The change in perspective will probably be enough to provide some positive psychological benefits, but I think doing some actual restructuring would help, as well.
In most games where you level up, you get as many chances as you need. If you fail to defeat a mob the first time around, you don't forever lose the possibility of reaching the highest level. You just have to try again.
But, in this grading system, as in every traditional one, you only get one shot at each task, and if you score less than optimally on any one, your maximum possible level decreases.
That's a big departure from the usual mechanics of games, and one that I think could have a significant impact on morale.
> In games like WoW, you can win through sheer playtime and repetition. In real life, such as school, you must apply intelligence.
Effortless recall is one of the foundations for reasoning fluently about concepts. And one of the most efficient ways to build that recall is repetition.
I'm not dissing repetition as a method to facilitate memory.
In WoW, people repeat the same boss over and over without learning anything or changing the approach until through luck they win. This is not possible with a school exam because you only get one chance, and even in the event that you can repeat it, the exam will be changed.
Actually the WoW approach has more to do with a different form of learning -- variable interval reinforcement ratios -- which has been canvassed at HN before.
In most games where you level up, you get as many chances as you need. If you fail to defeat a mob the first time around, you don't forever lose the possibility of reaching the highest level. You just have to try again.
But, in this grading system, as in every traditional one, you only get one shot at each task, and if you score less than optimally on any one, your maximum possible level decreases.
That's a big departure from the usual mechanics of games, and one that I think could have a significant impact on morale.