RadGrad Level Up
26 May 2020
I’m now a level 5 student in RadGrad. I am also waiting for my copy of Cracking the Coding Interview so I can begin doing that opportunity on RadGrad and I have an ICS summer class so if all goes well, I could be a level 6 student by the end of the summer. The category that I was initially lacking the most in was the Experience category. I remembered that I used to have a helpdesk job which could count toward a “CS related job” and that gave me enough experience to get to level 5.
However, now the category holding me back is Competency. There’s not much I can do about the Competency portion because it mainly relies on classes and data from STAR. However, I still lack Experience points and I can speed up the process of earning them. Or can I?
I suspect that a lack of experience points may also be holding others back from reaching levels 5 and 6. I went back into the explorer to take a tally of opportunities with experience points.
My New Discovery
I counted 45 innovation earning opportunities. Of those 45, 4% give 25 innovation points, 44% give 20 points, 9% give 15 points, 27% give 10 points and 16% give 5 points. The majority of these innovation earning opportunities give 20 points.
I counted 41 experience earning opportunities. Of these 41, 10% give 25 points, 10% give 20 points, 29% give 15 points, 17% give 10 points and 34% give 5 points. The majority of these experience earning opportunities give 5 points. The big ticket items in the Experience category are internships. The reason the points are structured this way is to incentivize students to get internships. However, if a student is more interested in research, they might never do an internship. Does this mean they are not as qualified as a student who has done an internship?
Opportunities that give 20 innovation points make up the majority of innovation earning opportunities. This could indicate it is easier to accumulate innovation points rather than experience points.
Difficulty leveling up:
When your level increases, it gets harder to level up. The main things that have been preventing me from leveling up quickly are the Experience and Competency points, but I have a doable plan for the summer that would allow me to get to level 6.
But even if I did reach level 6, I don’t know if that’s a good thing. I have never completed an internship and while I may have worked on RadGrad, completing an internship is different. I’m not sure if a company would even call me back for an interview based on my resume that lacks an internship. Perhaps, from now on there should be a new requirement for level 6 students: they must complete an internship.
Recommendations
I would like a “bit” section that has small, easy to complete micro opportunities.These 5 point (max) opportunities consist of weekend projects, things that should only take a weekend to complete but it would give the student some Experience or Innovation points. This could be especially helpful to those students who have already done big ticket items like internships, but are just a few points shy of leveling up. Where would it go? I have no idea. Would it even be useful? No clue. Could students take advantage of it? Absolutely.
I think there needs to be modifications to the verification system. There are only a few moderators and yet a lot of students. If RadGrad was integrated into student advising, we could also have the Academic Advisor be another moderator who verifies student participation in opportunities, and in turn they would share the workload with the current moderators. If we don’t increase the number of moderators, we may have to come up with an automated way of verifying opportunities.
Gerald Lau, the current ICS major advisor, is planning to retire in the next academic year. If we are able to get Gerald’s sucessor on board with not only integrating RadGrad into advising, but also taking a larger active role in moderating RadGrad, it could make the RadGrad model more sustainable for other departments and univerisities.