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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."
XP grinding their degree will thoroughly prepare them for the tedium of working on software design, though.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
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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.
Actually, I disagree with you there... I think it's VERY important to understand WHERE those equations come from and how to derive them (Especially for an engineer). If you don't know the roots of it, how can you ever know its limitations? I'll give you an example... You know that F=ma. But why should you need to know how it's derived? Well, it's derived from F= d(mv)/dt... So F=ma is only true if mass is constant with respect to time (So it doesn't work in cases of a rocket, airplane, top fuel dragster, etc)... That's easily seen from the derivation, but not trivial to see from dimensional analysis or the F=ma question itself. Without understanding the derivation, how can you ever hope to UNDERSTAND the equation? Sure, you can use it, but then how can you possibly KNOW if you pick the right one? And especially in the case of engineering, where people's lives can literally be at stake when choosing an equation, I sure as hell hope you understand the equation and not just know how to use it...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
And that artificial distinction between types of physics courses is exactly why people struggle with physics. What you're doing is simply downgrading the meaning of the word "understanding" when you remove essential things like Calculus from it.
A previous poster complained about derivations. (The rest of this post is directed at him/her, not to the immediate parent before me with whom I agree - for the most part). Well, without understanding where equations come from, haven't you just walked away with a cargo cult understanding of physics? Plug this into that equation and voila, you have a bridge that is probably as shaky as your concepts. A course like Physics for Poets is nothing but a compromise course, because there will always exist a class of people who will refuse to be bothered with "useless" things like mathematics and will demand that the workings of the universe be made comprehensible to them in simple terms that require only a modicum of thought. The very idea that the math and the physical concepts exist separately from each other in meaningful ways is ludicrous. In fact, without the math to derive the real world consequences of a physical idea in a logical way, a book on physics would have no more authority than a religious text. It is the math that makes it different. And the fact that students don't get this is responsible for the scientific illiteracy that plagues our nation today. A scientific explanation of a complex question (such as say, why the sky is blue) without recourse to mathematical analysis (like simply blubbering something about Rayleigh scattering) is only MARGINALLY superior to an answer such as "because God made it so". Because in the end, without the math, you're relying on your faith (in god or the scientist) to pacify (rather than satisfy) your curiosity about the world. The long road from a simple concept like light being an electromagnetic wave (as a first approximation) to the scattering of different colors of light that goes as the fourth power of the frequency can be traveled only in the vehicle that is mathematics. No amount of hand-waving arguments will let you bridge that gap in an intellectually honest way. Sure, you can resign yourself to the fact that some people cannot or will not (or do not wish to) travel that road and simply show them a picture of the final destination. Is that understanding? Or is it a low level faith masquerading as understanding?
The worst delusion is the one where people who "learn" through pop-sci books feel they "understand" something. To name something is not to understand. It's a delusion borrowed from the humanities and it has no place in the physical sciences. It's a start, but 99% of the work still remains to be done on your part.
Without deriving an equation yourself (or at the very least seeing it derived), you will NEVER understand (1) the assumptions that went into it and (2) consequently, the domain of its validity. So, the next time you try to use it in a practical situation to say, build something, I can only hope that the thing you build is safer than your general attitude.
Besides, we're talking about an introductory course on physics. 20 pages of derivations is something you'll see in an advanced course on quantum field theory (if that). If every equation in an intro physics course were rigorously derived, it wouldn't add more than 2 weeks to the course (and perhaps 20 pages TOTAL to your notebook if you scrupulously wrote it all down). But what it would do, in exchange for that minor inconvenience, is give you a level of understanding of the subject that (given the consolidation and refinement of the intervening years) would rival that of Newton himself. Ditto for relativity and Einstein, or quantum theory and Schroedinger.
The problem that I have with core classes is that it seems to be geared towards making up for what was once covered in highschool.
In elementary school, we should be learning our tools. In highschool, we should be learning how everything fits together. A highschool graduate should know how to write a research paper, how to give a simple speech, how to do basic algebra, and how a bill becomes a law. A highschool graduate should be able to tell you Newton's Laws, balance a chemical equation, and name the primary organs in the body.
People keep insisting that college is the point at which you specialize, but the typical four-year degree has less than half of its courses actually in your major. My university actually had a mandatory requirement in the first two years for gym class! C'mon, people, we're adults! We should be able to choose whether or not we want to get slammed around the basketball court One More Time!
Basically, I am not arguing against the idea of core classes. I am arguing against the notion that we must continue to emphasize them through college. A classic core education shouldn't take 14-16 years and you should be able to spend more than 6 months learning how to do what you plan to spend the rest of your life doing.