Help designing college course grading system

eMoander

Background:
My wife is teaching a calculus course at a community college and would like to better incentivize the students to do homework and quizzes, since in traditional grading systems they are weighted so low relative to midterms and finals that most students just ignore them (and then tend to do poorly on the midterms and finals. There is another teacher at the college that has been trying to bring more gaming-based ideas to his classes, which she thinks would be a good idea given that the majority of students are gamers now, but she spends essentially no time playing games. Hence, she has approached me as her resident expert to help design a fun and incentivizing grading system for the class. I have put together a plan, but I'm sure the numbers aren't perfect and it would probably be pretty easy to break the system, so I am posting it here to both identify/fix flaws in my system as well as to hopefully solicit even better ideas.

Constraints:
- There are 9 quizzes, 2 midterms, 1 final. There are a larger number of homework assignments, but in general everything up to a quiz is merged into one score, so there are effectively 9 homework grades, generated in parallel to the quizzes.
- You can't pass the class if you fail the final, or either midterm
- You should be able to pass the class if you ace the final and do zero additional work
(There are probably some other constraints she mentioned that I'm not remembering, I'll respond to questions in the thread)

Her initial idea:
For every homework that is successfully completed, the student gets a token
A midterm would be worth 200 points, spending a token makes it worth 400 points. If you spend a token and get >80%, the midterm is then worth 600 points
(Note she hadn't thought it through much more than this, but the problems I see is the tokens really aren't worth much relative to the final and you would have a lot of wasted tokens; ie once you do 2 homework assignments, you have one token for each midterm and there's no point in doing any more homework).

My current best idea:

                        Reward                   Max Points
Activity   Grade    Points  Tokens  # per class  w/o tokens  Multiplier cap
Homework    <70%      0       0         9            0             0
            >70%      0       1			

Quiz        <70%      0      -1         9        9000 (11%)       5X
            >70%   %*1000     0			

Midterm     <70%     FAIL     0         2        20000 (25%)      5X
           70-90%  %*10000    0			
            >90%   %*10000    3	
	
Final       <70%     FAIL     0         1        50000 (64%)      None
           70-90%  %*50000    0			
            >90%   %*50000    3			

Pass the class = 50,000 ; A = 70,000
Top scores go on a leaderboard that continues from year to year, they get to choose what name (instructor has veto)
Total class score goes on a leaderboard against other classes using the same grading system (live updates during the quarter?), also continues year to year

Token Rules:
Retake a quiz or midterm (any score) = -2 tokens (only if you can pay; max once per test; tokens spent prior still apply to the score)
Fail a quiz = -1 token (can’t go negative)
Fail a midterm or final = fail class (unless retaken)
Can spend tokens at any point before a test is taken for a score multiplier:

Tokens     1  2  3  4  5  6  7   8   9   10  11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18
Multiplier 2  3  4  5  7  9  12  15  18  21  24  27  30  33  37  41  45  50

*exception: tokens earned for high scores on the final apply retroactively

Key benefits:
• There is a gambling element to tokens, so you want to spend some early on quizzes where you are confident, but that cuts into your max later. Risk of wasting tokens on a bad score should make them study harder!
• Failing quizzes has a significant direct impact (not sure if we want to allow going negative or not)
• There is a big risk in not having 2 tokens available when taking a midterm as you can fail instantly
• A large chunk of tokens are only available for scoring very well on the midterms, so only those who were going to be getting A’s anyways are really competing on the leaderboard

Some alternative ideas:
• Can you retake the final? Maybe it costs 5 tokens instead of 2. Might cause some people to hold back a couple tokens to be safe, while sacrificing their top scores. Also it pushes borderline students to get tokens since they will be very afraid of the final and opportunity to retake will be big for them.
• Have a cap on tokens that can be hoarded at any one time (say 8 or so), thereby forcing students to have to spend them earlier. Gets rid of the obvious strategy of just saving all your tokens til the end of the class.

Note that in this system, you can score way above what is required for an A (the flipside is it may be too easy to get an A if you can pass; I don't see many people getting a C in this system), so the drive to do homework is driven by both the ability to retake tests if you screw up and to compete with the fellow students.

Anyways, I'd appreciate all comments and suggestions, positive and negative. Would you be more motivated if you took a class using this grading system? What would make it better? Are you aware of any similar systems that have worked well in other settings? I'm happy to explain my reasoning behind some of the above points as well if anyone is interested.

