In order for a cohort to win, they have to acquire a certain number (currently, 16000) keys (🔑)
We do not believe in grading (how do you even grade a Todo List?), but we needed a system so:
- the students can track their progress and know where they stand in regards to expectations, and the rest of the class
- a way to foster camaraderie and group work
- a way to create difficulty
This system had to comply by the following constraints:
- adaptable to very wildly different levels of skill mastery, from none to expert, while still allowing individuals from any levels to participate meaningfully
- not easily gamed (does not encourage counter-productive behaviors)
- not part of a complex digital system (any prescriptive digital platform would've been cumbersome and limiting for the kind of flexibility we need), and simple enough (if it is too complex to understand, or to track, it would just crumble under its own weight)
The symbol 🔑 was chosen, because:
- it rings nice and is reminiscent of "keys of knowledge"
- it has an UTF8 symbol, which makes it suitable for usage in plain text documents or anywhere without having to use a different symbol or an image
The class, as a whole, accrues keys. Keys are listed on this sheet, by date, and with the reason for each acquiring of key.
This allows to see progress, as well as track individual or group achievements, while keeping the focus on the 🔑 accrued overall.
The exercises, listed here and on Trello, all feature a minimum and maximum amount of points that the students can accrue by doing them.
Some exercises are recurrent, so students can choose to do them every day
Being on time gives you one key every day. There are bonuses for being on time many times in a row, and there are punishments for being late, as listed here). Our keys system has very little punishments (we believe in always increasing your pool), but some things, like absences, can be "paid". In that sense, the 🔑 is a bit like a currency.
It depends. Generally, they are distributed as follows:
This is where the most essential notions are. We want the amount of keys to be attractive enough so that even students with little time, or slow find interest in "playing". It is also generally a relatively cognitively challenging part, since it requires to learn something very new. Finally, for the students who are fast, it provides incentive, if they intend to min-max, in helping their co-students with this first part rather than continue, since this is the optimal strategy to acquire the most points
These are notions that continue to build upon what was previously introduced, but they are less hard. Still, some 🔑 are distributed to provide incentive and something to punctuate swaths of work
This is generally something either difficult, or left vague, or comes after a long part 2 & 3, so it is compensated by a good chunk of 🔑 for the brave souls that make it there
Of course, this is just a rough guideline, depending on the difficulty of the exercises, or how essential they are, 🔑 might be distributed differently, at the discretion of the exercise creator.