Game-Inspired Self-Graded Assessments: A Case Study in Real Estate Financial Modeling
| Category | Assessment |
| Instructor | Daniel Lebret, Senior Lecturer of Hotel Administration |
| Department | Peter and Stephanie Nolan School Hotel Administration |
| College | Cornell SC Johnson College of Business |
| Course Number and Name | HADM 4205 | HADM 6205: Real Estate Financial Modeling |
| Discipline | Finance |
| Course Level | Advanced Undergraduate and Introductory Graduate |
| Course Size | 40 students |
| Implemented | First version: Spring 2021. Current version: Fall 2024 |
Brief Summary
For his real estate financial modeling course, Daniel Lebret takes inspiration from gamification to improve assessments, promote student engagement, and increase student confidence in their abilities. Drawing from game design, multiple weekly assessments increase in complexity throughout the term. An innovative self-assessment tool allows immediate feedback to students.
Learning Outcomes
Confidence Through Content Mastery
Analytical Thinking
Problem Solving
Financial Modeling
Context
Real Estate Financial Modeling, an advanced analytics course at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration in the SC Johnson College of Business, has become a pivotal preparation ground for students pursuing roles requiring deep analytical thinking and practical problem-solving. Historically, however, challenges such as student engagement and skill retention prompted a significant redesign of the course. Recognizing the need for an innovative approach, instructor Daniel Lebret restructured the course using gamification principles. This shift was intended to enhance student engagement, instill curiosity, and foster ownership of learning, while addressing the practical needs of real-world analytical challenges. The course transformation revolved around gamified content and innovative assessment practices. Assignments were reimagined as game-like scenarios that progressively increased in complexity, simulating real-world challenges. Students were motivated by elements of immediate rewards through feedback, which enhanced their engagement and learning experience.
Students were motivated by elements of immediate rewards through feedback, which enhanced their engagement and learning experience.
Implementation
Since 2021, Daniel Lebret has restructured Real Estate Financial Modeling from the ground up. The first major change was expanding the course from seven weeks to fifteen weeks, allowing for better pacing of the content for students. With the help of eCornell, the course was transitioned into a highly structured, hybrid learning experience, with many robust learning materials built into Canvas for reviewing outside of class. This enabled the instructor to dedicate his time in class to high-impact activities necessary for building mastery.
Another significant structural change was to increase the volume of low-stakes assessments during the first two-thirds of the course, before the high-stakes and more challenging end-of-term projects in the final third. These low-stakes assessments increased in difficulty throughout the semester, creating a scaffold that enabled students to gradually build their mastery of the key concepts for the assignments. Early assessments included multiple supports and instant feedback, but those were gradually removed as the difficulty increased.
Lebret also created self-grading Excel worksheets posted in Canvas. The assessment was designed so that there was a commonality among each of the sheets throughout the semester, with each assignment adding a new piece of information or content that the students learned how to manipulate. As the students worked on the sheet, the cells in which they worked were highlighted, and as they entered information, the formatting changed in those cells to reflect whether the information was correct. If a student inserted the correct information, regular black font appeared in the cell, but if the answer was incorrect, red italicized font appeared. This immediate feedback helped students recognize errors and learn how to correct them for quick gratification – a concept rooted in gamification.
Lebret also incorporated an AI virtual assistant, HiTA AI, into the course to create an ever-growing, immediate feedback tool for students while they worked through the content and assignments within the course. The AI tool drew from Lebret’s course content and allowed him to analyze the data “behind the scenes” of what his students were asking the tool. He could view a wide variety of data, including how many questions were asked, common themes within these questions, and also potential gaps in learning. This allowed him to continue to improve the course.
Challenges
In the implementation of this redesigned undergraduate course, some challenges Lebret experienced include:
- Students initially resisting the gamified approach.
- Integrating technical tools like the AI assistant presented logistical difficulties, as the AI assistant wasn’t sophisticated enough for complex questions. This required the manual work of inputting hundreds of questions and answers in order to train it.
- Balancing heterogeneous incoming student skill levels while maintaining rigorous academic standards required careful planning.
These challenges underscored the importance of iterative improvement, with continuous refinement based on student feedback proving essential to the course’s success.
Reflection and Future Directions
Since the restructuring of the course and implementation of gamification into its assignment structure, Lebret has noted a significant increase in student engagement, as well as their mastery of the skillsets needed in the course, and their overall enjoyment of the course itself. The phased removal of guided tools was particularly successful in advancing students’ ability to solve problems independently, especially in the context of real estate financial modeling. Course evaluations revealed consistent improvements in student feedback on multiple aspects of the learning experience. Feedback from students underscored the practical relevance and interactive nature of the course, highlighting its effectiveness in preparing them for real-world challenges. Lebret believes that the emphasis he has placed on transparency for grading and feedback has been a large success.
“The introduction of a self-grading system empowered students to evaluate their work and identify errors independently.”
-Daniel Lebret
How to Adapt This Approach
- Incorporate many types of assessments throughout the semester, increasing the stakes and difficulty over time.
- Incorporate self-grading low-stakes activities to provide instant feedback and to help students build confidence in their abilities, while also freeing up time for instructors and teaching assistants.
- Prioritize activities that have a significant impact on student learning. Ensure that each activity has a clear goal for learning and that the connection is evident to the students.