One other big concern my wife had is the competition may be great for motivating male students, but it may not work for female students. I was hoping the alternative use of tokens for retaking tests would be provide some incentive there, but I'd love to hear other opinions on how well it may or may not work for females.

Thanks for reading!

Jebus314

I haven't read the whole OP yet, but right off the bat I have to say I'm not sure this is a good idea. Most students I see tend to hate complicated grading systems. They want it to be immediately obvious how they are doing and what they need to do to get the grade they want. I would be willing to put money down that you will not get the results you want with the whole token thing. It just needlessly complicates the process and it will probably only benefit the kids who were going to do well anyway.

Edit - I should add that I am not a teacher, I am a graduate student that has had to TA for several classes.

Edit the Second - Ok I read the op and I would say 2 things.

1) Ditch the whole "token" thing. It's needlessly confusing and will be a pain to implement. The HW's are the token's. So for example, If you want to retake your midterm, you have to have completed 2 HW's.

2) The multiplier thing is probably not going to go over well. It's a fun idea when nothing is on the line. When it could mean the difference between a good and bad grade in the class it is going to piss students off. It will make them think that the grading is arbitrary and they will not like that at all.

Zombie Hero

I'd keep it simple.

It may be fun for the grader to have this gambling grading system, but it wont be fun for the students.

.Decide how much you want the tests/quizes/homework to be worth and stick to them. Having offering the option to retake the final without one of the 'excused absenses' may actually be against university policy, so double check that. The best grade is one that reflects performance in the class, not how well you made meta choices.

Zombie Hero

If the design goal is to make sure the students do tons of homework without having to grade 200 weekly submissions, you can get large homework sets and then base quizes (maybe even tests) on those problem sets. Which reinforces that doing homework is the best way to succeed in the class.

You can do things like drop the lowest quiz, or make the final also count for your lowest test score if you want to have merciful stuff in there.

Esh

Your wife's students are going to hate this and it's going to cause her and them some serious headaches. Assign a percentage weight to each facet (quizzes, homework, midterm, final), don't over complicate things, and call it a day. I'd probably drop a class where the professor was trying to do something like this. I can imagine she's going to get some complaints to the department as well if she uses it.

Her students don't need "incentive" to do homework or quizzes other than they should be wanting a good grade. If they don't do the work, who cares? It's their problem for being lazy geese. Fail them out.

supabeast

As Jebus noted, students want their grades to be comprehensible. Students are going to rake your wife over the coals in course evaluations if she does this. Depending on the school she might not be asked to teach there again.

That said, complicated grading bites professors in the ass. The students who are serious enough to take advantage of it would all get Bs and As anyway. The rest use complicated grading as an excuse to procrastinate and try to make it up later by gaming the system. As a professor, that ends up being infuriating.

If your wife really has trouble getting students to do homework she should just lower their final grade by one full letter grade for every assignment not completed. The great thing about being a college professor is that you can do that kind of brutal shit, and as long as it’s written in the syllabus in plain English, you’re covered.

Esh

supabeast wrote: »

If your wife really has trouble getting students to do homework she should just lower their final grade by one full letter grade for every assignment not completed.

This is a little extreme and will likely result in your wife getting some extremely bad evaluations. I've seen profs do this with individual papers for every day that they're late, but never, ever to a final grade.

Does she take attendance? I have seen profs drop final grades by a percentage for every unexcused absence after the third one.

Zombie Hero

As for getting students to do homework:

Make it clear that homework is necessary for success in the class. Remind them that they are adults, and if they want their target grade, they will have to hold up their end of the bargain. Make sure help is avI can't imagine . ailable for them if they need help understanding the material so they don't despair.

Esh

Zombie Hero wrote: »

As for getting students to do homework:

Make it clear that homework is necessary for success in the class.

I'm always in awe that this is something that needs to be told to people at the college level.

Zombie Hero

Well, sometimes i doubt how much it helps. I think the people who really want to succeed already know this. People who don't really care probably won't take it to heart. As a teacher you say it because it hopes it catches a soul or two, but who knows.

a5ehren

This is super complicated. Here's a better idea:

Quizzes: 5% each, 45% total. Make it very clear on syllabus and in lecture that quiz problems are "derived" (aka same shit with slightly different numbers) from the homework and that they need to do it to do well.
Midterms: 12.5% each, 25% total.
Final: 30%. Fuck letting people who only get a 100 on the final pass. If they couldn't bother to show up for anything else, they can eat it.

