Skill Based Grading

While writing my post Understanding in Process an idea for skill based grading came to mind. The inspiration came from comparing the debriefing screens that tell you how well you did something in a game and the normal school grading.

School Grading

In school the grading is fairly familiar to most of us. You do work, take tests and the resulting grades compile into a course/subject grade.

Debriefing Screen

In games the debriefing screen is feedback for that round of play. The results may be compiled in a similar method as school grades, but not always.

Going Back

The big difference I see between these two is the ability to retry. In classes it's normal to not be able to retake tests or redo assignments. While this makes sense from a linear effort and direct comparison with work point of view, I think we could do better.

Skill Grading

Thinking about the way games generally "assess" player performance I realized another big difference. In school you get grades for tasks and compiled grades for a series of tasks. Games will commonly give feedback on skills and sometimes record that. In fact some games focus more on skills than results.

How good you are at a skill is sometimes treated with equal value as over-all results, consistency and effort. This is an interesting direction for assessments.

The odd part I see from that is that some tests become throwaway tests. Basically it's like placement, qualifying and entrance tests/exams. A person takes it, some responses to their results occur and the responses, not the results, are the important part. This kind of down playing for test results could be a good thing.

Have fun, spread the word and tell me what you think,
Igen Oukan

Skill Based Grading

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