Achievements, Competition and Learning
For those that do not own an Xbox, Microsoft has implemented an achievement system that tracks various milestones for you when you play through any game. From the Xbox 360 website:
Achievements are game-defined goals that are stored and displayed in your gamer profile. Achievements can be as simple, complex, or off-the-wall as a game wants.
This system has been so successful (read: Are you addicted to achievements?) that Valve is implementing a similar system for all its games via Steam, Sony is working on a similar system for Playstation 3, and World of Warcraft is implementing an achievement system for the next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. Personally, I have not been sucked into the world of achievements, but nearly all of my friends have. I’m starting to see how addictive it is, both as a personal accomplishment as well as community bragging rights. GTA 4 contains 50 achievements, many directly tied to missions, but some just for fun. For example:
Dare Devil: Complete 100% of the unique stunt jumps.
This has NOTHING to do with the actual story or progression of the game, simply a fun challenge for a player to undertake. From the design side of the coin, putting achievements in games keeps gamers playing your game that much longer.
In terms of community, many gamers compare their overall achievement score, as well as their achievements for specific games. It’s almost an informal competition among friends. In my opinion, competition also leads to some level of motivation and engagement.
So how does this tie to learning? What if we could put some sort of achievement system in place for a course? What if such a system could be coded inside a CMS like Blackboard or ANGEL, that tracks your academic achievements over your academic career? Would this lead to a more engaged and motivated student? Obviously the biggest roadblock here is privacy; grades are not public and I, as an instructor, am not allowed to post student grades somewhere for everyone to see.
This feels like something worth fleshing out for a future course offering…
Hi Bart,
As someone on the faculty and staff training end of things, I’d love to see the achievement system built into communities used for staff training and documentation.
Imagine if our staff members were encouraged to participate to the ANGEL, Microsoft Office, Oracle Calendar, Blogs, Wikis, etc. based on some rating being displayed in community hubs, wikis or an LMS.
People seeking validation as subject-area experts could at once network and advertise their skillset while providing services that others need.
Sure there may be issues–the temptation to use this system in the formal evaluation process, the debate over privacy and one’s digital identity–but I’d love to at least see a this as a possibility open for discussion.
Nikki
Back in October, I had posted a similar idea, though more on achievements as a means of modernizing the academic transcript (maybe with grades, maybe without). My take was to help ease the burden of self reflection in learning, as opposed to encouraging learning and competition in and of itself.
The difficulty I see in going the later route is that there is already a comparative measure built into learning, those being grades. Penn State might not be able to share grades publicly, but it doesnt mean students don’t, and in doing so compare their performance with their peers. Video games have no such metric, so achievements fill that comparative void. They are your gaming resume and GPA all in one - the only only truly tangible metric through which gamers can measure themselves against their peers (or themselves). Thats what makes it compelling.
Having said that, I do think the idea has legs. Just perhaps not in the undergraduate classroom sense - maybe something more akin to what Nikki is talking about.
I must ponder on the tree of woe…
I agree, students do share grades, so there is a bit of competition already. But what I witness in my classes are small groups of friends sharing grades; not a large-scale measuring stick that the whole class would feel part of the competition or game.
Hopefully I’ll be able to give this idea a pilot test in SP09. Too much stuff to pilot the next 2 terms already