Gamified Government: Keeping Track of Experience Points

My gamified unit is drawing to a close!

I will most definitely continue gamifying my classes next year…most likely as a course long activity.

However, I will admit that, other than having no clue about the gaming world, the thought of keeping track of my students’ experience points was extremely daunting, and nearly deterred me from attempting gamification…simply because I compared it to grading.

I. Despise. Grading.

However, the way I’m keeping track of experience points is NOT grading, at least in my mind.

The “targets” or “objectives” my students were expected to meet simply required them to complete something…a video, their unit module, contemporary issues bonus activities, etc. Therefore, I’m basically just recording points for reaching a target, as opposed to grading for content.

Since I use the wonderful EDpuzzle to assign and track completion of instructional videos (EDpuzzle also allows teachers to set due dates and clearly indicates if students watched the video by the due date, submitted late, or have yet to submit), I can easily award experience points based on whether or not the student reached the target!

How do I keep track of experience points?

With a Google Sheet, of course!

I’m definitely not well-versed in the world of Google Sheets or Excel. If I can create and utilize a Google Sheet without going gray(er), then anyone can!

On a side note…

I read an article recently about a college professor who ditched traditional grades for a truly gamified “grading” system. Click here to read that blog post.

I’m interested to hear your opinions on that experiment!

Thanks for reading 🙂