Motivating students with a contest

A $100 EB gift card prize goes a long way in motivating a group of students. Sure it costs me a large percentage of the money I make teaching the class, but if I cared about the money I wouldn't teach the class in the first place. Adjunct teaching doesn't pay, at least not for me. I love to teach and the little I do make is just an added bonus.

I've done the contest once before and the work was amazing. This year I've upped the ante and invited a bunch of execs and hiring mangers from local game companies to be the final judges. This will be a great opportunity for the students to show their talent and for these game company folks to hire amazing young talent. It also motivates the students to spend extra time on their projects which is the only way to learn to program. All sides are primed and ready and it seems like the perfect matchup so far.

We still have 6 more weeks of development time left for the students, but after two weeks officially working on their final projects I am throughly impressed with the results. This is going to be much better than last year.

For those that are worried about it, the contest placing has no bearing on the grade for the students' final projects. I'll grade under the same rules as the contest, but that grade is separate from contest placing.