Reflections on Part One of John Warner's Why They Can't Write, Pages 1-31 (Post #1)

At The Oakridge School, the entire English department is reading John Warner's Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. Six of us have volunteered to post reflections on the book as we read and discuss the text. I volunteered to post the first reflection, which I've provided below. 

Last week, we read Shirley Jackson’s terrifying short story, “The Lottery,” and discussed its significance as a class. There was consensus among the group that the story was asking us to reflect critically on the idea of “tradition.” We analyzed its most important symbol – the black box from which the characters draw slips of paper for the gruesome ritual of the lottery. We learn from the story that the black box is older than anyone there and therefore possesses a kind of sacred quality for the residents. However, the narrator notes that “the black box grew shabbier each year” and “much of the ritual [that related to the box’s purpose] had been forgotten or discarded” (5). Later we discover that the box they’re using isn’t even the original one, and towards the ending of the tale, the narrator chillingly states, “Although the villagers had forgotten the ritual and lost the original black box, they still remembered to use stones” (9). My classes agreed that the black box symbolizes certain “traditions” – not tradition in a generic sense – but specific cultural practices whose origins are largely forgotten but the impact of the practice remains strong. The scary question posed by Shirley Jackson is one which asks us to think about traditions we still practice that not only lack purpose but may be harmful to certain individuals in our community. Every society has its black boxes, and John Warner wants us to interrogate the culture of writing instruction to expose the shabbier practices we still hold on to.

Black Box Traditions Are a Way to Control the Variables

For instance, take the five paragraph essay. Does anyone know where it came from? Why does it settle for five units instead of four? Why emphasize the limits of form as opposed to the infinite possibilities involved in a process? The 5 paragraph construct, according to Warner, can be traced back to Harvard’s entrance exams in the late 19^th century!! Last I checked, the skills demanded by 21^st century universities and employers are drastically different than what was needed in the 1800s. Warner writes, “The five-paragraph essay is an artificial construct, a way to contain and control variables and keep students from wandering too far off track. All they need are the ideas to fill in the blanks. It is very rare to see a five-paragraph essay in the wild; one finds them only in the captivity of the classroom” (29). The five-paragraph essay gives us a manageable set of variables as instructors and (perhaps more importantly) as graders. Warner makes clear, though, that often “we overestimate our own past proficiency at writing” – meaning it’s important we examine the costs of this traditional construct before casting the first stone when grading students’ ability to correctly adhere to the form.

Students Already Demonstrate the Skills to Write

In the section “Johnny Could Never Write,” Warner observes that “…[S]tudents freely and effectively communicate in other mediums, often using the skills we claim to desire and develop in academic writing. When students turn to school-related tasks, though, those skills seem to disappear” (16). Students already have the skills, meaning the real challenge for us as instructors is shifting attitudes and beliefs that students hold about their writing. However, certain “black boxes” of writing instruction are getting in the way of this. In the opening section, Warner employs the analogy of training wheels to diagnose what’s wrong with traditional approaches to writing instruction. Just as training wheels actually keep the learner from practicing the most important skill for riding a bike, in this case balance, the five-paragraph essay prevents students from developing the writer’s most important skill, which he identifies as choice (such as choice of audience, topic, tone, form, etc.). In other words, the 5 paragraph essay limits students’ opportunities to make the choices that matter as a writer. But I want to take Warner’s analogy further; it’s not just the training wheels when it comes to how we teach writing. If we taught bike riding the way we teach composition, students would read about the rules of bike riding; they would answer worksheets that test their comprehension of those rules. We might even watch videos of the greatest bike riders in history, and occasionally, we would ride bikes ourselves (but with training wheels, of course). And we wonder why students don’t like to write. One thing’s for sure: this approach is not helping us overcome the challenge of transforming students’ attitudes about the practice. We act like the risks of letting them crash or get off course are as physically dangerous as those related to actual bike riding when in reality our classrooms have the potential to be the safest places for students to crash, fail, and try again. As Warner states, “Prohibitions may prevent disaster, but they also may close off the possibility of great discovery”(31).

Human-focused Design Over Function-focused Design

The Council of Writing Program Administrators compiled a list of qualities they think to be most important for every developing writer: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and meta-cognition (25). Warner’s claim is that black boxes like the five-paragraph essay or the tendency to isolate grammar instruction have the result of taking writing out of an authentic context thereby making it less motivating for students to engage creatively and persistently in the process itself. In fact emphasis on traditional modes of assessment “has left our practices largely divorced from the kinds of experiences that help students develop their writing practices” (28). My claim is that we need to focus a little less on outcomes (which tend to take writing out of its contexts) and start worrying more about the outset: Do students already believe in themselves as writers from day one? Is there an authentic context, purpose, and/or audience that beckons them to write? This means moving away from a function-focused approach (function prioritizes efficiency, manageability, conformity, etc.) to design our writing instruction using a more human-focused framework (which prioritizes choice, purpose, ownership, and creativity). Otherwise we risk casting stones at something we should be nurturing – namely, every student’s “deep need to represent their experience through writing” (Lucy Calkin The Art of Teaching Writing). To do that, we have to take the risk of riding without training wheels. 

Questions for reflection:

What are the black boxes of writing instruction (or instruction in general)?

What instructional practices do you want to change in your classroom and what prevents you from doing so?

What instructional practices have you changed in recent years? How are you doing it differently?

What classroom traditions do you want to change? Which ones do you think still hold value and why?

Some resources for extra reading:

Colley, Jared. “Why I’m Done with Paper Prompts: An Imagined Conversation with Jacques Ranciere and Lucy McCormick Calkins.” What Should We Do with Our Classrooms? 2 June 2018.

Council of Writing Program Administrators. “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing.” National Council for Teachers of English & National Writing Project, January 2011.

Hidden Brain Podcast. “The Carpenter Versus the Gardener: Two Models of Modern Parenting.” NPR, 28 May 2018.

Nazerian, Tina. “Is the Five-Paragraph Essay Dead?” EdSurge, 18 October 2017.

#Ranciere18 - Why I'm Done with Paper Prompts (kind of joking, but not really...): An Imagined Conversation with Jacques Ranciere and Lucy McCormick Calkins

A group of us are investigating and discussing Jacques Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster (go here so see the Google Doc and go here to join the hypothes.is group), and this is the end of our first week. Starting Monday, we'll be reading Chapter One "An Intellectual Adventure." You can also find more activity at the hashtag, #Ranciere18. However, I'm also reading other materials for various projects, which brings me to Lucy McCormick Calkins's seminal study, The Art of Teaching Writing, a work I decided to return to this summer for two reasons: I'm beginning to revisit our writing curriculum at The Oakridge School, and I'm starting to prep ideas for a deep dive session on the topic that I'll be facilitating with Joel Backon at OESIS Boston this October. This is just one more reason my stack of summer reading has already become a sizable collection of titles, and here's what's on deck (Please! Any recommendations on the topic of teaching writing would be much appreciated, just leave a comment below!):

Last night, I reread the opening chapter of Calkins's The Art of Teaching Writing and immediately I had to close the book. The connections to Rancière were overwhelming. Perhaps I'm a hammer who can only see nails right now, but the parallels were undeniable. Each thinker was making a radical claim about how we should see students as equally capable from the outset, no matter their level of performance, and each writer was raising concerns about how schools can sometimes get in the way of seeing students for who they actually are. Consequently, we confront the problem of passive students who resist learning.

