Thought I would mention another scheduling method I came up with recently. I was beginning to have problems with my "draft" method because the number of people needing to be scheduled has risen to about 25. With that amount of people, draft scheduling can take hours and since there are fewer shifts available per person, it seems silly to wait around for an hour an a half to pick three shifts.
My solution was this: Shift the burden of time it takes to schedule back onto me and away from the workers by giving them an availability form to fill out. I have used availability forms in the past, but I discontinued their use because it was too difficult to get people to select the hours that needed covering. When you fill out your form independently from everyone else then desirable shifts aren't "eliminated" from the running, so you choose only the shifts you like the most.
My goal on the availability sheet, then, was to provide enough incentive for people to diversify their desired shifts so that all shifts would be covered and I wouldn't have to assign anyone. You may recall from my previous posts that my mantra is: the perception of choice makes a happy worker, and a happy worker is a good worker. Therefore, it is important to me that everyone feel that the shifts they are working are the ones they chose.
To accomplish this, I gave every participant $10 (not really $10, just on paper) that they each HAD to spend on the available shifts for the week. They could spend it all in one place, or they could split it up 10 different ways, but all the money had to be "spent". The amount of money spent on a shift qualified as the priority number for the shift. That is, a person spending $6 on Wednesday had priority over somebody spending $3 of Wednesday. In order for someone to get the hours they wanted they would have to spend enough money in one place to earn priority. I was concerned, however, that many people would just spend $10 on one day, and be unwilling to work other days that were less desirable, but still necessary. To counter this, I added one stipulation: if there were any holes I would assign those people first who had spent the most money on one single shift. I hoped this rule would cause people to split their money up so that they would be choosing more times, and giving me more flexibility.
My plan was not perfect. In fact, there are a lot of things about this method that need to be improved. First among them is the problem that there were still too many options for people so that certain undesirable days still did not receive enough money. There is an easy solution to this. All I need to do is split up all the days into groups. Group 1 would be desirable days. Group 2 would be less desirable, and group 3 would be least desirable. In each group everyone would be expected to spend $10, so everyone would have to pick days they didn't like as much, but at the same time they would still have the option of picking WHICH undesirable ones they would work. I think this is a simple fix with versatile implications, and as a matter of personal interest I wonder how many groups I could divide the shifts into while still giving the appearance of choice.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Participation points
In a class I just finished participation points were an important part of the grade. Although the value of the grade, 10%, is a typical value associated with participation points in most classes, in our course it seemed to be more important. In fact, every day turned into a competition for participation points, which spurred some lively--if not sporadic--discussion. I think there are two reasons for this.
First, our professor explained that the not only would we receive a 10% grade based on participation, but also that our grade would be based upon the ratio of our number of participation points to other students in the class. This means that if one person received 2 participation points and everyone else received 1, then the person with 2 would get the full 10% and everyone else would get 50%. Conversely, of course, if everyone had an equal number of points then everyone would earn full credit.
Second, the points were distributed directly from the professor during class time for nearly any constructive comment that was made. That is, a student contributing 3 separate and unique comments to class discussion would receive 3 participation points.
The above criteria represent the rules of the game, and the combination of both rules created incentive in the class to speak up and to speak up often. Typically I have found that participation points are awarded secretly and arbitrarily by teachers so that students don't have much idea when their contributions are contributing back to their grade or not, but in the case with this course, every comment was tangible and held weight. Not only could you control your sum of points, but proportionally you could estimate your grade compared to others based on your perception of how talkative your neighbors were.
Every so often the highest participation score would be posted on the online system for everyone to see, and, because the highest score was usually much higher than the score you had, it was usually something that caused general despair. There was even a small coalition to convince the student with the most points to shut-up during the last few class times so that the rest of the class could catch up. (I believe at this point the high amount was 23, and most people had between 6-15 or 26-65% respectively.)
If the point of the game was to achieve vocal participation, then it was obviously successful, but at what cost? There was a distinct sense at some points, that the comments made were specifically for participation credit instead for improving the learning atmosphere of the class. Then again, the ability of a comment to be thought provoking and promote further discussion does not always lie with the intention of the student to have it do so, and often the mere energy created by the high volume of comments was enough to improve learning. In this regard, therefore, I believe the game accomplished its goal, and provide an excellent example of the mechanics of the game can integrally affect the outcome of the system.
First, our professor explained that the not only would we receive a 10% grade based on participation, but also that our grade would be based upon the ratio of our number of participation points to other students in the class. This means that if one person received 2 participation points and everyone else received 1, then the person with 2 would get the full 10% and everyone else would get 50%. Conversely, of course, if everyone had an equal number of points then everyone would earn full credit.
Second, the points were distributed directly from the professor during class time for nearly any constructive comment that was made. That is, a student contributing 3 separate and unique comments to class discussion would receive 3 participation points.
The above criteria represent the rules of the game, and the combination of both rules created incentive in the class to speak up and to speak up often. Typically I have found that participation points are awarded secretly and arbitrarily by teachers so that students don't have much idea when their contributions are contributing back to their grade or not, but in the case with this course, every comment was tangible and held weight. Not only could you control your sum of points, but proportionally you could estimate your grade compared to others based on your perception of how talkative your neighbors were.
Every so often the highest participation score would be posted on the online system for everyone to see, and, because the highest score was usually much higher than the score you had, it was usually something that caused general despair. There was even a small coalition to convince the student with the most points to shut-up during the last few class times so that the rest of the class could catch up. (I believe at this point the high amount was 23, and most people had between 6-15 or 26-65% respectively.)
If the point of the game was to achieve vocal participation, then it was obviously successful, but at what cost? There was a distinct sense at some points, that the comments made were specifically for participation credit instead for improving the learning atmosphere of the class. Then again, the ability of a comment to be thought provoking and promote further discussion does not always lie with the intention of the student to have it do so, and often the mere energy created by the high volume of comments was enough to improve learning. In this regard, therefore, I believe the game accomplished its goal, and provide an excellent example of the mechanics of the game can integrally affect the outcome of the system.
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