Compared to my math classes, which were 60/40 midterms(30% each)/final, this is a pretty good deal.

Or if she wants to explicitly reward homework without having to grade it all, add a 10% homework grade where you get 1% (x 10 assignments = 10%) for making a substantial effort at the problems, regardless of correctness. Maybe pull that from the quiz section above.

supabeast

Zombie Hero wrote: »

As a teacher you say it because it hopes it catches a soul or two, but who knows.

The more people who say it the better. If one kid in ten actually pays attention that’s ten percent less irritation.

a5ehren wrote: »

Final: 30%. Fuck letting people who only get a 100 on the final pass. If they couldn't bother to show up for anything else, they can eat it.

Documenting attendance is a great way to handle people who don’t even show up. IIRC schools are required to give professors the option of failing students who miss more than two classes to maintain student loan eligibility. Documented unexcused absences and late arrivals are really hard for slackers to appeal at the end of the semester. Making students sign in at the beginning of class shows them that you’re serious and sets a tone that generally makes them more likely to do the work.

ceres

There's nothing wrong with a complicated grading system assuming it's really transparent, but I am going to say that I think you should cut down your OP a good bit and focus more on what your actual questions are.

For myself as both a right-out-of-high-school student and as a mature student respectively, I never cared WHAT the system was or what weird math I had to do for it as long as it was pretty clearly laid out in the syllabus. You could tell me I needed calculus to figure it out and I'd just go find a friend who was good at math. What bothered me was "hidden" points based on things I had no way of knowing that pretty much looked like the teacher's opinion of me in point-score form.

Jimmy King

Making it fun is great, but seriously, just keep it simple. I just took Calc 1 last semester and am in Calc 2 this semester.

Last semester there were tests worth 100 points each, homework with 0 points and "bonuses" which were basically really hard homework that were 100% extra credit. The bonuses were given one per test and worth 8-12 points, so enough to bump your test up one letter grade... 4-6 problems worth 2 points each. 1 point for showing your work and having sane work (ie. simple mistakes were allowed, there are a lot of minor details to accidentally screw up) and 1 point for actually getting it right. They were given near the beginning of a new section and hard enough that if you could do them, then you could do anything on the test or in the ungraded homework. They were very worthwhile to do and gave you an idea of what you should probably review before the test. I've still got these around and could dig a few out as examples in the next or two even.

My teacher for calc 2 just made the homework worth enough points that you'd be stupid not to do it. I don't have the syllabus in front of me to double check or get the exact numbers, but a quick glance at the point values looked like perfect scores on the homework guaranteed at least a low D, even if you did nothing else at all. The homework is all stuff from our book and only problems where the answer is in the back of the book, so there's no reason to not get a perfect score.

Akilae

Too complex. Sure, some students are gamers. What about the rest of the students that aren't? Not to mention, the more complex the grading scheme, the more likely you'll have students who need to "talk about it" at the end of the semester.

Just go with a straight weighted system and weight the assignments more.

First and foremost, check to see what the school's policy is on attendance, grading, etc... there might be things in there your wife can use to her advantage.

Second, don't let students sign in. Actually take attendance.

Skeith

This is a lot more convoluted than it should be and it will almost certainly lead to your wife getting shredded on evaluations. I'm of the opinion that if a student can prove that they know the material on a midterm and final exam, they should pass the class. I don't mean with a good final grade, I mean just-squeaking-by passes. Maybe qualify that, though, like solid As on the tests and quizzes giving a C- without homework.

eMoander

Thanks for the feedback. I will say that the whole idea going into this is that she (and everyone else) has been using the straight weighted system for years, so the whole goal is trying to find a new approach that will improve on homework completion (all the suggestions to increase weights etc have been tried). She has tenure, so the evals aren't an issue either, but obviously if its going to confuse the students then its not going to accomplish the goal.

So, aside from advice to just stick with the traditional system, and accepting that what I lined out is going to be too complicated, are there any suggestions for something down the middle? Taking at face value that they want a gaming-based system, do you have any thoughts on what that could entail that wouldn't be too complicated?