A quick overview of core principles for Rancière's project:

So why bring this up in a post whose title calls for the abolition of paper prompts? And how does it relate to Calkins's opening chapter in The Art of Teaching Writing?

Consider the following two quotes:

The ignorant schoolmaster exercises no relation of intelligence to intelligence. He or she is only an authority, only a will that sets the ignorant person down a path, that is to say to instigate a capacity already possessed, a capacity that every person has demonstrated by succeeding, without a teacher, at the most difficult of apprenticeships: The apprenticeship of that foreign language that is, for every child arriving in the world, called his or her mother tongue (J. Rancière's "On Ignorant Schoolmasters" from Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation).

Human beings have a deep need to represent their experience through writing... But in our schools, our students tell us they don't want to write (Lucy Calkins's The Art of Teaching Writing).

Step back for a second and observe these two fundamental truths about all humans: (1) we learned to do one of the most difficult, complex tasks without the aid of explicit, direct instruction: we learned to speak "the mother tongue" and (2) we have a deeply ingrained need to tell our stories, but schools have a way of making students forget that.

Why is there a disconnect?

Calkins makes the case that, while we're good at stimulating/motivating students to write on certain occasions, we have a much harder time "helping young people become deeply and personally involved in their writing," such that we cultivate the skills necessary for empowering lifelong writers who no longer resist the invitation to write for themselves as well as for others.

Unfortunately, much of what we do with students when it comes to writing in an academic context amounts to inauthentic writing occasions where "we set up roadblocks to stifle the natural and enduring reasons for writing, and then we complain that our students don't want to write" (Calkins 4). It becomes all the more dismal when teachers accept the students' resistance to such occasions as a natural reaction. Rancière would counter such a scenario proclaiming, "we [cannot] accept this passivity as the inevitable context of our teaching" (Calkins 4). All students, says Rancière, are equally intelligent; all students have something to say. Therefore, all students can (and want to) write.

So how do we prompt students to reawaken what we already know to be unmistakably in them, namely the desire to write?

One of the roadblocks that stifles student writing is our tendency to want "to make them into writers" - to assume they're not there yet, but a worse hindrance to our cause is a certain assumption we must unpack that often comes with the good, teacherly intention of providing students with "writing prompts." Consider what Lucy Calkins writes when reflecting on the idea of "motivating writing":

I was being patronizing. In Rancière's terms she had assumed the role of "explicator" which "stultified" any natural inclination on the part of the student to take responsibility for his/her equal capacity to say something and thereby be heard by an audience of equal intellects.

We as teachers know a lot, and can craft a plethora of paper prompts to verify it. However, "our children are no different. They, too, have rich lives. In our classrooms we can tap the human urge to write if we help students realize that their lives are worth writing about" (Calkins 6), which gets me to the title of my blog post. I need to write less paper prompts and start listening more closely to my students' uniquely rich experiences. I need to empower them to learn how to construct their own prompts, albeit ones that satisfy two demands of our vocation. First of all, students need to relate their learning to their personal experiences in ways that make it relevant for them, and secondly, they need to learn to write for informal and professional audiences that demand them to bring their experiences outside themselves and in contact with a world that's beyond their wildest imaginations. This is one way we can make a step in the right direction when it comes to getting students more deeply and personally involved in their writing, but we have to treat them as writers from the outset. It's not a goal: it's a human reality, a natural capacity akin to early language acquisition.

Someone once asked Lucy Calkins What is essential in teaching writing?, to which she responded, "For me, it is essential that children are deeply involved in writing, that they share their texts with others, and that they perceive themselves as authors" (9). I. couldn't. agree. more. We have to write a lot about things that matter to us, and we have to have authentic audiences (beyond the teacher and classroom peers), but for Rancière the third point may be the most essential: Students have to perceive themselves as authors.

When reading this, I was reminded of a passage from The Ignorant Schoolmaster where Rancière discusses the notion that all humans have the capacity to be painters (an obvious analogy to his claim about the equality of all intelligences). Provocatively, he asserts, "It's not a matter of making great painters; it's a matter of making the emancipated: people capable of saying, 'me too, I'm a painter,' a statement that contains nothing in the way of pride, only the reasonable feeling of power that belongs to any reasonable being. There is no pride in saying out loud: 'Me too, I'm a painter!' Pride consists in saying softly to others: 'You neither, you aren't a painter'" (66-67).

There is no pride in saying out loud: 'Me too, I'm a painter!' Pride consists in saying softly to others: 'You neither, you aren't a painter'

Me too, I'm a writer! That's what I want to hear from every student who enters my classroom. And never will I pridefully say to a student: "You know. Maybe writing is not your thing." What I will be saying more to students is write about something that matters to you. What story do you want to tell and why? But this means I need to write less paper prompts and think of ways to inspire students to frame their own questions.

Student Choice in Reading: Let Students Decide Whether They Want to Read a Shakespeare Tragedy, Comedy, or History Play

One thing is certain: when students are given choice—whether limited or wide open—they read and write more.  -Kelly Gallagher, "Moving Beyond the 4x4 Classroom"

Why Is Reading Such a Chore?

What makes something a chore? Is it the essence of the activity itself, such that mopping the floor, for instance, is inherently more chore-like and more obligatory in nature than doing something else, such as watching a movie? Is it really that ontologically simple? Surely not. The idea that something is a chore due to the nature of the act itself is an obvious oversimplification: it fails to account for the importance of context. That's why cleaning the house can also be therapeutic, perhaps even fun. The word chores functions, not as a label for a certain set of activities, but as a description for how one feels about the activity he or she is engaged in. The question has more to do with why one is engaging in a given activity as well as how one came to be motivated to do it in the first place.

As teachers of reading, this is exactly the kind of oversimplification we are battling when students enter our classrooms and say, "I don't know. Reading is just not my thing. It's such a chore." They have become convinced that reading is one of those activities that falls under the category of chores.  How can we convince them otherwise? How can we get them to experience the joy of reading again?

What happens when, over time, an activity that one used to enjoy begins to feel more like a chore? Whether it's something that's leisurely or something that demands a large amount of work, an activity risks becoming a chore, in my opinion, when one (or all) of the following factors starts to seem amiss:

1. Agency in the form of having a choice in the matter.

2. Purpose in the form of knowing why you are doing the thing in question.

3. Relevance in the form of appealing to one's interests and/or passions as an individual

Even things we enjoy doing can become a chore when we no longer feel a sense of agency, purpose, or relevance, which brings up the important question for all teachers:

How can we make students see reading as something other than a chore? How can we prevent what Kelly Gallagher calls Readicide, namely the "systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in our schools"?

