Louisiana State University: Introduction to the Study of Education - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 138

the semester, but that I would increase the number of achievements students
would have to earn before extra XP/grade points would be given.

I believe that it was because of this incentive that the number of students earning
the Shines (all levels) dramatically increased. In the first week of the first session,
only three students out of 25 earned any level of Shine, approximately 8%. In the
first week of the second session, 12 out of the 35 on the roster earned Shines
(approximately 29%), while three earned Super Shines (approximately 8%), and
two earned Mega Shines (approximately 6%). In all honesty, this was the week
that I felt compelled to create the Mega Shine award as one of the recipients
made 11 posts, and another 13, and I had never witnessed this level of
participation in the course before.

At the end of the first session, I asked students why there was the sudden
increase in people earning Shines and other achievements. My informant “ S �

said perhaps a little too honestly, “ Well, they finally had a point. �

While observing the students receiving the achievements, interesting social
aspects of the class began appearing, namely the competitive nature of the female
students. The young women started bickering among themselves about who
should have earned an award. There were also rumors of me being biased and
favoring certain students when giving awards. This is understandable, as I tended
to be suspicious of those students who suddenly began reflecting on subjects that
they previously never mentioned or when posts seemed to be disingenuous. As
the Game Master , I did not want to feel like I too was being metagamed.

During the course debriefing or postmortem, I sought out the students opinions

about any additional changes they would like to see for the future with the
method and about the methods in general.

'

The changes many wanted to see were more fair distribution of points per
achievements and better uses of guilds. According to many students, they
wanted to see the Super and Mega Shines be worth more than the Shine. The
most often requested was that each Super should be worth two XP counts and
the Mega three. They also wanted to see the Eddie be worth more than the other
subjective achievements. He was often touted amongst the players as being the
top honor each week, ostensibly because of the appearance of the slide (see
Figure CH3.2).