@Jimmy King if you could PM me some examples, that sounds like it might be useful, thanks!

ceres

Personally, I don't really like the idea of a gaming-based system for grading. Like I said, it's not that I care one way or the other how I work out the number, it's just that in the end all that matters for grades is the number and something like this isn't ever really going to engage me, which I'm pretty sure is the point here. I think if you want to introduce that sort of thing into the classroom to good effect, class participation is a much better place for it. I had a teacher once that had something like this, only he didn't call it a gaming-based system, he called it "if you raise your hand enough times with the correct answer that I can place your name to your face at the end of the term I am more likely to curve up if you're on the cusp of a better grade." That was a chemistry class, and you better believe I have never been so fast with a calculator during a class.

The point is that you can use that sort of thing to better effect in the context of class participation, where said class participation will buy you some points of extra credit at the end of the term. That is the sort of thing that will get people competing.

I am also not a person who is inclined to touch ungraded homework, but my calculus teacher won at getting me to do the assigned problems he never collected by having a weekly quiz and putting only homework problems on it. I suck at the mathing, but it never failed that if I did the homework I could get through those long problems well enough to change my mind for the duration of the course. Test problems came from the quizzes (usually with numbers changed), and midterms and finals came from the tests (again, usually with numbers changed). If you could be bothered to do the assignments it was like being handed take-home quizzes every week, except only some of the problems counted in the end.

JaysonFour

If you put up a complicated scoring system that looks like it could be gamed, there will be someone who will inevitably try to figure out the minimum workload that they have to do to pass or do well in the course. Most people want to do well, but at the same time, you will get your "I'm only looking to pass" people- usually content with a 2.0 (or a 2.5 if they're trying to transfer to a four-year college) who want to do as little work as possible. It's also a target for "Waaaaah the teacher screwed me with a complicated grading system!" and could really backfire because it almost seems like gambling instead of learning.

If you want to make sure they do their homework, well, you're going to have to make it worth at least thirty percent of the course points- to the point where students will not be able to pass the class without doing the homework. There's no fancy way around it.

Jimmy King

ceres wrote: »

Personally, I don't really like the idea of a gaming-based system for grading. Like I said, it's not that I care one way or the other how I work out the number, it's just that in the end all that matters for grades is the number and something like this isn't ever really going to engage me, which I'm pretty sure is the point here. I think if you want to introduce that sort of thing into the classroom to good effect, class participation is a much better place for it. I had a teacher once that had something like this, only he didn't call it a gaming-based system, he called it "if you raise your hand enough times with the correct answer that I can place your name to your face at the end of the term I am more likely to curve up if you're on the cusp of a better grade." That was a chemistry class, and you better believe I have never been so fast with a calculator during a class.

My trig/pre-calc teacher also did this, more or less. The grade that you earned based on tests and homework would not be lowered based on participation. If you participated in and contributed to the class in a meaningful way and you were sitting at a high B at the end of the semester because you just don't test well or made stupid mistakes but understood the concepts as demonstrated by answering questions in class and helping other students out, she would bump you up to the A you really deserved.

Of course I don't think that's going to be much help to the "doesn't do homework at all or study because it's "pointless" and then bombs the test" crowd. Since they aren't doing homework or studying, they probably don't understand the concepts in the first place.

eMoander wrote: »

@Jimmy King if you could PM me some examples, that sounds like it might be useful, thanks!

I'll see what I can do tonight. Should be tomorrow at the latest. Was going to get them for you right now, but I took all of my calc 1 stuff out of my backpack since calc 2 started last night, so of course it's not with me.

a5ehren

he called it "if you raise your hand enough times with the correct answer that I can place your name to your face at the end of the term I am more likely to curve up if you're on the cusp of a better grade." That was a chemistry class, and you better believe I have never been so fast with a calculator during a class.

Thiiiiiiiiiis. I got an A instead of a B in my Accounting elective last semester because I was one of like 2 people who ever answered anything in class.

zagdrob

You shouldn't be basing scores in classes on how well someone can game the system. A convoluted scoring system like the one given in the OP is only going to piss people off, and have a lot of students with bad grades saying they didn't understand the system, etc.

Do a standard weighted scoring, Quiz / Midterm / Final, possibly with an attendance or participation score. Nobody wants to deal with bullshit when it can cost them money and give them lower grades. People don't like being forced to play games and at a disadvantage in real life because they didn't play well.