Kelly Gallagher suggests several things for combatting the phenomenon of Readicide. One suggestion that's challenged me to grow as a teacher and designer of curriculum is the idea of providing more opportunities for student choice, thereby getting students to exercise agency in determining what texts or books seem most relevant and purposeful to them. 

Core Texts: Community at the Cost of Agency?

I am a big fan of building a learning community around the collaborative study of a core text, whether it be classic or contemporary, but I slowly have come to realize that, if that's all I'm doing, students will inevitably lose sight of one (if not all) of the above three factors (namely, a sense of agency, purpose, and/or relevance).  Community is important, but so is agency. In agreement with Kelly Gallagher, I think there needs to be a balance, but in no way can I claim to have made room for choice to the extent of a "20/80 model" like that in Gallagher's class. 

On a quick side note, I personally think there are strategies one can employ for purposes of empowering student agency even when one is reading a singular text as a class. I suggest the following ideas:

1. Let students choose to be a certain kind of "expert." Sometimes I'll create four reading groups: Group 1 reads for setting, historical/authorial context, etc.; Group 2 reads for character development and analysis; Group 3 reads for theme analysis and development; and Group 4 reads for rhetoric and literary style. Each group is responsible for being the experts in the room when it comes to discussions that relate to their topic of choice (Go here to read more).

2. Allow students to have more direct influence over what you discuss and how. There are so many technological platforms that make this possible. I often use google docs as a back channel for students to make clear to me what they want to talk about and address in the novel we're reading (go here to read more). My friend, Joel Garza, often uses hypothes.is to amplify student voice and particularly to empower the quieter students in his classroom (go here to read more).

3. Gamify the experience for the students. I've written extensively about the pedagogical benefits of gamification, which can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

4. Allow students to persuade each other and to choose democratically a core text for the class to read.

I don't think that assigning core texts necessarily implies a lack of agency, purpose, and/or relevance for students, but it does demand us to be intentional and creative as teachers. On the flip side, promoting student choice for reading also doesn't need to be seen as a threat to cultivating a sense of community in a collaborative classroom. There are ways to foster community while allowing students to direct their inquiry more independently, whether limited in nature or in a completely open framework.

Student Choice in Reading

A couple years back, NCTE published the article "Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in Reading" and the first reason the authors identified was the idea that "Choice empowers students":

School is sometimes a frustrating place for students. Their technology-rich world is robust with opportunities for decision-making and choice, but when they enter the classroom, the opportunities for choice are much more limited. When students are routinely assigned books to read without any opportunity to act on their own judgment, many end up dreading the reading and often fail or refuse to complete it. But when we provide students with choices (even within parameters), they make their own decisions and they feel empowered and important. (Campbell, Dubitsky, Faron, George, Gieselmann, Goldschmidt, Skeeters, and Wagner)

I emphasized the 2nd and 3rd sentences because I think this gets to the heart of how choice connects to relevance and purpose, especially for the 21st century student. Our students' technologically-laden world is one that constantly invites them to make choices, to interact, and even to manipulate the things that capture their interest. This is why school can seem so frustrating at times: They don't have that same sense of agency.

*****

This year, when designing my latest unit on William Shakespeare, I was debating whether to do a Tragedy, Comedy, or History play, and it occurred to me: Why not let the students choose? I knew I would limit it to a 3-option choice, meaning there were still strict parameters when it came to exercising student agency. Despite how minimal it was, a significant change in student engagement was immediately evident due to a simple gesture on my part: I trusted them to make a choice based on what sparked their individual interests the most, and simply put, that excited them.

Ss are exploring the first scenes of the #Shakespeare plays they’ve chosen to read. Already, I see more interest & engagement b/c Ss have a choice in the matter #engchat #aplitchat #edchat pic.twitter.com/TfZEb1EJTU

— Jared Colley (@jcolley8) January 12, 2018

Working off the thematic question of What does it mean to be the Other?, I selected three very different plays: Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Richard III. On the first day, I framed each text for the students (we watched movie trailers for each one as well...). We also identified common themes across the plays, and I encouraged them to explore each option a little more by getting on YouTube, Google, and other platforms to find out more information.

Once students selected the play that perked their interest, they received the following instructions:

(1) Based on who chooses what play, you will form “reading groups” with other students who are reading the same text as you.
(2) On the class calendar, each reading group is scheduled to lead a class discussion on various days on a weekly basis.
(3) Groups will lead class discussion only on the due dates for completing each Act of the play (meaning there will be five scheduled presentations for each group).
(4) On those scheduled due dates, each group is expected to present their ideas in a 10-15 minute period of time. Each presentation will be followed by a 10 minute harkness-style question and answer session, and all reading groups are expected to participate.
(5) Presentations will be based on the questions related to the themes that are listed below. Groups may use the same question (or questions) for multiple presentations as long as each presentation develops the revisited question further.
(6) Expectations for each presentation:
     (a) They must be at least 10 to 15 minutes in length
     (b) They must address at least 3-4 of the questions that are related to the themes
     (c) Students must turn in presentation notes, outlines, or scripts
     (d) There must be multiple citations of the text to provide evidence
     (e) Presentations must be cogent, prepared, and collaborative: everyone has to talk
     (f) Optional: Students may use media, visual aids, etc., to enhance the presentation

My school's schedule operates on an ABABC block schedule, meaning I get to meet with students for 80 minutes on either A or B days, and I see every class for 45 minutes at the end of the week on the C day's modified schedule. The reading plan looked something like this (with a few improvised adjustments along the way...):

For each play, we identified 7 common themes we wanted to talk about: (1) Prejudice towards Otherness (2) The idea of Bonds, especially with Family (3) Marriage & Love (4) Hatred (5) Honesty & Trust in a World of False Appearances (6) Gender Politics and (7) Justice vs. Vengeance. There were 3-5 questions for each theme that potentially could be applied to any of the three plays, and students could use any of those questions to frame their weekly discussions on the days they were assigned to lead the class meeting.  (Go here to see the complete google doc that contains the questions as well as the rest of the resources related to the project)

It was very much an experimental risk on my part. How would it go with students talking to each other in class discussions while reading different texts? Would it fall flat? Would students make interesting connections? Overall, I was blown away, watching students teach, challenge, and make connections for each other in organic conversations that were purely student led. By giving them choice, the students gave back as well both to me and to each other. There were days, no doubt, when it was dry, and by the end, I think we were all ready to move on. However, with a few adjustments to the calendar and to the volume of discussions, I will definitely be doing this again next year.  As the authors make clear in "Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in Reading," providing students with more choice (whether it be limited or open) empowered them to have more meaningful conversations, to deepen relationships with both peers and the teacher, and to think more independently as developing learners (Campbell, Dubitsky, Faron, George, Gieselmann, Goldschmidt, Skeeters, and Wagner). I saw all of this at work on a daily basis when students took ownership of their choice to read a Tragedy, Comedy, or History play, and although there were a lot of student-led discussions and presentations, there was also time for independent reading, group preparation, and small group discussions with the teacher. 

