“Welcome to #8bitmooc. You all have an F”.
This is my take on the introduction to the Multiplayer Classroom,
#8bitmooc works like an RPG. Every student begins at level 1, and reaches new levels every 100*(level**2) experience points. As students gain levels, they unlock new course content as well as new abilities they can take advantage of in the course.
There are three main ways to gain experience points in the class. The first is by doing clearly defined “challenges”. These include the traditional autograded programming assignments, as well as ‘achievements’ that students can win by doing things in the playground or project editors. Students can also gain challenge experience by submitting the projects they work on to game jams like One Game a Month and Ludum Dare.
The second approach comes from helping out other students. Students can ask questions on the message board (I decided to just go ahead and make one) as well as by helping with more targeted SOS requests, and the helpful students are rewarded for helping their peers out. I also really want to create a system where students can create learning content such as videos and worked out examples and earn points for that, to demonstrate the “learning by teaching” approach.
The third approach comes from doing projects, which I believe is the most authentic way to learn how to program. Unlike the game library in the original #8bitmooc, the new incarnation features an almost Github-like project management system that allows students to work together on large projects. Students are encouraged to publish these large projects in the forums and students get experience points as other students provide feedback and “like” the project. This will require manual grading, but students who demonstrate the ability to plan a project and see it through to completion show just as much learning as someone who completes all the autograded assignments.
When students gain levels, they unlock new challenges up until they reach level 10, when the final challenge is revealed: create a game, on your own, with some certain requirements. Students submit their game to this project, just like a game jam, and both the source code and the final project are evaluated.
This pathway to completion shows how I value the ability to choose your own approach to demonstrate learning. Students are free to pick any one approach or mix all three together. This nonlinear growth path is much more gamelike than the directed acyclic graph used in Khan Academy (which is what my original vision for this system looked like).
Now that I’ve blogged about it, let’s make it happen!