Marked Tree High School - The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game - page 55

auction involves big-ticket items that every single questing class can participate
in. For instance, in this nine-week period, students are bidding on a $100 Visa
gift card. Students must place their bid for the gift card in a box. After the
auction expires, the highest bidder wins the card. The English auction pits
students in the same class period in bidding wars vying for various items,
including hall passes, coupon books, small gift certificates, lotions and sprays, as
well as food items.
Student Opinions
My students are very pleased with this form of class. Students have expressed
that knowing exactly how many points are expected of them and offering
various methods of obtaining these points allow them to achieve higher. Several
other students said that having a reward at the end of nine weeks (like our
auctions) was great motivation for them to do more work. Students state that
they would like other teachers to use this method in their classrooms.
The classes that are not questing complain that it is unfair and that if they had
that opportunity when they were in Biology, they would have scored much
higher. My AP Biology class begs me to begin questing with them. Several
students have come up to me in the hallway and said that they cannot wait to be
in my class so that they can quest.
Because of questing, many students feel more confident in science. A lot of
students have told me that they would like to pursue a career in nursing,
veterinary medicine, nuclear medicine, and engineering, just to name a few.
Students feel that when they are given a choice in the type of work they do in
classes, they will produce more work with more effort.
Data Analysis
Marked Tree High School is 80% free and reduced lunch, meaning that 80% of
our students fall below the poverty line. Typically, these students do not perform
well in school, and many of them fall short of high school graduation. Many
students that do make it to graduation do not go on to college. Most never even
take their ACT.
In December of 2009, 62% of the sophomores taking Biology were passing with a
D or higher. These students were taking a Biology class taught in the traditional