For a final project, students had the following choices as well:
1. Team up with 1 or 2 other students from your class section (or from another section).
2. Decide whether you want to partner with peers who read the same play or with people who read something different.
3. Select one of the seven themes from the student-led class discussions.
4. Choose to either create a digital essay (using sound, image, & text) or a podcast episode (using sound and voice) that explores the theme you selected.
(Again, Go here to see the complete google doc that contains the final project instructions as well as the rest of the resources related to the project)

We examined examples of both mediums and discussed their merits and flaws, and students were let loose to make their compositions, and overall, the final products were creative, funny, and diverse. You could tell they had a good time: With all the options, I think it felt less like a chore and more like an opportunity to take a risk and be creative. (One of my favorites was a podcast created by 2 sophomore boys where the episode would periodically be interrupted by Shakespeare-era adds like the one from the company "2 Murderers for Hire"). I will say, I had no idea what to expect with the digital essays; it was new territory. Overall the products were beautiful, and to demonstrate, I leave you one on Richard III created by Rosalind K. & Reagan L:

Works Cited

Campbell, Bridget, Andrea Dubitsky, Elizabeth Faron, Deborah George, Kelly Gieselmann, Brooke    Goldschmidt, Keri Skeeters, and Erica Wagner. "The Top Five Reasons We Love Giving Students Choice in the Reading." English Leadership Quarterly, National Council of Teachers of English, 2016. Accessed 27 March 2018.

Gallagher, Kelly. "Moving Beyond the 4x4 Classroom." Kelly Gallagher: Building Deeper Readers & Writers, Gallagher & Associates, Inc., 15 July 2015. Accessed 27 March 2018.

Gallagher, Kelly. "Reversing Readicide."Educational Leadership, ASCD, March 2010, Vol. 67, No. 6. Accessed 27 March 2018.

What is Student Agency? Some Provisional Notes

Next week I will be speaking at the Online Education Symposium for Independent Schools Conference in Boston on October 15-16.  One of several things I'll be doing is participating on a panel titled, "Student Agency - Strategies and Opportunities."  I'm excited to be a part of such an exciting conversation with so many impressive fellow educators. 

I'd like to share some of my preliminary thoughts as they relate to 5 crucial questions for our upcoming panel, and any critical feedback from those of you who are reading this post would be much appreciated as I prepare for next week:

Question 1: What is Student Agency?

First off, I think it’s important to note that there are two terms here: “student” and “agency.” The word "student" makes me think of the following modalities: learner, investigator, inquirer, maker, practitioner, deconstructor, apprentice, evaluator. In other words, to be a student, we must be willing to move outside or beyond the self for purposes of encountering teachers, experts, peers, as well as a body of knowledge in a given field of constructed inquiry.

As I think about the word "agency" some words that come to mind are will, choice, autonomy, ownership, personalization, and individuality. If being a student demands us to "get outside our selves" to experience the world and others, agency is the practice of taking responsibility for the self by being one's own advocate and by managing one's priorities, capacities, and interests autonomously. Agency relates to choices about pacing, sequencing, and scope when it comes to curricular engagement as well as deciding how to demonstrate one's knowledge and learning.

With all this in mind, here's my working definition: Student Agency is empowering students to develop, not only the hard skills necessary for a particular curricular scope and sequence of content, but the soft skills as well to map that scope and sequence for themselves in a personalized fashion that fits their sense of purpose while doing so responsibly and productively in partnership with a community of learners (teachers, experts, peers, etc.).

Question 2: Why does it matter?

Students are capable of learning anything, and they need to take responsibility for that innate capacity, but that can only happen if we expect and demand that of them in their formative years of socialization and education. Otherwise, we risk messaging something much less inspiring: that there are those who are good at school and those who are not, when in reality everyone is good at learning, especially if we’ve been given the time and space to develop the soft skills needed to manage that innate capacity productively. However, this can only happen if students have a safe place to practice agency during the formative years of their educational development.

Question 3: What structural and cultural barriers in our schools inhibit the development of student agency?

For structural barriers, here are some insights that came to mind for me:

1. It can take more TIME: pacing can be unpredictable and varied, and not every student moves according to the same timeline. As a result, teachers may not be able to cover as much ground.
2. School schedules can be a hindrance, but the reality is we need to "have the minutes match the mission" - meaning if cultivating agency is important for your school then there needs to be a schedule that allows for such environments to flourish. I think it's harder to achieve this when students meet for shorter time periods (such as the 45 minute, 5-days-a-week schedule).
3. Technology is often a supporting tool for scaffolding agency, so inequity can be an obstacle when it comes to having access to such resources.
4. Sometimes there can be "mixed messaging" for a given student when traveling from one classroom environment to another.  Some classes demand the exercise of agency, while other classes may inadvertently suppress it, making it difficult to develop the kinds of habits of mind that are necessary for students to take ownership of their learning.
5. High stakes testing.
6. I believe agency is motivated by authenticity, so it's important a student's educational experience is (inter)connected across departments as well as to the real world (beyond our campuses).  

For cultural barriers, here are some thoughts that occurred to me:

1. The tug-of-war between the scope of content vs. the depth of the learning experience can make it difficult for teachers to prioritize student agency. This gets back to the structural barrier mentioned in #1: it takes time to cultivate agency.
2. For some of us, there is a real fear of losing control of the classroom, and the fear is well-founded.  One does lose control, but we have to ask ourselves: What does active learning look like? I think the answer to that question makes clear that there is a need to cede some control in our classrooms.
3. Our cultural perceptions of the role of the teacher can get in the way: there's little room for the distribution of agency when the teacher is content king/queen. We have to rethink our role if we are to empower students to drive their learning.
4. The “messiness” and diversity of student demonstrations of learning can be daunting: How do we assess them? What are we assessing in a classroom that prioritizes agency?
5. It can be difficult to trust students to take responsibility for their learning, but we all know that they need to practice having such responsibility before the stakes are raised in college.

Question 4: Are all students capable of driving their own learning? What gets in the way?

In my experience there are 3 identifiable cases of students who have a hard time driving their own learning:

(1) The student who has always “schooled school”: usually this type of student is a “high achiever,” but his or her strategy for success is to give the teacher “exactly what they want to hear or read.” I like to think in terms of “mapping” versus “tracing,” and the kind of student I’m describing here is very comfortable with “tracing” what the teacher “maps” - instead of taking the risk of leaving his or her comfort zone to map the learning for his or herself. Oftentimes this kind of student needs to be challenged to exercise agency - especially before they leave for college where more independence and agency will be expected of them. Usually consistent conversations (of a metacognitive nature) that reflect upon why such experiences matter can be enough to get this kind of student to understand what’s demanded of them and why. The real challenge here is when the “high achieving” parent of that student expresses skepticism about what you’re trying to get your students to achieve. Again, I think frank conversations about the soft skills that will be demanded of them once they leave for college can be a good starting pointing for winning this type of parent over.

