MARCH MADNESS: Every year, the same result: Some of us (ahem, Leonard!) lose three months of productivity watching college basketball, only to watch our teams underperform and NCAA Final Four picks evaporate. Maybe they’re better at bracketology, but we wonder how many college professors feel similarly helpless. Many nights and weekends (not to mention the preceding PhD track) are spent applying expertise to lectures and curriculum, only to see students underperform on homework assignments. Enter Top Hat Monocle hoping to fix the odds with its Tournament Homework Module. The premise: students solve practice questions to determine proper “seeding” leading up to a tournament around question. The students then take part in successive tournament rounds until one is declared the winner. The top five finishers are publicly congratulated. Beta results look promising! While there are no plans for K-12, the model seems easy enough for individual teachers to implement.
