Antstrain comments on A Gamification Of Education: a modest proposal based on the Universal Decimal Classification and RPG skill trees - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Ritalin 07 July 2013 06:27PM

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Comment author: Antstrain 30 August 2013 10:01:22AM *  4 points [-]

The main issue in implementing such a system is testing and certification. If you use quizzes then there is nothing to stop the student from looking up the answers in another window. The system can still be made but the tests need to be designed so that students can't just look up the answers. The solution is applied knowledge problems.

For example instead of asking someone about the physical properties of a metal you would ask them what metal they would use for a certain construction and why. Student programmers would be required to write short scripts. Student geographers would interpret maps. Student lawyers could say how a client should behave is different situations.

Basically you would test whether people can use their knowledge instead of whether they can communicate it to avoid students second-hand communication. The downside is that questions are harder to make.

Comment author: Ritalin 05 September 2013 06:22:55PM 2 points [-]

The uspide is that it tests for the actual skills (expertise at) rather than the ability to talk about them (expertise on), which is something that should only be required of communicators such as teachers/professors, journalists, lawmakers, and so on.