Achievement Mapping in OneNote

So I’ve been thinking a lot about competency-based education – the idea that learners should be able to progress through a flexible map of skills or concepts or dispositions, tracking progress and reflecting as they go, with as much choice as is reasonable on the timing and nature of the learning, on a time scale that’s right for them. Simple… right? I’m playing with some ways of piloting the idea in my classroom and I keep thinking about gaming in this process. Most video games have levels or achievements, and gamifying education is based on the inherent motivation built into video games. Every time you fail a level, you get to try again. You try until you succeed. Success metrics are clear, and when you succeed you go on to the next level. I like playing Minecraft with my kids, and we have fun finding our way through the Minecraft achievement map. The skills are really clear-cut and the achievements have to be done in order.

Anyone who plays Minecraft recognizes this map.

I wonder if I can apply the gamification principles to a class I teach. I’m experimenting with OneNote Class Notebook to push an achievement map out to my students. I need the map to be flexible – I don’t have it all written right now, and I’m not sure a competency map should be articulated completely from beginning to end. Do you want your child’s educational path pre-mapped from K through 12 or do you want them to be able to take unexpected turns as needed? I’d like to be able to push achievement challenges to the students as they come up, and maybe assign achievements flexibly depending on student choice and need.

I can push the achievements out as documents that contain a checklist, maybe a place to paste some code, and a reflection from the student. I can respond to their achievements and use this as the basis for conferencing with them about their learning.

For example, as my first two achievements for kids:

This semester, I wouldn’t use the achievement map as a grade, but I could leave the door open for it as an assessment tool in the future. How far would a student need to progress through the map to “pass” the class and move on to the next one? This is something I hope to answer after this semester.

I really wish I could create a clickable map like the Minecraft one, where you could hover over a box and it would tell you about the achievement, or click on the box to submit an entry to pass the achievement. When you passed one, the following achievements would be enabled. I know this is doable, but time and 217 students and so many preps and…. it’ll have to wait for a break, unless someone has created a tool like this and I just don’t know about it. Any badging or achievement-mapping tools out there that I should learn about?

What do you think? Have you ever gamified a graded class? What structures did you use and what should I fix before diving into this?