Endless Points vs. Assigned Challenges

LMS feature request: the Infinite Task

So I’ve been playing a game called Forza Horizon 3 lately, and it might be the best game I’ve ever played. And, as always happens when I play something this fun, I consider how we could apply the same principles to teaching.

Disclaimer: Gamification is a dangerous idea, and 90% of the time it’s done poorly in education and professional training.

The feature I want to emulate right now is what I’m calling the Infinite Task.

In Forza Horizon 3, you get points for everything. EVERYTHING. Are you driving really fast? Speed points. Are you staying on the road and not running into anything? Clean driving points. Are you crashing around and destroying property? Destruction points. Are you doing donuts and 180s and drifting every corner? Points, points, and points.

Resist the urge to scroll to the bottom and argue, because it’s not exactly that simple. Forza Horizon 3 is a driving game. They reward you for driving, whether it’s completing and winning races, discovering new roads, taking the longest jump, or just fooling around in the open world (see above). You will definitely improve your driving skills more by participating in a challenge, so those things are awarded more points. But you also improve your driving skills by messing around, whether you notice or not. When you suddenly decide to turn around, slam on your brakes and spin the wheel, you get slightly more experience with handling and physics and techniques. When you’re romping through the bushes and sliding around, you’re figuring out how to handle loose surfaces.

So when we apply it to education, we need to keep that in mind. If I teach a class that covers Illustrator, I want to give them points — if only a few — for when they just mess around in Illustrator. For that, I need the Infinite Task in my LMS.

First, you need a toggle: “Allow students to re-submit.”

Then you’ll have the option to determine a set number of submissions allowed, a set timeline that they can re-submit (once a day, once a week, etc.), or unlimited. (I’ll choose once a day.)

Finally, select the second option out of: “Use highest score” and “Add all scores together.”

So in the case of my students’ Illustrator work, if they chose to simply experiment with drawing and creating shapes and messing with colors, they could quickly screenshot it and submit it for some points.

I’ve noticed a trend recently regarding not giving points for anything but tests or final projects, and instead providing only feedback. I agree with why they choose to do this: they want to reduce the anxiety and pressure on simple assignments. After all, they’re like practice. You’re not graded for practice.

My grading system is already different, however. Everything is additive. You don’t get 7 points out of 10. You just get 7 points. I want to reward work, so any and all work gets points. At the end of a term, I’ll have one or two students pushing 500 points, and some struggling around 200. That doesn’t mean that one gets an A and the other gets an F, it’s more for them to see how much work they’ve done, and as long as they’ve shown up to class and worked on the software assigned, they’ll at least get a C or above.

In my ideal school, when a student signs up for a class, they simply pick up where they left off. The 500 point student would pick up with much more advanced stuff than the 200 point student, the key difference being that even though both of them passed the previous semester, the 500 point student isn’t ‘held back’ by the class average and the 200 point student doesn’t have to play catch-up for the rest of his life.

Nevertheless, I’m open to the feedback idea. I mean, on one hand, students are here to learn and gain experience, so I want to reward any and all work. On the other hand, I want to prepare them for adult life, and adults tend to have projects they need to complete that have deadlines.

I guess I want to separate the two concepts: practice/work ethic vs. real life projects. You go to one class and just work on Illustrator stuff at your own pace, then you’re given a real-life scenario where you use whatever skills you have to fulfill the requirements. For example, you could design a pretty decent logo without having a ton of technical knowledge of Illustrator, the key is to use whatever skills you do have.