(2) The student who struggles with executive functioning or related skills that are the foundation for exercising agency successfully and productively: some learners, for a variety of reasons, have a hard time self-initiating and staying organized, as well as understanding strategies for prioritizing tasks to get a job done efficiently. A student who has these challenges sometimes necessitates intervention and assistance from the instructor, but I believe this can only work if there is a communicative partnership with parents or guardians behind the scenes. It’s important to let these students make mistakes, but it’s also important to vigilantly serve as a source of support. I often schedule weekly meetings with students to help them identify what priorities matter for them this week and strategize ways to get it done.

(3) The student who is (nearly) completely disengaged from school and perhaps from the greater community: this to me has been the most challenging case in terms of winning a student over to the idea that he or she can drive the learning. No single classroom environment can completely solve this conundrum; that’s why I mentioned community because it has to be a communal effort to reengage the student. Most importantly, there has to be a mutual partnership with parents/guardians as well. The best place to start I think is to get to know the student as well as his/her interests and/or hobbies, but if the parent/guardian is disengaged as well, it becomes a difficult, uphill battle. One thing that can work here (I think) is peer mentorship, namely finding student(s) who have bought in and could collaborate with (aka mentor) the student in question.

Question 5: How do you determine if a student is motivated, engaged and taking charge of their own learning?

First off, I strongly recommend looking at the Bartle Test for Gamer Types. There are 4 categories: (1) Achiever (2) Explorer (3) Socializer & (4) Killer/Griever; and the test results reveal where you fall (in terms of percentile) with each given category. It measures what’s motivating different types of gamers by identifying what keeps them engaged with the game over a sustained period of time. (Go here to learn more about the taxonomy of types). I suggest using this resource to better understand what type of learner you are working with as well as what motivates them to stay engaged with a project or task. If you have a “socializer,” the student is most likely motivated by social factors; therefore, make them a group leader who reports back to the teacher about the success of the group’s work. An “achiever” wants to feel a sense of accomplishment, and they want it sooner than later, whereas “explorers” want to investigate all options and pathways in a given unit of study. The “killers” are interesting; they like sabotaging other people’s progress. I like to gamify my units, and I always recruit the killers to be beta-testers who look for glitches or loopholes in a given unit (and they are very motivated by this role).

Here are a few more observations about indicators that students are truly motivated to take charge:

1. They stop asking about grades and the bare minimum requirements; instead they start focusing on completing the task they have envisioned

2. I know there's a shift towards agency when students stop asking what I want (for a given assignment) and instead start telling me what they’d like to do.

3. I know they're engaged when students demand that I adjust, alter, or modify an assignment, not because they don’t want to do the work, but because they see a connection or direction that motivates their inquiry elsewhere.

4. Students are taking control when what I’ve planned (in terms of a lesson) gets derailed by the demands of what students need that day for purposes of getting done whatever it is they are working on (in terms of an ongoing project, etc.).

5. I know something is going well when students start talking about what they’re doing/learning outside my class and start making connections with other learning experiences both in other classes and in the real world.

6. (In the context of gamification) I know they're engaged when students go beyond the required amount of XP points because they want to finish the task, “beat the game,” or have the most points.

Wow, I didn't expect this post to be this long, but I've been thinking about this a lot over the past several weeks. Again, please share feedback; these notes are provisional so I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on the matter.

Overcoming Classroom Distraction & Passivity using Gamification, Part Three - 10 Essential Questions for Building Gamified Curricula

This is the last installment in a 3 part post on gamification and, more specifically, on a project I implemented in the last 6 weeks of this spring semester (go here and here to read the previous installments). The project was over Charles Dickens's Hard Times, and as the title of these entries suggests, I was challenged to make the book more engaging for an audience of teenagers that otherwise seemed anesthetized by the notion of exploring one of Victorian England's most popular writers. To put it simply, the word was out among the students: "Mr. Colley makes you read a boring book in 10th grade that's appropriately titled Hard Times." My response was to say challenge accepted! and before I knew it I was building the most elaborate gamified curriculum I had ever ventured to construct. This spring I had the chance to present my latest work at the annual ATLIS conference in LA where, upon reflection, I developed the following 10 essential questions to serve as practical steps for anyone who might attempt to build or design a gamified curriculum in any discipline or content area (not just English).

10 Essential Questions for Building Gamified Curricula

1. What is the Content and how will it be scaled for your gamified module? 

This question is a fairly straightforward one, but it's a good place to start: What is it that you want them to learn about in this unit? And how will that content build upon itself as students level up to more difficult challenges? In a literature course, the content could be a novel, a play, a school of literary thought (like Romanticism), a genre, a short story unit, or perhaps a grammar unit.  Recent examples for me were a unit on Shakespeare's Macbeth and one on Charles Dickens's Hard Times. How to scale the content in these kinds of cases is somewhat obvious; take the Dickens unit, for instance:

Level Zero - Historical, Intellectual, & Authorial Contexts (Dickens's life, the Industrial Revolution, Utilitarianism, the Labor Movement, Positivism, Social Darwinism, etc.)
Level One - Chapters 1-9, Book the First
Level Two - Chapters 10-16, Book the First
Level Three - Chapters 1-6, Book the Second
Level Four - Chapters 7-12, Book the Second
Level Five - All of Book the Third

The linear development of content according to a scaled system of levels (when reading a play or novel) can simply be mapped upon the development of the narrative of the text in question. Of course, a geometry or art history course might have to think more creatively about how to scale the content properly.

2. What are the Skills you want students to master in the gamified unit?

To me, this is the more important question when designing one's curriculum. No one questions the value of good content (such as a canonical work like Macbeth), for it serves as the rich and deeply-rooted terrain upon which students are inspired to cultivate the skills they need to be successful in life. But skills are what students need to be successful in life, so it's important to have a clear vision of what skills you want to target when doing something like gamification - especially when skeptical parents begin to ask questions about the purpose of your project.

When designing the Macbeth unit, Seth Burgess and I relied upon Bloom's Taxonomy as a guide for scaling the skills we wanted students to practice as they leveled up. With the Dickens unit, I thought less in terms of Bloom's hierarchy, and instead focused on more "English specific" skill sets. It looked something like this:

Level Zero - Students practiced research & documentation skills, contextualized authorial perspective, and practiced paragraph composition
Level One - Students practiced thesis & body paragraph composition, character & theme analysis, expanding vocabulary, and oral discussion (harkness style)
Level Two - Students practiced thesis & body paragraph composition, character & theme analysis, expanding vocabulary, and oral discussion (harkness style)
Level Three - Students practiced thesis & body paragraph composition, character & theme analysis, expanding vocabulary, and oral discussion (harkness style)
Level Four - Students practiced style analysis, developing character and theme analysis skills, developing thesis statement composition, and oral discussion (harkness style)
Level Five - Students constructed and composed argument (logos, pathos, ethos), Evaluating theme & character

As one can see, the nature of learning at Level Zero does not go much beyond rote memorization and basic comprehension. Levels 1-3, however, demand more critical thought and evaluation from the student, which Level Four builds upon. By the time they reach Level Five, the student is creating/constructing his or her perspective and meaning in response to Dickens's text.

