How Can We Improve UC-256?

Recently, Ryan and I gave our minor quest IV presentation on imagining the University of Michigan in the 21^st century. However, I felt that it would be interesting to explore the other option, ways to improve UC-256, through a blog post.

            To begin, I think that the structure behind “guilds” should be altered. Currently, working within guilds is encouraged, but it’s not necessary at all to receive a top grade. In fact, the only assignment that actually requires some sort of group work at all is the book quest, which only consists of 1000 points. Everything else is individual work. In fact, nearly all of the guild points are merely the cumulative individual scores for certain assignments, including blog posting, minor quests, and major quests. Thus, I believe that there should be more assignments where group work is required since guild points are really just the sum of individual points.

            Additionally, guilds should only be created after the initial drop/add deadline. Smaller guilds are required to do more work for the same amount of points. For instance, in an 8-person guild, each individual only needs to receive 750 points from blog posting to max out the guild’s score. However, in a 4 person guild, each individual would need 1500 points, which requires at least an additional 3 blog posts per group member. The same applies to all of the other assignments including minor quests and major quests since the guild score is merely the sum of the few highest individual scores. Therefore, bigger guilds have more of an opportunity to receive the maximum amount of points because of their strength in numbers. An 8-person guild can have twice as many attempts to receive a high major quest score compared to a 4-person guild.

            Furthermore, one of the main themes in UC-256 is competition. I think that guilds should compete against each other for bonus points in certain assignments because it would foster more of a team mentality within a guild. Also, competition is a tool for motivation, and it would make the class more interactive. In the class that Ben taught, guilds competed against each other for bonus points in a debate about certain NCAA basketball topics. This was a fun and interactive way of guilds competing against one another, and I think there should be other, similar activities introduced into the course.

            Finally, I think that there should be a requirement for participating in lectures where guest speakers talk. Some of these lectures can get a little awkward because there isn’t enough participation by us students. This is partly because some speakers perhaps aren’t as engaging as others, but that shouldn’t be an excuse for the lack of class discussion. Perhaps each guild should be required to contribute to the discussion each class (it would get too out of control if each individual student was required to do so).

            What do you think of these proposed changes to UC-256? Do you have any ideas to make this class even better?