If you really want students to complete their homework, other than just collecting and scoring it, there are only two ways I've ever seen work.

One is to collect a few of the previous homework assignments randomly along with the test / quiz / midterm for extra credit points. Grade for attempting everything, not correctness on the homework.

The other is to allow 'corrections' for missed problems on quizzes / tests. Each problem should note the section it was taken from, and to make up points require the homework from that section be turned in along with the corrections.

Either way, some lazy students are going to be lazy and fail accordingly. Some people can't be made to do homework. I've found the first method rewards hard work, while the second forces hard work.

mts

in order to get people to do the homework it needs to be worth it.

either by making it worth enough points that if you don't do it, you are screwed

making it worth extra so it can help bump up your grade

directly relate to things that are worth it, questins for quizes come from homework.

using gimics might sound fun, but if it needs to be precisely thought out or else she is going to get slammed in reviews.

eMoander

ceres wrote: »

I am also not a person who is inclined to touch ungraded homework, but my calculus teacher won at getting me to do the assigned problems he never collected by having a weekly quiz and putting only homework problems on it. I suck at the mathing, but it never failed that if I did the homework I could get through those long problems well enough to change my mind for the duration of the course. Test problems came from the quizzes (usually with numbers changed), and midterms and finals came from the tests (again, usually with numbers changed). If you could be bothered to do the assignments it was like being handed take-home quizzes every week, except only some of the problems counted in the end.

I think this is the key point she's trying to address. When the students do the homework, they do better in class but finding ways to encourage them to actually do it is hard since they don't realize it. I think she doesn't like the above system though, because it doesn't promote understanding the material so much as memorizing questions.

I don't want to defend my universally reviled system in the OP (/cry), but on the idea of getting screwed by a complicated grading system, the numbers were set up so that if you don't do anything with the tokens, the 'gaming' system just collapses into a standard system with the quizzes, mid-terms, and final worth fairly standard percentages of the final grade. The way I envisioned it was you can only get extra points from the game, so the grade ends up not mattering (an A is 70k, but optimal use of tokens can get you to 2.5M) and its the competition with the peers that ends up driving the students to want to be better on the assignments.

The other idea she brought up would be to add in non-grade incentives at different point levels. For example, meeting the college president if you pass 1M points or some other arbitrary measure.

One of the constraints was that a student who didn't participate in the class in any way, no homework, no quizzes, but still passed the midterms and finals would pass the class, so just overweighting the homework isn't an option. Don't shoot the messenger!

Edit:
I think the comment was that it is too easy to cheat on homework, so making it a big part of the grade is just self-defeating as it pushes students to copy or find other ways around it.

Esh

eMoander wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

ceres wrote: »

I am also not a person who is inclined to touch ungraded homework, but my calculus teacher won at getting me to do the assigned problems he never collected by having a weekly quiz and putting only homework problems on it. I suck at the mathing, but it never failed that if I did the homework I could get through those long problems well enough to change my mind for the duration of the course. Test problems came from the quizzes (usually with numbers changed), and midterms and finals came from the tests (again, usually with numbers changed). If you could be bothered to do the assignments it was like being handed take-home quizzes every week, except only some of the problems counted in the end.

The other idea she brought up would be to add in non-grade incentives at different point levels. For example, meeting the college president if you pass 1M points or some other arbitrary measure.

You might want to check into the legality of effectively "bribing" students to do their work.

mts

if cheating is an issue, what she should do is make it so that the quiz questions are directly from homework but not word for word. ie. say you need to calculate something, rather than use the exact same numbers as teh homework, make it so you figure it out the same way. that way they need to know the why rather than the result

eMoander

Esh wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

ceres wrote: »

I am also not a person who is inclined to touch ungraded homework, but my calculus teacher won at getting me to do the assigned problems he never collected by having a weekly quiz and putting only homework problems on it. I suck at the mathing, but it never failed that if I did the homework I could get through those long problems well enough to change my mind for the duration of the course. Test problems came from the quizzes (usually with numbers changed), and midterms and finals came from the tests (again, usually with numbers changed). If you could be bothered to do the assignments it was like being handed take-home quizzes every week, except only some of the problems counted in the end.

The other idea she brought up would be to add in non-grade incentives at different point levels. For example, meeting the college president if you pass 1M points or some other arbitrary measure.

You might want to check into the legality of effectively "bribing" students to do their work.