3. How many levels will there be and what are the requirements for leveling up?

The second part of this question matters most, I think. How will you determine when students can "level up"? There's two basic ways to think about this: (1) students can level up based on how many XP points they've earned (for instance, one has to have 30 XP to move from Level 1 to Level 2) OR (2) students can level up based on completion of certain required assignments at each given level. Personally, I find it useful to make it more about mastering certain required assignments (while also leaving room for choice and autonomy) - that way one can make sure students are adequately practicing the skills targeted in question #2.

4. How long will the unit be (in terms of weeks) and will there be any due dates (besides the project end-date)?

Again, the more important thing to consider is the latter part of the question. Of course, it's crucial to make clear from the outset the exact amount of time students have to earn as many XP points as they can, but the more debatable question is whether there will be other due dates in the process for certain benchmark assignments. I'm of split camps on this one (see my previous discussion about the Procrastinating Achiever), but I will say this: One of the most important experiences for students in a gamified course is autonomy. For a lot of students, it's the first time that they have had to practice the softer skills of setting their deadlines, making their own priorities, and initiating the plan to see it through. The more you structure due dates, the less freedom students have to practice and develop these important skills.

5. What will be your XP point policy?

There's a few issues here to consider:
--The amount of XP points awarded needs to match (as best as possible) the level of challenge (as well as its time demands) for a given assignment. There's no better resource for determining the glitches (regarding this matter) than the students. If an assignment is not worth enough XP, students will let you know (because no one will opt to do that assignment); if it the challenge is worth too much, students will let you know (because everyone will want to do that assignment).
--How will you scale XP points in relation to final grading outcomes? How many points does a student need to earn to make the A+ and so forth? Is this realistic in relation to the answer to #4?

--For each individual assignment, will you allow partial XP earnings? (In other words, say an assignment is worth 20XP, and a student does a less-than-adequate job: Do you allow the student to earn half the points?) Personally, I think this diminishes the emphasis on iteration and mastery - which is one of the "game changing" elements of grading according to an XP system.
--Will you allow for points to be deducted from a student's score? I personally think that this too could have a negative impact by diminishing the emphasis on affirmation-based grading. One of the best things about gamification is the revaluation of the function of failure. Beckett said it best: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail better."

6. Do students have to finish the game or are there alternative paths for success?  

Do students need to "beat the game" or is it simply a matter of earning enough XP points? I think focusing on the latter is more effective. Not every student succeeds according to the same path, and allowing for students to achieve a superior score according to different means also opens opportunities for meaningful differentiation. I always offer smaller chances for earning XP in the form of "grind assignments" - which are more minor tasks that can be performed anytime, at any level, to earn extra amounts of XP.

The year I gamified our unit on Shakespeare's Macbeth, there was a "grind assignment" where students could translate 10 lines of Shakespeare's play into modern English to earn 1 additional XP point.  I remember one student started thinking very intently: I could tell by the strained facial expression he wore after I introduced the notion of "grind work." Eventually, he posed the question: "So you're telling me that if I translate this entire play into modern American English, I could automatically make an A?" He thought he'd found a loophole; I'd say he found his learning preference.

With the Dickens unit, I required students to at least make it to Level Four; otherwise, I didn't care how they earned the required amount of points. In fact, I have a feeling that some students didn't have to finish the novel to earn the superior score. Is that a bad thing?

7. What elements of structural and content gamification are you planning to implement?

This is a huge question - involving lots of considerations. (Please see the first post of this series for more explanation).:

Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic
Culture by Alexander Galloway

Structural Elements of Gamification (Non-Diegetic Elements):
-XP Grading
-Self Pacing
-Choice & Nonlinearity
-Leveling Up & Mastery
-Failure is never punitive

 Content Elements of Gamification (Diegetic Elements):
-Avatars/Role Playing
-Game Narrative
-Mapping the Journey (as a character)
-Badges/Diversification of Skills (e.g. Powers & Abilities)

And indeed, in some instances it will be difficult to demarcate the difference between diegetic and nondiegetic acts in a video game, for the process of good game continuity is to fuse these acts together as seamlessly as possible.

 -Alexander R. Galloway, Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture, University of Minnesota Press, 2006.

If you've never gamified a class before, I would focus on structural elements of gamification because that's where you really see the psychological shift with students in terms of their motivation, sense of autonomy, and willingness to take risks. Content gamification, however, really adds another element altogether in terms of engagement for the self-directed learner: They want to be a part of the world from which they're learning! (Please read the last post for reflections on why this is the case.)

8. How will you build both individual and collaborative challenges into the game?

One risk we all face when completely handing over the learning agenda to the student is that our classrooms lose a sense of community. When personalizing the learning to such an extreme degree do we lose a sense of learning-together-ness? How does one embed opportunities for communal discovery in a journey that is, for the most part, radically individualized? It's important, I think, to require students to master certain assignments in a way that requires them to enlist the help of their peers. Otherwise, the experience can be a bit isolating.

9. How will one's daily classroom culture & agenda be structured?

Some of what I outline here answers the question posed in #8. One of the great things about gamification (when it's done well) is how it transforms one's class such that student demand for learning becomes the agenda-setter for the day's mode of action. What I mean is that each student is "grinding" away at their unique path for learning and discovery, and they come to you with the demands of the moment, thereby exposing a kind of teachableness that makes them more receptive than they ever would have been in the traditional, lecture-based scenario. But how do we maintain a community as a classroom? Here's a basic outline of a given week in my class:

Monday: 15 min. debrief with the class to see if there were questions, concerns, or frustrations (whether it be about the curricular content or the structure of the unit's project) followed by 30 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Tuesday: 45 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Wednesday: Harkness Discussion Day - certain discussion days were optional, whereas others were mandatory (depending on the week). Students could earn extra XP points for participating. If students opted out, they could work on other tasks related to the project.
Thursday: 45 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Friday: 30 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room, followed by a 15 min. debrief with the class to see if there were questions, concerns, or frustrations (whether it be about the curricular content or the structure of the unit's project).

*Note: During, self-directed work times, students could also opt to go read in the library (because the room could get pretty busy and active with so much going on).

10. How will you maintain a quick and fluid feedback loop?

This is a question I pose more to the liberal arts teachers: the history, English, and other humanities teachers who spend most of their time grading compositions and other demonstrations of student learning that require more than marking letters from a multiple choice assessment. How do you make the feedback more constant and fluid? For a unit like the ones I describe, it has to be short-form writing assessments that make clear what skills the grader will be assessing when evaluating the assignment. Otherwise, one will get too bogged down, which ruins the momentum of the game experience.

