In the December, 2010 Scientific American is an article on ten world-changing ideas that may influence our futures. One such idea is “game-ifying” real-life human activities in order to motivate and modify behaviors. I won’t try to explain it and, not being a gamer and having little interest in games, would not have been interested save for one application that touches on teaching, in this case math instruction. “First Things First, an experimental math curriculum used in five schools in Oklahoma and Texas, presents high school algebra and geometry as a series of 101 levels, encouraging students to master basic concepts at their own pace before moving up [italics mine] as in a video game. In the four years since the program was implemented, all five schools have seen students register double-digit increases in state math tests; students at one school improved their scores by nearly 40 percent.”
This sounds much like a structure for math instruction developed by Herb Grosdidier at Payette High School in Idaho in the late 1960s and early 70s. It was, for the time, a radical idea. I doubt that there was anything else like it, at least in this part of the world. During the few years that it was in place, more students completed more math than ever before (or ever since, for that matter) at PHS. I discuss it at more length in “Math” which may be found in From the Files.
The most distinguishing feature of Herb’s program and the point of connection with the Scientific American article is that it required students to master basic concepts at their own pace before moving up. Of course this was long before video games had been invented, so the inspiration lay elsewhere. It worked, and when it was discontinued, it was for reasons other than its efficacy.