Personally, I do not understand a British notion within the education system that one’s grades cannot be known to others. Maybe I am biased as my whole education prior to HE was in a different system that everybody knew everyone else grades, but nobody really cared. I mean, yeah if somebody was always failing and somebody else was an A* pupil they almost never been friendly, but knowing other people grades enabled me to create support groups for those students, one to one-afternoon classes where I was helping them to better understand the subject and at the same time practice skills I would down the lane require as a teacher – patience, understanding, acceptance of different views, simplification and breakdown of complex concepts.
This approach of mine, using knowledge of other people grades to benefit them and myself was caused by my experience from playing video games and board games. Whenever you play games you can more often than not keep track of peoples score and as such change your strategy. For instance rather than implementing play to win which with luck and aggressive play can cause a positive feedback loop (Salen & Zimmerman, 2004) you may change your strategy to create negative feedback, punish best performing players to bring them in line with the rest and assist everyone else, or at least losing/new players to reduce the gap and balance out the gameplay.
In games like Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo EAD, 1997) the losing players are getting high likely hood of the most disturbing weapons – Thunder (slowing all enemies and making them vulnerable to us driving over them) and Blue Shell (hits anybody on its way while it aims to hit and slow down the first player, whoever that is), that allow them to catch up to players way ahead, in board games, it can be done via rules, as extra bonuses for players depending on their play order as in mobile RISK: Global Domination (SMG Studios, 2017).
I do believe that university should be a chance for students to explore their passions, their personality, their inner self. But this should be done by the students themselves while studying on hopefully right course. A degree that is sold to them with a high price margin on the promise of a better life afterwards: being a better job candidate due to having a respectable degree, getting a better-paid job, employment in their dream career. For those reasons I find it immoral to keep students on the course if they do not want to do it or if they are not engaging and not attending it. Obviously, there are plenty of potential reasons for that:
- The student was sold on a title/advertisement only
- The student did not read the description of the course (and did not attend any of open days/offer day holders)
- The student was forced to go to university by their family and choose “easy sounding course”
- The student thought that the course would be different in nature
- Variety of personal reasons (mental health, changes in personal circumstances etc.)
Instead of keeping those students on the books, and charging them horrendous amounts of money for something they cannot and do not benefit from they should be contacted and given options to either defer the year or withdrawn. To reduce the amount of anxiety related to the financial debt aspect of University and show them that we care about their well-being and the future right for them more than just having them as a name on our register.
As such I do not agree with several of my colleagues in terms of grading students for their “personal development” and growth as “artists” and people as both are very subjective and do not hold merit when evaluated by external assessors or even different members of the same team giving drastically different grades.
I believe that grading should be reflection of students understanding and application of what has been taught and what they have learnt. And if the course is strongly related to the respective industry, it can reflect as well on their employability and give students honest answers on what is their likelihood of survival outside of the university walls. An approach like this would stop the grade inflation and devaluation of degrees which is a huge problem in modern-day academia (White, 2020). I do believe that grading requirements should be known ahead of the time and given in context to students:
- D – This is the bare minimum acceptable. In the case of games, is the most basic, limited barely working due to amount of ducktape and WD-40 game prototype.
- C – This is a fair maximum grade if students accomplished all tasks as required and told – simply put they just followed what was expected of them and were not creative at all, they could last in the industry for some time but would not be happy bunnies.
- B – This grade requires some creative output from the student, additional mechanic, change in visuals, extra feature, something unexpected and different that lets them stand out of the crowd. They have a fighting chance as employees or as independent artists.
- A – This grade should be reserved only for work that shows the industry standard of work ethics and quality, if this person was given a job next Monday they would be able to deliver it and enjoy doing it.
The act of studying should be like a game. Fair and fun with clear rules, yet challenging and adaptive, allowing to be explored by anybody. It should respond to students performance and needs but remain coherent and true to its core to its curriculum. All students should be given the same equality of opportunity, but not equality of outcomes. Grades should be achievements, something that requires commitment, dedication, hard work, time and understanding. Something that will make people who own them proud, and others envy and hopefully motivated to become better and earn them themselves.
References:
Nintendo EAD (1997) Mario Kart 64. [Catridge] Nintendo 64, Europe: Nintendo.
Salen, K., Zimmerman, E. (2004) Games as Cybernetic Systems In Rules of Play. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 212-230
SMG Studio (2017) RISK: Global Domination. [Mobile] iOS/Android, World: Hasbro.
White, J. (2020) Gavin Williamson vows to end university grade inflation to stop first class degrees being ‘devalued’ as it emerges a quarter of all students qualifies with the top honour, Daily Mail. [Online] 17th January. Available from: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897343/Gavin-Williamson-vows-end-grade-inflation-stop-class-degrees-devalued.html [Accessed 04/04/2020]