*******

If you can answer the above 10 questions, then you are ready to implement a curriculum that will motivate, engage, and inspire your students with subject matter that otherwise could be construed as too dull or too challenging to entice the 21st century teenager. The question comes back to the following: What do you want your students to be able to do? Most likely the answer aligns well with the skills targeted by gamified, learning experience. Try it. Experiment. And report back. I'd love to hear about people's experiences.

Overcoming Classroom Distraction & Passivity using Gamification, Part Two - Practice

Overcoming Classroom Distraction & Passivity using Gamification: Part Two, Practice

In the last post, I shared some "theory" about why I believe gamification to be an effective method for designing and delivering curriculum, and here I hope to outline its practice. Did it work in my learning lab? For the most part, I think so. Do we know why? Well, that's the point of blogs like these, namely to map out some pathway for reflection and understanding. But it's always important to remember that both theory and practice are "decalcomaniac" processes, or what Deleuze and Guattari would describe as a process that “forms through continuous negotiation with its context, constantly adapting by experimentation, thus performing a non-symmetrical active resistance against rigid organization and restriction” (A Thousand Plateaus 20). It's only when we think of theory and practice as rigid that we risk restricting our efforts to the trappings of the above conundrum. 

Adventures in Coketown: A Nonlinear Learning Journey based on Charles Dickens's Hard Times - The Details of the Game

For a 6 week module on Charles Dickens's Hard Times, I introduced my students to a gamified version of the unit, involving 6 levels (Levels Zero to Five), involving heavy elements of both structural and content gamification (see last post for a discussion of structural/content gamification). The rules were as follows:

• Grading will be different: You do not start with 100% average; instead, everyone begins with ZERO XP points.
• There are no due dates for particular assignments; instead, you have 6 weeks to earn as many XP points as you can.
• There are 5 levels, and you have access to level one. Earn XP points to level up and beat the game.
• Each assignment is worth a certain amount of XP points. To earn the points, you must master the assignment (no mistakes); there is no partial credit. You may try to master an assignment as many times as it takes. Failure simply means try again.
• There is no 1 way to earn an A; one simply needs to earn enough XP points at the end of the 6 week unit.
• There are smaller, "grind" assignments that you may complete anytime to earn more points
• Each level also has certain required assignments that must be completed to make it to the next level.

My students had never been exposed to a curriculum designed in this way, and for some, it was frustrating at first. No due dates!? But what do you want me to work on first?!? Other students, however, were invigorated. You mean I can choose what I want to study and when?!? Can I do all the options?? Yes, I had some learners who were inspired to do more work than what was required, while other students had a really hard time mustering the initial motivation to even get started. So one thing was certain: gamification amplified and made evident each student's distinct learning personality and preference, as well as their strengths and weaknesses when it came to "softer skills."

So what did the structure of a given week look like? After all, students had to make their own priorities, deadlines, and decisions about what direction to take the project and at what pace. Consequently, most of the week's agenda was in their hands, and it looked something like this:

Monday: 15 min. debrief with the class to see if there were questions, concerns, or frustrations (whether it be about the curricular content or the structure of the unit's project) followed by 30 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Tuesday: 45 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Wednesday: Harkness Discussion Day - certain discussion days were optional, whereas others were mandatory (depending on the week). Students could earn extra XP points for participating. If students opted out, they could work on other tasks related to the project. 
Thursday: 45 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room.
Friday: 30 mins. of student-directed work (which could be individual or collaborative, depending on the selected assignment) while I rotated the room, followed by a 15 min. debrief with the class to see if there were questions, concerns, or frustrations (whether it be about the curricular content or the structure of the unit's project).

*Note: During, self-directed work times, students could also opt to go read in the library (because the room could get pretty busy and active with so much going on).

A brief description of the levels of the game: 

Students started on Level Zero, which you can explore with the following link: 

Game Homepage: https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/hardtimes/home

On the game homepage, students were introduced to the premise of the game narrative:

You are a French sociologist who recently graduated from the École Polytechnique where you studied under the famous Positivist, August Comte. Your career's research thus far focused on one important question: What is the secret to human happiness? And you've been researching societies in the northern region of France where there has been a tremendous amount of social change due to the developments of the Industrial Revolution. However, you soon find out that your former professor has mysteriously disappeared, and you suspect that it has something to do with the secret war that's been spreading across Europe, battling for the hearts and minds of all citizens, namely the war between the Friends of Fancy and the Philosophes of Fact. Finally, the conflict arrives at your front doorstep in Nancy, France when you receive a cryptic telegram asking you to travel to Coketown in northern England to help "a friend in need." Of course, you agree to go as it will afford you the chance to study England's industrial transformation as well as opportunities to meet the likes of Friedrich Engels and John Stuart Mill. Thus begins your journey called "Adventures in Coketown."

The idea was to make the student a part of the world that Dickens's characters lived in - to have students interact with both fictional personalities and important historical figures from that period such that they had to confront (in a more personal way) the issues being explored and wrestled with by both the common folk and prominent authors of the era. Therefore, their first task was to research one of the following topics before departing from their imaginary home in Nancy, France:

1. Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill, and Jeremy Bentham
2. Sociology, Positivism, and August Comte
3. Industrial Revolution, Manchester, and Friedrich Engels
4. Social Darwinism, Thomas Malthus, and Herbert Spencer 

Students then began their journey by arriving in Roubaix France...

Roubaix, France (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/roubaix/home

In Roubaix, students started to define more distinctly the unique route of their journey because students had a choice to stop in Roubaix and study the Industrial Revolution, before departing for England from the next stop in Calais, France; OR students could move on more quickly to Dunkerque, France where they would be required to study Charles Dickens's life (instead of the Industrial Revolution) while eventually traveling to Dover, England. The idea with all these options for research was to have students earn different "badges" (because, later, they would be asked to collaborate with each other based on their different areas of expertise).

You can explore the two routes in more detail if interested:  

Route A (Calais):
Enroute to England via Calais, France (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/enroute-calais/home
Welcome to Dover, England (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/dover/home
The Dickens Dossier (Dover, England - Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/dover/the-dickens-dossier

Route B (Dunkerque):
Enroute to England via Dunkurque (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/enroute-dunkerque/home
Boz’s Documents (“En Route” - Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/enroute-dunkerque/bozs-documents

Destination for Both Routes:

Welcome to Dover, England (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/dover/home

Enroute to Coketown via South Eastern Railway (Level Zero): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/enroutecoketown/home

After students earned at least 30XP, they could arrive in Coketown, and in their emails, they were sent a link congratulating them and granting them access to Level One of the game. This is where they began their intensive reading of the novel, with the chunks of chapters corresponding to the scaled levels in the following way:

Level One: Chapters 1-9 of Book the First
Level Two: Chapters 10-16 of Book the First
Level Three: Chapters 1-6 of the Book the Second
Level Four: Chapters 7-12 of the Book the Second
Level Five:  All of the Book the Third

In addition to Level One, students were granted access to what was called the Grind Assignment page. "Grind assignments" were smaller tasks that could be done anytime at any level to earn smaller amounts of extra XP points (think of it as analogous to spending your time defeating the easy villains in a video game to earn more points before fighting the more challenging opponents like "the final boss" of a given level). Grind assignments also provided opportunities for students with various learning styles to find the tasks that motivated them the most, and it opened opportunities for alternative paths to success (as one didn't necessarily have to "beat the game" to get the superior score; they just had to earn enough XP points by the end of the 6 weeks).

