a raid in WoW!
if you can gank your classmates for extra credit?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
it never crashed. Never!
New Economic Perspectives
I can't wait to get "You've gotten 3 A's in a row" or the more elusive "You've slept with the teachers daughter!" achievement.
What happens when he upgrades to Vista?
Too soon for a MSFT reference?
If I were to have this system for school/work I'd grind that all the time just to get through the checklist, honestly. It'd get more done for sure.
What a conincidence. I just heard a talk with him today. He's visiting our company to help with the development of a star trek game and he also introduced the very same concept. Neat idea and - as he says - it works with those who play games and then is a better alternative to grades. His explainations seemed plausible to me.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And this different from the old points system, how?
Where does Chuck Norris fit into all this?
It's a high level course for upperclassmen, one of the hardest there is. If anyone tells you they got through it, they're lying.
I didn't think the house band in Hell would play this badly.
In the grown-up world you reward results, not effort.
sic transit gloria mundi
I think the problem with universities is that education has already become a grind, and this takes the mind-numbing up a notch. The reason why our students are demanding "clear, well-defined goals" in courses is exactly because they want everything in college to have handrails, explicit structure and a transparent input-output conditionals. And it's true that it's easier to get good grades in such a system. But I think it's completely irresponsible to take someone who has made it through such a system as "college-educated". An educated person has learned to operate flexibly in a system where the input-output structures are opaque, and the quality of their product is what matters. (The real world doesn't care if you took "all the right steps" in the process of making something shoddy, so I don't see why college courses should reward it either.)
While my background is in physics, I now teach courses in philosophy. Now try to imagine applying this XP system to my field! It's not useless; I mean, I do stuff like this already (though I feel dirty about it). I occasionally give quick multiple-choice reading quizzes which make up a tiny portion of the course grade. Students can see "collecting" reading quiz points as XP's. But what really matters to me is that my students reveal an understanding of the issues and are able to have coherent and insightful reactions to these. Maybe a more straightforward way of looking it is this: My students need to be able to horribly embarrass anyone who defends certain dumb ideas, in a wide range of contexts. For example, if my ethics students aren't able to embarrass a smart moral relativist in a conversation, they don't deserve a passing grade for that (small) unit of the course. This objective cannot be divided up into sub-objectives to which you could assign XP's, because there are incredibly many paths for getting to that goal, and for the purpose of grading, I don't care which path they take. It depends on their temperament and talent. I'm not about to impose a structure on how to achieve this goal, and anyone who does is being a terrible educator. Their students will learn to grind out good grades, but... what else? Is it hoped that "incidentally" they will also acquire an understanding of the subject along the way? It seems to me much better to just test their understanding directly, and let them learn how to best match their skills to the available resources so that they achieve that understanding. That's exactly what students should learn in college, and it's also exactly what this XP system circumvents.
Much like law: Once long ago we had something called a Constitution with something about rules or limits on what government could do, and even though everyone in government quickly found those limits to be wholly inconvenient to ensuring life was fair, it is interesting to see what kind of experiments people came up with long ago in simple times that in no way resemble the complex world we live in today.
It is still an amusing read, and often helps one understand the crazy ramblings of people that still talk about it being real like people that think the Bible is real.
So like you said, it if fun to read about stuff, but make sure you keep it in context and double check with reality.
Have gnu, will travel.
Since 2006 I've been teaching an undergrad general education (i.e., for non-scientists) course in Computer Science called Computer Games at UNSW@ADFA (University of New South Wales, at the Australian Defence Force Academy) that has used a levelling metaphor. Students start out as "Newbs" (Fail level) and level up through Knave (Pass Conceded), Squire (Pass), Courtier (Credit), Peer (Distinction) and L33t (High Distinction). A large pool of elective tasks are made available to the students. These fall into one of three categories - Delves, Quests, and Odysseys based on their difficulty and work involved. Students undertake whatever tasks they desire (within a few constraints) and will level-up on successful completion of a certain task mix. Each student has their own Wiki where they record their progress on tasks and where I and my markers provide feedback on their progress. Think of it like a Quest Log. Heck, there's even a series of weekly exercises which might be considered the "main storyline" of the course/game, and there's icons for each of the ranks and quests. The 2009 version of the course can be found at http://seit.unsw.adfa.edu.au/coursework/ZGEN2301/index.html, with task lists etc. Student Wiki pages are there also but password locked (plagiarism issues), otherwise you'd be able to seem the excellent work that (some of) the students have done.
To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play ⦠- Albert Einstein
I'd be interested in seeing an entire school switch to "Achievements" and see what comes of that, grade wise.
I think this can be linked to the "personnal progression" part of the scout method, where badges are awarded when progress is made as a team or individually. This is a method that works since 1907.
Send them to the playroom. That's the problem with education: No carrot, only stick.
I'm a level 80 Vice President!
Furries make the internet go.