It may seem like each assignment grants the maximum possible XP (which would be a different, though probably broken, grading model), but not if you read this: "Grading is rigorous. Spelling, grammar and punctuation must be proofed. Points will be deducted otherwise."
This TEDxUniPittsburgh talk speaks to this concept: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tg55pdNMxw&feature=relat...
Quote: "This has a number of powerful psychological motivators. One of them is no matter what you do in the class, anything you do is forward motion. As opposed to a normal class, when you get a bad grade or something, it takes you back a step which is very demoralizing. Game designers would never put that in a game, because they know people hate it."
I agree that people hate this (I know I do, at least), but game designers put that in games all of the time, regardless:
You just died ten minutes into the level with the finish line in sight--start over again at the beginning of the level.
OR
You are only allowed to save at particular save points. These are spaced out just far enough that you are likely to lose significant amounts of progress every time you die.
Save points in particular are far more numerous and well-placed in today's games. Notably, challenges are now intentionally separated by save points, so that a single skill-type is in focus during each unit.
That way someone who has trouble with, say, a vehicle section won't fail and be faced with five to ten minutes of run-and-gun before they can even attempt (and thus practice) the vehicle portion again.
Essentially, that's precisely what the OP's approach to education is: adding more save points and breaking up the challenges better by type: solo vs group, oral presentation vs written proposal, etc.
Further, failure penalties are only really used in games where the player has an open-ended amount of time to defeat the challenge, precisely to encourage learning and/or mastering of a technique or skill. In a setting where the player has a time limit (such as in education) it would be unnecessary and inappropriate to additionally penalize failure as "repetition + luck" wouldn't be a valid strategy in the first place.
After a while we just realised uni was just another "tickbox" for the next step - work. Only after you get a job would you realise the total discontinuity between uni (or the different modes of learning) and reality.
1. You can recall and use it under pressure, without the luxury of consulting books and friends.
2. You can use it in a creative manner, to solve new problems.
Only exams can furnish such proofs. The exam system is not perfect, but the best we have (and incomparably less corrupt than the assignment system). The proper way to see things is that assignments are rehearsals for the exam; and the student who never turns in a homework but aces the exam well deserves his/her A-.
Of course, my experience is only with math courses, and your mileage may vary.
Our experiences were that with the assignments we had undertaken we felt enriched doing the research and learning about the things that needed to be done. Exam time was inevitably cram time. Pure short term memory work (coupled with going over past exams - which coincidentally were templates for the current exams).
Now both your arguments about using something under pressure and doing so creatively would be fair, if it was not the case that most of our exams were based on previous years' ones.
I do agree with you about exams being less corrupt. But I am talking about students who actually enjoy doing their assignments and the whole research process (and students who learns for the sake of learning rather than doing well for exams).
I guess an important question could be: What would the feedback from a teacher mean to a 10,000 XP student who is desiring an extra 2,000 XP?
Required Text
Designing Virtual Worlds. Richard Bartle.
Character Development and Storytelling for Games. Lee Sheldon.
Suggested Reading
Developing Online Games. Mulligan and Petrovsky.
Massively Multiplayer Game Development. Thor Alexander et al.
Synthetic Worlds. Edward Castronova.
Community Building on the Web. Amy Jo Kim
My Tiny Life: Crime and Passion in a Virtual World. Julian Dibbell
A Theory of Fun. Raph Koster
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
Of course, it can be a bit awkward to explain the F on your first interim report card, but if this kind of grading became standard that wouldn't be a problem. :)
Calculating the grades in that way just seems to make the interim grades seem more meaningful. When you have 35%, that means you have mastered 35% of the course material. Traditionally, if you have 73% at some point in the term... what does that mean in concrete terms? It doesn't mean you've mastered 73% of the course material, not even "so far", because chances are good that you've only received dinky assignments, labs, quizzes, etc., for a large portion of the material you're supposed to have learned so far. You won't be truly tested for mastery on chapter 1 until the midterm or sometimes even the final.
The name of a thing is an integral part of the thing. Often, solving a problem means reformulating the problem in different terms.
Take any FPS, and it can be broken down to a simple point and click. The underlying actions are essentially move the cursor to a spot and click. It's everything else that makes it a game.
So while I agree, that he didn't change the underlying structure too much, how that structure is displayed is what makes it special.
I agree very much with your point in general. However, in this case, if I were a student in the class, I don't think this scheme would really do anything for me. I think I'd have the same reaction I expressed in my comment - saying "XP" instead of "points" or "level" instead of "grade" doesn't change the work I'm going to have to do or the effort I'm going to put into it.
Maybe it would. Maybe it wouldn't. Whether it does or not is irrelevant. It's whether it get's more people to put effort into a system they normally wouldn't (something that is proven time and time again). Branding something as X might not be important to you, but for the vast majority of people, that brand categorizes it in their mind.
It's easy to dismiss this, but I think if you look at what choices you make in your life, you'll find areas where the brand something is given impacts your choices, even in the slightest ways.