Proposition Game Crit.

point of the game
    http://tunedit.org
        it would have been nice to have seen this site earlier in the semester to give a better idea of the motivations behind the prop. game.
    but more collaborative

personal exp.

    guilty:
        My group posted incorrectly formatted propositions/examples more than half the time. (usually they were called out and corrected, but since there were no consequences there was no incentive to be more careful.)
        Many of the challenges/agreements we and others got were just ignored. Especially after an assignment has finished
            maybe explicitly include which part of your grade comes from piazza so people have to be more responsive. This means you actually have to tally everyone's postings each week- I'm not sure how helpful piazza's administrative tools are.
            
    problems
        difficult to play with more than 3-4 pairs. 
            everyone posting their own claims doesn't work well
            usually the 'game' would cluster around 1 claim, and the other 15 or so would be neglected, or get some perfunctory agreement.
        
    went well:
       improving algorithms incrementally, getting ideas about what to post from other people's solutions.
       


don't change
    piazza is great

definite changes
    no grading solutions by # seconds, too system dependent
    fully automated avatars are a bad idea - even pseudo-implementing them wasn't much use.


possible changes
    make it more formal?
        have a formal scoreboard where pairs compete
        no editing claims after the fact
        strongly enforce scoring
        points lost for using the protocol incorrectly
        should probably compete on # machine instructions/specific examples to be fair
        
        pros:
            students are motivated by competition
            gives the protocol legitimacy
            speed of making claims effects score:
                people will participate more to optimize their score
        cons:
            will mostly motivate top 2-3 pairs competing for first
            zero sum game leads to a depressing scoreboard
            speed of making claims effects score:
                may lead to undesired effects/gaming the system
            machine instruction counting is a pain/unfeasibly slow
            
    make it less formal?
        people discuss/improve algorithms openly on piazza
            maybe once people have agreed they must explain how they got their running times/talk about their algorithm implementation
        compete on asymptotic running time/general code
        no real scoring system
        
        pros:
            better learning experience, especially for students who are having trouble/aren't engaged
            develop better final algorithms collaboratively
            less aggravation with the formal protocol/posting with an incorrect format
        cons:
            sloppiness
            students can piggyback on others work instead of coming up with algorithms themselves