ran a story today about Professor 's efforts to turn two of his classes into MMOs, and try as we might, we couldn't quite understand how that would work. Really, how is XP any different than a traditional grade point system?

We asked Sheldon and got back a class syllabus and a very detailed list of how classes-as-MMOs works, which we've paraphrased here:

1) The class is divided into "guilds" and the entire room into six zones that the students have to shift around in throughout the course of the semester.

2) The syllabus is broken into quests. Solo quests are completed by individual students. Pick-up Group quests are completed by pairs of students, each from a different guild. Guild quests are completed by all guild members and the guilds are responsible for dividing up the work among themselves (so it sounds like he won't directly penalize a guild for forcing one member to do a whole assignment themselves).

3) There are reading presentation quests that sound like traditional seminar classes where you use PowerPoint presentations and take questions from your classmates and professor. Sheldon said one time a guild actually presented the reading as a game. "It was awesome!"