Kevin Moberly and I have decided to go forward with an achievement system this year for some of our classes. My basic philosophy is that they should not be grade-related. I figure we already have grades for that type of achievement; I'm trying to provide other opportunities to achieve something else. My list runs the gamut from nerdy to OC to flat out zany, and I'm still thinking of others. Check out my achievement list for FYC and Professional Writing and lemme know what you think.
I haven't fully developed this idea out, but my thinking is that students might get excited about these achievements and hopefully want to complete them all. One big reason I don't want these to be directly tied to a grade is that then I couldn't be as open about posting their names and such; I also will let anyone opt-out who doesn't want to participate. Actually, when I introduced the concept and such the students were openly excited about it--I heard a lot of "cool!" and such, so I'm looking forward to seeing how this pans out.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED
This is a fabulous idea. Do you mind if I try this out with my class, too?
Go for it
Sure, go for it! It'd be fun to compare achievements.
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Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
rave reviewer
For those who do 100 of something to achieve an achievement (what eloquence) I'm guessing you don't mean on one draft, but over the course of the term?
This is a good idea because we have a writing center few students use, but would certainly benefit from.
bradley || bleckblog.org
I'm not sure what
I'm not sure what achievement you're referring to, Bradley. If it says 100 comments, that's on one draft. Some of them extend across all the papers, though, such as the "in today's society" one.
It's a bit early to tell how things will work out, but this system definitely seems to be of greater interest to my freshmen than my upper classmen (at this point, at least). I've already had a few freshman declare that they intend to get all of them, but the 332 students seem less enthused. I think it may be that the younger ones are more familiar with this concept in XLA or WOW, whereas the older ones may find it strange or irrelevant.
At any rate, again it's too early to be drawing conclusions.
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Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
100 on one draft?
That seems like quite a few, or maybe I've just never counted the number of comments on a draft, to earn Rave Reviewer status. Seems the writer would then have a lot of stuff to wade through that, potentially, might just be commented upon not because it matters, but because the student had to get from 99 to 100. bradley || bleckblog.org
LOL, well, that's why these
LOL, well, that's why these don't count for points. I've made that clear enough; if you're doing these achievements, it's for your own satisfaction only.
I think the payoff for doing 100 comments would be having to think of so many things to say about a paper. I won't accept it if the comments are junk, so they'll have to put some thought into it. But I've had 3 or 4 students in the past who have made 100 or more useful comments on papers before, and that was before the achievement system. Granted, it's usually on the portfolio projects (which are actually 4 papers combined) rather than the single projects.
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Check out Barton's gaming blog at Armchair Arcade.
makes more sense
100 comments on a portfolio makes more sense than on one essay, which is what was throwing me for a loop. 100 comments on an essay, even if they were all "helpful" would likely be too overwhelming to be helpful, especially for fyc.
bradley || bleckblog.org