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."

Comments

Balance? Yeah, right...

[danaris]

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

Re:Change is motivational

[Karellen]

change brings about a temporary boost in motivation.

That's the Hawthorne effect.