Before we start, I have some questions for you:
I have always had a love-hate relationship with grades because achieving high grades helps me stay motivated, but at the same time, they create unnecessary stress. According to a systematic review by Harlen and Deakin Crick in 2002, grades and tests have a negative impact on the motivation of low-achieving students, leading to test anxiety and reinforcing a negative self-image [1]. These studies also reflect my learning experiences, especially when I struggled in high school. Receiving poor grades ultimately killed my motivation to learn and made me feel stupid, which only worsened my academic performance. [2]
On the other hand, receiving high grades does not always accurately reflect a student's performance. Many students achieve high grades by conforming to academic cultures, such as attending classes, knowing how to plan to meet assignment deadlines, actively asking questions in class, and seeking help if needed. But these things demonstrate that high-performance students have little grasp of the class knowledge or academic skills. This can create a situation where teachers communicate more with high-performing students while those who are struggling do not have the opportunity to exchange ideas, discuss topics, or receive feedback. Consequently, struggling students may become more hesitant and withdrawn from the learning process in class.
On the one hand, students who start with a low academic background (low GPA in the first year) and make a lot of effort during the learning process (high GPA in the final year) end up with an average total score. For example, consider a student who only scored 1 point on the first test but got 9 points on the final test. Despite the significant improvement, their average score is only 5, much lower than high-performing students. That is why grading can only be a snapshot of learning performance and cannot tell the whole story of a learner's journey.
To address this issue, universities and educators need to create better grading systems design that encourages students to make mistakes without fear of failure. One way to achieve this is to look to game designers who have mastered the use of point systems to create motivation in gaming.
<aside> 💡 Example
Good games often have well-designed scoring systems. For instance, the snake game on Nokia phones motivates players by offering small rewards, such as the snake getting longer when the player successfully controls it to eat food. When the game ends, the player is given a score and notified if they achieved a high score. Players may want to play the game multiple times to improve their scores.
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Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer, and YouTube personality, gave his followers a computer programming puzzle to solve. However, when 50,000 followers attempted the puzzle, they didn't know that Rober had randomly assigned two versions of the challenge.
You can watch his Ted talk here: Link
In group 1, if a user was unsuccessful, they didn’t lose any of their starting 200 points and received the message, “That didn’t work. Please try again.”
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