Heh, you'd be amazed how much leeway a tenured faculty has in setting the grading system in their own classroom. There should be no legal issues here (you can't bribe a student, especially if the rewards are laid out at the beginning of the class). The real issue I see is she'd never be able to convince the president to actually meet with the students, lol.

Wezoin

Yours is wayyy too complicated for people to care to learn. If you want something slightly simpler try this:

Homework >80% (or 70% or whatever is reasonable) = 1 token, for every 3 tokens the students lowest grade gets dropped from their final grade. If you do all 9 assignments that means your 3 lowest grades get dropped and your average should then increase.

If you want to add in extra tokens for performance on quizzes/midterms go for it or a higher token cost to drop a midterm grade (if that can even be done?) then you can play around with that. But it has to be a simple currency, not gambling percentages and all that - do x, y, z to earn tokens, redeem for items off this menu.

Esh

eMoander wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

Esh wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

eMoander wrote: »

ceres wrote: »

I am also not a person who is inclined to touch ungraded homework, but my calculus teacher won at getting me to do the assigned problems he never collected by having a weekly quiz and putting only homework problems on it. I suck at the mathing, but it never failed that if I did the homework I could get through those long problems well enough to change my mind for the duration of the course. Test problems came from the quizzes (usually with numbers changed), and midterms and finals came from the tests (again, usually with numbers changed). If you could be bothered to do the assignments it was like being handed take-home quizzes every week, except only some of the problems counted in the end.

The other idea she brought up would be to add in non-grade incentives at different point levels. For example, meeting the college president if you pass 1M points or some other arbitrary measure.

You might want to check into the legality of effectively "bribing" students to do their work.

Heh, you'd be amazed how much leeway a tenured faculty has in setting the grading system in their own classroom. There should be no legal issues here (you can't bribe a student, especially if the rewards are laid out at the beginning of the class). The real issue I see is she'd never be able to convince the president to actually meet with the students, lol.

No, the real issue is the students not giving a shit about meeting the president. ; )

eMoander

Wezoin wrote: »

Yours is wayyy too complicated for people to care to learn. If you want something slightly simpler try this:

Homework >80% (or 70% or whatever is reasonable) = 1 token, for every 3 tokens the students lowest grade gets dropped from their final grade. If you do all 9 assignments that means your 3 lowest grades get dropped and your average should then increase.

If you want to add in extra tokens for performance on quizzes/midterms go for it or a higher token cost to drop a midterm grade (if that can even be done?) then you can play around with that. But it has to be a simple currency, not gambling percentages and all that - do x, y, z to earn tokens, redeem for items off this menu.

Dropping a grade might work, the idea she was working from was a one-time ability to retake a midterm (more than one-time is unacceptable since it turns into too much work for her). Given the constraint that failing a midterm means failing the class, it does seem like that could be pretty good incentive by itself.

eMoander

No one likes the idea of a student/class leaderboard that rolls from year to year? I thought that was the best part.

Akilae

The leaderboard depends on other instructors being on board with the same grading scheme. Difficult to pull off.

ceres

It also seems awfully... public. In order for that to work out you'd have to make it opt-in, as it means that students would have a reputation that could affect them even when going to a completely different teacher. I realize teachers talk about students all the time, especially particularly good or bad ones, but passing on something numerical like that just doesn't seem.. right.

For my calculus professor, he didn't just assign a few homework problems a week and then make that the quiz; each week there were about 20 problems, a random two of which would become quiz questions. It's calculus; weekly quizzes are short by necessity or else you can lose a whole class period every week to them.

eMoander

That was the reason that the student can choose what name to put on the board, so the privacy would be there if they wanted it. Also, it would only show the highest scores, so ideally there wouldn't be any negative connotations. Again, the system should ideally be set up so grades can never go down for either playing or not playing, its supposed to be an outside push to make them want to do what they should be doing anyways.

Think the leaderboard at the pacman machine at an arcade. Looking at the list and saying "Wouldn't it be cool to put ADAM_RULEZ at #1? I'm going to have to work this quarter to get it up there (and with a score to make sure it stays up there for years" or running into someone on campus and finding out "oh you're CALCULUS_QUEEN? I'm totally taking you down a peg next quarter!"

Disclaimer: I am terrible at fake leaderboard names.

