Testing a “Quest-Points-Level” Game Structure in Introduction to Astronomy

 

The traditional classroom reward system involves each student completing the same assignments as his or her peers and being evaluated on the quality of the submitted work.  For this project, I will create, implement, and test a new class structure built around the mechanics of role-playing games. The “quest-points-level” reward system of such games (e.g. Dungeons and Dragons, World of Warcraft) allows a player to select from a variety of tasks worth some number of experience points.  These points accumulate and allow the player’s character to “level up” such that he or she becomes eligible for more difficult tasks.  While this structure exists to some extent in higher education, it takes place over a timescale of years (i.e. students choose classes, receive grades, and are promoted to the next grade).  By distilling the reward system down into much smaller chunks (minutes to hours), role-playing games become quite addictive.   My goal is to emulate and test the effectiveness of such a system in my Introduction to Astronomy class.  Three separate experiences at Elon have led me to believe that such a class structure might lead to substantially more engagement than the traditional framework.  I would fuse elements of each into the “quest-points-level” class structure that I propose to create and test.