The Tragedy of the Extra Credit
This article was originally sparked by a viral tweet from a student about an extra credit problem he was given on one of their exams. Essentially, the question was to choose to receive either 2 bonus points or 6 bonus points, however the tragedy was that if over 10% of the class chose 6 points, then no bonus points were given to anyone. This is a perfect example of the tragedy of the commons because bonus points are a resource that all the students could share, however the students had the option to increase their own payoff as long as not many other students also chose to maximize their own gain. Another interesting point that this article brings up is that in all the years that this extra credit question was in use, only one year managed to successfully retain their extra credit.
This particular extra credit question was used in that class to try to get people to think of ways to reduce the incentive for students to all pick the 6 point option. Some of the methods were to provide an extra bonus to the people that chose 2 over 6, such as a piece of candy or something, or to publicly post a list of the names of all students that chose the 6 point option. Variations of these methods are actually in use today by environmental protection organizations to try to coerce companies into being more environmentally friendly. As discussed in class these types of tragedy of the common problems don’t have a simple solution and almost always work on a case by case basis.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/07/20/why-i-give-my-students-a-tragedy-of-the-commons-extra-credit-challenge/?utm_term=.d2fec12ff034