Devil's advocate: since ideally people are only taking the class once, you don't get a lot of back and forth like at an arcade which could eliminate a lot of the potential incentive. I see this as the major flaw, since the whole competition/incentive thing would only work if it gets really popular.

Pure Din

How about letting students submit their own questions (along with their answers) for extra credit and then before each test put the best questions and answers in a study guide? If they understand the problem enough to write out the solution to explain to someone else, that will help them learn it better, and it has the social aspect because study guide could have the names of the student who submitted the problem and solution (if they want).

witch_ie

I would suggest the basic weighted system others have proposed above and then add some homework "achievements" that have grade related awards. The "sectional" achievements reset in between the two midterms and final. This way students that don't do well in the first part of the semester still have a way to make a comeback and don't feel they've completely missed out on homework bonuses. You could still have the leader board you suggested with each person's "handle" as a visible motivator in the classroom. All the other rules about failing or acing exams can still apply (aka achievements don't work on an F). This would be in addition to weighted assignments, making homework a bonus that should help students' grades.

Homework Guru
Successfully complete all nine homework assignments.
Reward: One partial grade bump for your final grade. (C moves to C+, B+ moves to A-)

Sectional Homework Achievements (between exams)

Homework Champion
Successfully complete all three homework assignments receiving an average score of 80%.
Reward: One half grade bump on the next exam. (C moves to B-, B+ moves to A)

Homework Veteran
Successfully complete two homework assignments receiving an average score of 80%.
Reward: One a partial bump on the next exam. (C moves to C+, B+ moves to A-)

Homework Challenger
Successfully complete one homework assignment receiving an average score of 80%.
Reward: One full grade bump on the quiz of your choice. (C moves to B, B+ moves to A+)

eMoander

Thanks witch, that's not bad at all. Homework champion does have a nice ring to it. I can certainly see students bragging about it. My reservation would be that the number of achievements is too low to support a real leaderboard (not enough ways for them to differentiate each other, so everyone ends up with the same score and the competition dies out). Of course, I'm biased towards a leaderboard so maybe its a non-issue, but I wonder if there are more achievements that could be created...

Handing out a list of potential achievements on day 1 shouldn't be too complicated (assuming the rewards are equally simple like you wrote), and it could give every student something different to aim for. Maybe some harder ones like the same list you have above but with 90% and 100% as the targets; same thing for the midterms. And then a platinum trophy for completing all the other achievements!

Jebus314

Honestly I think it is mistake to try and make the grades where you introduce the gaming based aspect. In general students want their grades to be very straightforward in their calculations, and purely proficiency based. There are lots of incentive based ideas that you can use to get students motivated to do their HW, and several good ideas are mentioned in previous posts. I think to really integrate gaming ideas you have to do the entire lesson with that in mind. Instead of saying "do this hw and try to get a high score!", its more like "play this game which incorporates the ideas I want you to learn, and try to get a high score!". In fact, to start with it would probably be best to have the "game" not affect your final grade at all. Maybe when you have something that seems to work you can add some more incentives by having the game play some part in their final grades; like having a high score allow you to drop a low quiz grade or something.

oldsak

School is already gameified. Your final grade is your final score your assignments and tests are how you earn points.

If students aren't willing to do the homework, it means they don't think the effort of doing homework assignments is worth the points offered for them.

The most straightforward solution: If your wife wants more students to do homework, make it worth more points. Any other elaborate system would have to ultimately do this in a round about way and just give everyone a headache in the process.

Other potential schemes:

Homework is worth a lot, but only counted if you do it. It could encourage students to do homework as hedge but still allow people to pass by simply acing the final. The drawback is lazy students might still ignore it and only worry about the final.

Homework is worth little, but students are either allowed to bring it in to quizzes as a resource, or are told quizzes are based entirely off the homework.

Deadfall

I was a pretty good student in college, and also played a ton of video games. Maybe it's just me, but I would hate an achievement/handle/scoring system like this.

I would see it as my professor trying too hard to pander to what they think college kids are. I would see it as a gimmick. Like I paid a ton of money to get an education, and my professor was turning it into a game? I understand math is pretty straight forward, and it was never my favorite by a long shot, but I was there to do the work and get out. I dunno, I might be in the minority here.

ceres

But look, on the plus side they'll want to know what their grade is at the end of the term, so they'll have to pay some attention to the subject matter in the course if they want to figure it out.