Levels One through Three, for the most part, looked very similar in terms of types of assignments; of course, the game narrative (along with the novel's plot) continued to change and develop as one leveled up through the first 3 stages.

Here's a look at Level One:

Welcome to Coketown (Level One): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelone/home
“Congress of Conspirators” (Level One): https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelone/level-one-congress-of-conspirators

On Levels One through Three, there was a recurring pattern in terms of required assignments:

1. Vocabulary Assignment (based on words from the relevant chunk of chapters)
2. A choice to complete and master one of the following: (a) a researched history report on something related to the setting (b) 2 character analyses on main characters from the novel (c) multiple short form theme analysis compositions. (If a student decides to do (a) at Level One, then she must do either (b) or (c) at the next level and so forth...)
3. An online quote identification quiz based on that Level's chunks of chapters. I used classmarker (which was way too expensive) to embed automated quizzes with a randomized question base. Students had to get a perfect score before getting the link to the next level, but they could try as many time as they'd like (However, you had to take the quiz in my presence, and if you failed 3 times, then you had to wait 24 hours). 

If interested, you can explore the details of Levels Two & Three as well:

Level Two of Adventures in Coketown: https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/leveltwo/home

Level Three of Adventures in Coketown: https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelthree/home

Route A - Friends of Fancy:
https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelthree/friends-of-fancy

Route B - Philosophes of Fact:
https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelthree/philosophes-of-fact

At Levels Four & Five, as the game narrative continues to develop along with the novel, the nature of assignments begins to change. At Level Four, for instance, students are asked to research the definitions of literary terms and devices for purposes of composing a style analysis paper. Students (in the role of their avatar, the French sociologue) also begin to interact directly with characters from Dickens's novel as well as with historical figures like Dickens himself, Mary Shelley, Auguste Comte, and others.

By Level Five, the narrative conspiracy involving your missing professor (Auguste Comte) concludes along with the novel, and students are asked to make an argument to radicals on either side of the war between Fact and Fancy for purposes of trying to convince them to temper their extremism in the name of some defined "middle path." At this stage, students are composing arguments while practicing empathy (for certain characters) in the process of deconstructing the major themes of Dickens's novel.

You can explore the final Levels by using the following links:

Level Four of Adventures in Coketown:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfour/home

Level Four - “2nd Congress of Conspirators”:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfour/2nd-congress-of-conspirators

Level Five of Adventures in Coketown:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfive/home

Route A, part one - Friends of Fancy:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfive/friends-of-fancy-page

Route A, part two - Sisterhood of Shelley:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfive/sisterhood-of-shelley

Route B, part one - Philosophes of Fact:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfive/philosophes-of-fact-page

Route B, part two - Brotherhood of Boole:

https://sites.google.com/oakridgeowls.net/levelfive/brotherhood-of-boole

Reflections (in no particular order):

1. Gamer Types (a.k.a. Learning Personalities and Preferences): Knowing "what type of gamer" a student is can be very helpful for understanding what motivates or engages the learner in question. I strongly recommend having students take the Bartle Test - a series of questions designed to determine how much a person matches 4 personality types within the ecosystem of the world of gaming:

-Explorer: this type wants to explore every corner of a game's worldhood; they are in no hurry to "beat the game" because they want to explore everything
-Achiever: this type wants to beat the game faster and more effectively; the quickest way is best way for this gamer
-Socializer: this type wants to use the game platform as a way to connect and share experiences with others
-Killer: this type thrives off of competing against and defeating other players more so than "playing against the computer"

It's good to know the student's proclivities when it comes to the above categories. Explorers and Killers, for instance, can be very helpful with finding the game's "glitches," whereas Socializers make good leaders for collaborative assignments. Achievers just want to know exactly what they have to do to get the necessary points to finish the game; sometimes it's best just to get out of their way.

2. Sandbox or no sandbox privileges? One question that came up quickly was whether students could have sandbox privileges to go backwards in the game for purposes of completing more assignments at earlier levels for extra XP points (as opposed to moving forward to the game's highest, and most challenging, levels).

Pros: Explorers would have the opportunity to discover every element of the game experience, thereby broadening their learning all the more.
Cons: Achievers would remain at the lowest levels, earning points with "low hanging fruit," while not having to read very much of the actual novel.

Solution? Students had "to choose a path" and make it to at least Level Four before sandbox privileges would be granted by the Gamemaster (which was me). Honestly, I didn't care if they finished the novel, as long they read enough to have had a sustained, in-depth experience with a difficult, canonical text while practicing skills like those outlined above.

3. The Procrastinating Achiever: I work at a school where students are pretty driven by their GPA; it's a high achieving environment, and students often have many responsibilities in athletics and extracurricular activities as well as in other classes. As a result, some students (who are concerned about their grades) procrastinated (because they have a lot on their plate, and this unit had no due dates). Consequently, some of them became "last minute Achievers" who were trying to move through the game at a rapid pace in the last 3 weeks. As a result, I found it challenging to fight the tendency some students to sacrifice quality for quantity (especially at the end).

Possible solution for next year? Although there will be no due dates for specific assignments, perhaps there will be mandatory "checkpoints" such that students must be at Level Three by week X. I'm still thinking this one through...

4. Grade Distribution & the Soft Skills Gap:

75% of the students made As
10% of the students made Bs
10% of the students made Cs
5% of the students made Ds
0% of the students made Fs

What's going on with the bottom 15%, namely the ones who made Cs and Ds? Is gamification just not for them? Perhaps one could make that case (and I'm open-minded to it), but I think there's room for a contrary interpretation.  What the above distribution exposes, in my opinion, is what I call "the Soft Skills gap": some students have never practiced the skills of setting their own deadlines and prioritizing what should be done first. And some of those are typically "A students" when it comes to traditional schooling. I would make the case that the bottom 15% needed this experience to happen now and not in college, for instance. That's why it's important to build in an opportunity for reflection at the end of the unit (in my case students had to write essays that assessed their performance by outlining what they did well as well as what they needed to improve upon for next time).

*****

I have one more post planned for this series which I intend to upload next week. The title of Part Three will be "12 Essential Questions for Building a Gamified Curricula in any Discipline." Hopefully it will serve as a helpful guide for anyone who'd like to explore the benefits of gamifying class for the upcoming school year.

In the meantime, reach out to me at jcolley@theoakridgeschool.org or leave a comment here.

"Coketown's Interminable Serpents of Smoke" by Brad Greer, Class of 2019