[mediumdave]

First of all: I think the US education system (at both K12 and college/university levels) is deeply disfunctional.

However, I can understand and sympathize with a teacher's desire to understand how his or her students are using their time outside of class. In particular, knowing that a student who is struggling is not studying or is only attempting to cram at the last minute could be useful information for finding a strategy to help that student to improve.

I think the real problem is that many of the students I see (I teach CS at a small college) are focused on the external artifacts of education --- grades, a degree, etc. --- and not the actual learning. If students don't see an intrinsic value in what they are doing, they will try to game the system by cheating, memorizing instead of learning more deeply, etc. Over time I have come to realize that one of my duties as an educator is to try to motivate students to learn. As such, any information available to me that will help me understand whether or not a particular student is using his or her time effectively outside the class is valuable.

[gress]

With all due respect, students are not the ones gaming the system. If you make the system into something that functions like a game, then it will be played.

[VLM]

What you call a game, is also called operant conditioning and some other google terms to research are "B F Skinner".

It works really well for mere vocation training, habits, etc. Doesn't work very well for education.

There can be some disturbing introspection involved WRT the purpose of the organization, is it vocational, educational, or merely a financialization scam. This also gives an thin smear of "icky" across the whole discussion of the merits of expensive spyware.

Another game theory topic not yet discussed is the classic writing prof problem of how a prof spends her time. Would a prof be better served at whatever goal by spending 15 minutes thinking about improvement of the next lecture, analysis of errors in latest quiz to respond at next lecture, or analyze the gathered stats to hurry along the primate dominance ritual game of rating and classification of students by an arbitrary reward structure?