Barry Fishman logs into his GradeCraft program as “Katniss,” his demo student, and begins to click through the dashboard.
“Katniss has been a slacker,” jokes Fishman. “You can see here that she only has 243,740 points, but that the class average is currently 416,481.”
While Katniss doesn’t actually exist, there are dozens of students using GradeCraft for Fishman’s “Video Games and Learning” class that do, and thousands using GradeCraft in courses across campus.
Fishman is a professor of information and education. He also is an Arthur F. Thurnau professor.
He uses GradeCraft, the brainchild of Caitlin Holman, a Ph.D. student he advises, as a learning management system for his class. Co-created with Holman, it includes a gradebook, assignment tools, a grade predictor and a badging environment.
Badges are virtual awards given to students for such things as exhibiting leadership in section, being an excellent writer, or going above and beyond on assignments. “There’s even a zombie-killer badge, which is to incentivize sick students not to come to class and infect others,” says Fishman, smiling.
After logging into GradeCraft, students can see upcoming assignments, including prompts for optional projects called “boss battles,” a nod to the final stages of video games.
“At the end of a typical game level, you don’t know how to beat the ‘boss,’ but you have all the tools to do so. You have to think across what you have learned to succeed. Similarly, in these projects, students have to recombine information they’ve learned in new ways,” he says.
GradeCraft’s most important tool is the grade predictor. Students can see where they stand and what they have to do to move up. For example, they might be at a B-, but doing two 75,000-point papers could bring them up to an A-.
Fishman’s early research focused on how teachers can effectively integrate technology into the classroom. He took his work into public schools in Detroit and Chicago, helping to develop technology tools used to teach scientific inquiry. This work was conducted in partnership with education and computer science faculty at U-M.
Fishman’s video games class is “meant to introduce people to ideas in education in an inviting frame. It’s really a stealth course about cognitive science and education design,” he says.
Fishman finds video games to be good models of ideal learning environments. “In a well-designed video game, you’re engaged and constantly learning new things about the narrative and plot,” he says.
His class design, and GradeCraft, is based on self-determination theory, or the idea that by increasing the amount of autonomy, belonging, and competence someone feels, you can make an activity more intrinsically motivating.
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He says his video-game-based approach is applicable to all subjects, from astronomy to medicine.
“Different subject areas have different natural games,” says Fishman. “Science is like a deductive mystery story. Engineering is a quest to create awesome things. The key is to find the game in the content, not to try and make learning fun in an artificial way.”
This past spring, Fishman received university funding through a Transforming Learning for a Third Century grant to make GradeCraft available to all instructors on campus.
When he’s not designing groundbreaking educational tools, Fishman enjoys landscape photography and traveling with his family. He has two daughters.
Q & A
What moment in the classroom or lab stands out as the most memorable?
A struggling student checking GradeCraft and realizing that they can achieve their goals if they try.
What can’t you live without?
Books. Reading.
What is your favorite spot on campus?
The Wave Field.
What inspires you?
Great teaching. Great performances of all kinds — teaching is a kind of performance.
What are you currently reading?
I just finished “Ender’s Game,” which I assign for class and re-read every year.
Who had the greatest influence on your career path?
My advisers, who always helped me make good choices at the right times, and my students, who always ask the right questions.
