For the first week I introduced the students to the Art Quest rule system and quest book. I broke it to them how the grading would work and they mostly took it ok. I had one class that received it negatively, but once they figured out the system, the whining stopped.
Some students were very adept at picking up how they could use the system to their advantage and have leveled up quickly. Most students are still stuck in the old way of waiting for me to give directions. That may have a lot to do with how I set up the quests.
Now that week 1 is over I can see that the quest system is pretty flawed and way to rigid. In order to be less flexible and up to student interpretation and planning what I propose is creating a quest system that can be dropped into any project. The wording is more general and applicable to wider variety of student scenarios. More student planning and less speciifc teacher instruction, although I still plan to deliver demos, doing an activity directly related to the demo will not, in itself yield XP. Instead, doing an activity related to what you have planned for your artwork will yield XP. If that correlates to what I demoed then that is fine, if not, that is fine too.
I also want to change how the content is gated. Previously, I told students I didn't care what order they went in because the XP would all balance out. If they shot themselves up to level 6, then inevitably, other assignments would be worth less because of my XP curve. However, I found that students who did this aren't making the connections I want them to and aren't planning for a successful project using the vague directions in the quest book. I still honored the XP, but this will change soon. I plan to gate students by forcing a progression from level 1 quest up the chain to level 6.
My goal for next week is to work on this new system.
