10 April 2011

Mini-Challenges and Mini-Achievements

One of my thoughts for this program is that it should be possible for a participant to get a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment quickly. I think of these as "mini-achievements".

They should be challenges that drive a small bit of learning, force the participant to do some work or research, but take a short period of time.

Each one should be fun, and accomplishing it should provide a sense of satisfaction, while delivering something useful.

Here's the example I recently used with a couple of friends who are familiar with the VI editor (aka VIM):

  • Using a single command, reverse the order of the lines in a file
The first friend figured it out on his own (as far as I know). He had fun, and got a sense of accomplishment.  The second friend looked it up using Google.  He too had fun, and got a sense of accomplishment.

Both of them now know several things: how to satisfy this particular challenge; how to deal with similar challenges; how to find the answer, if they need it.

There should be lots of these in each domain, so that participants can get "experience points" in little increments as they have time.

No comments:

Post a Comment