The Get Out of Jail Card
My students love this idea, I got it from a play on Monopoly board game. Simply put when the students have a missing assignment, they can use a "Get out of jail Card" to replace said assignment. They only get one for the entire class.
Great idea !!! My students are in a very accelerated course, and do "bomb" a test or two. Great way to get them re-motivated and one I will certainly try !
If there are 10 assignments for the course, and a student turns in 9 and a card, do you average the 9 assignments turned in, or do you average all 10, with the missing one counted as 100%? I like the idea, as long as only the nine turned in are averaged for the homework portion of the course grade.
I feel this is similar to a dropped test/quiz score but aimed at a more immature audience. I only teach in the clinical setting so missed assignments/tests and quiz scores do not apply to me.
I like the idea, but find that some students find things like this to be juvenile and demeaning. I also have students who wonder if they get anything at the end of the course for NOT using their Get out of Jail Card. I also wonder what kind of real world implications such a card takes. Do Get out of Jail Cards exist in real life? Should we, as educators, encourage the idea that there will always be some sort of free pass to get out of the consequences of not performing certain tasks? As career college employees preparing career students, I don't see the benefit of offering such a reward when there doesn't seem to be many real life correlations relating to their chosen fields.
