Symposium 2018: Scholarly Teaching & Learning in Post-Secondary Education

Calculus 1 is a required course in many post-secondary programs.  In spite of the fact most calculus students were very successful in their high school math courses, the drop out/failure rate for calculus is typically quite high.

Building on the ideas in recent literature on gamification, I offered Calculus 1 and 2 in an online gamified format. The gamification took two forms:  (1) a Quest story (pirates and sunken treasure) in which the student plays the part of a hero and must solve course based puzzles and questions to advance; and (2) the idea of mastery and ‘leveling up’, similar to what kids experience in video games.  Every assignment and quiz (except the midterm and the final) could be repeated unlimited times but 80% mastery had to be achieved to move on.  Assignments carried no ‘risk’ and students could feel free to learn from their mistakes.
 
In this presentation, I will describe the elements which worked and which didn’t work, as well as interesting patterns which emerged regarding student learning styles. I will also share my plan for changes for future iterations of teaching calculus in a gamified format.