[TeMPOraL]

> being competitive in school-like activities provides them

To an extent. I keep wondering, wouldn't it be better if schools/universities were structured as PvE challenges, not PvP ones? Trying to elicit a culture of collaboration, instead of pitting students against each other?

I may be strongly biased, because I hate competition outside of games[0], and competitive incentives generally make me stop caring.

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[0] - Particularly, games in which points are fake and only matter for brief status rewards and after-play joking.

[ItsMonkk]

If I was a Professor teaching the same class to two different sections, it would be really neat to give the entire winning section extra credit based on the difference between the average values of the two sections. This would encourage group study and would ultimately lead to students helping their other classmates out. And since teaching is the best way to learn, everyone would do better.

Maybe you don't even need two sections. Just split the class into two teams? Has this been tried anywhere?

[feoren]

That's still a "student vs. student" mindset, just one that incorporates a form of collective punishment, which is against the Geneva convention. It's an absolutely atrocious idea.

[notriddle]

The problem is that, if both teams are randomly selected, then they should be expected to have equal underlying performance, and the only thing your grades are measuring is noise. It is unfair when one winds up with a team that happens to contain outlier students through sheer luck of the draw.

The law of large numbers would smooth these kinds of things out, but a single semester is not a very long time, and we don't want classes to have large numbers of students.

[tmotwu]

Collaboration and competition are not mutually exclusive. Competition does not always result in self-determination. For instance, people mentor others because they might learn something new themselves or grow their network. Thus, you can enjoy collaborating with others while doing so because of your competitive ambitions.

[TeMPOraL]

It's the question of who are you competing with, and how hard. That's why I mentioned PvE and PvP games. I find a fair competition against a (widely understood) environment fine. I dislike competing against my fellow players.

As an example: our class at the university was somewhat unique in that, unlike most other departments/subjects, our scholarships were thresholded only by grade average. So, where students in other classes were competing against each other to reach the few top spots that paid money, in our class, we all helped each other out. Helping another student didn't jeopardize your chances at the scholarship, and it felt nice when the person you helped got the scholarship too. We were playing a PvE game - competing against the grading system. Even though ultimate rewards were given based on individual performance, there was no downside to cooperation.