Gamification Reflections.

So, yes, I'm only at the end of Week 3 with this gamification idea (which isn't quite the halfway point), but I had to blog about how it feels rather successful at the moment. I am slightly shocked that it's working as well as it is, but in reflecting, maybe I'll realize why it's working better than my other approaches.

Benefits:

• Students are doing well. Only one student is below a B right now, and many are over 100% (due to the extra points gathered from winning contests).
• I've asked students to be the most concerned with three elements to writing (even if their judges aren't): format, content, and audience. A majority of them take the last two seriously each time they compose.
• The critical thinking involved with determining what the audience might want to hear, or what the content should contain, can not be undervalued or underestimated!
• The majority are handing in the contests - or their substitutions - on time, even though I didn't go into a long drawn out lecture on Day 1 or 2 about my flexible due dates. I haven't really spoken to deductions at all; I've focused on the attempts, the labor. If they attempt the work, they get credit. I have said that I will take their work, even if it's a few days late; I haven't told them any of the tenants of ungrading/alternative assessments.
• There's still much student choice in this game. They can complete all contests or complete all substitutions or a combination and still hit the outcomes of the course.

Pitfalls:

• Some do not care about their formatting, some are not using Grammarly, and some ask me for assistance but then do not use my feedback. This would probably happen in any class, however.
• The way I have the contests set up in Blackboard is working okay thus far; however, I have them set as Assignments in Ultra to prevent each other from seeing how another is approaching the contest. The issue is that Bb Ultra only lets me download their stuff as PDFs and if I want to combine their contests into ONE PDF (so judges don't have to open 5-20 documents), I do not have the fancy Adobe with which to accomplish that.

Things to Change for the Future:

• Ask students to put their names on their contests so judges can easily tell me who was their top 3-5.
• Integrate feedback sooner in the course.
• Use Grammarly earlier in the course.
• In preparation for the contests, I've asked them to seek out the genre that is a part of that contest in Chapter 4 of our textbook. Many do not do this (not shocking), so in the future, I'd like to create a PDF handout of samples for them to check out as part of their prep work. The samples would be good, bad, and ugly. They might be missing formatting, contain inappropriate content, or be wrong for a certain audience. They'll be required to prep by looking through the 3-5 page PDF before the contest and participate in a discussion of what sample was the best and why.
• Perhaps the FIRST participant in this discussion (online or f2f) gets an extra point OR the student with the BEST explanation...

Things to Keep for the Future:

• Continue asking staff (especially) to judge; they have loved being asked!
• Continue having substitutions for those who are not interested in every single contest.
• We're focusing on the contests right now, for first half of the 8-week course; the second half wraps up the contests and gets into the two Large Projects. In my 16-week course, I have these activities - the genre practice and Large Projects - overlapping. I'm wondering if separating them out might be the better deal?

Notes on the Scheduling:

• Right now, I have set aside two days for each contest. One day for me to somewhat lecture on the format, content, audience (followed by brainstorming time for them) and then a day to compose their contest piece. Some students finish the contests earlier than others; I have wondered if I should've squeezed the contests into a smaller time frame, but this allows all learners to work at their own pace.

More Reflection to Come...