GradeCraft

A growing number of teachers are transforming their traditional course designs into gameful systems, with the goal of creating an environment that allows students to autonomously select a path through the course content, enables them to take risks in their coursework and recover from potential failures, and asks them to work together to collectively accomplish class-wide challenges. Managing this multifaceted course format within a “standard” learning management system (i.e., one that was built to support traditional course designs) proved to be both limiting for instructors and confusing for students. We have designed a new learning management system, GradeCraft, to support the unique requirements of game-inspired courses. In this Working Example we document that process, detailing some of the challenges that we have faced, along with issues we have yet to address.