Incentivize Assignments or Behaviors with Points:
Use the manual point Adjustment feature in the Leaderboard tab or the "Reset Scores" feature in your Game dropdown to get the behaviors you want. Don't call these activities "assignments" or "homework for points" as students have grown out of those terms. Try calling them "White House Briefs" or "point challenges".
Stephanie Middleton incorporates the politicians game into both her U.S. government and AP US History courses, which gets players paying attention to news about "their team". They also need take whatever historical period they are studying and connect it to what's happening with that topical idea today.
@ms_greencvhs uses a "Reward Task" to help add points to student teams. She will select certain existing projects or class work to be Reward Tasks and determines the amount of points based on the level of difficulty of the assignment: 25 Points for low level of difficulty, 50 points for average level of difficulty, and 100 points for a large project with high level of difficulty. Classes can vote on the project or it will be chosen by the teacher: Ms. Green's favorite is letting students vote to get them involved in the process.
@MrBittenbender even gives points for students noticing when he says certain states to promote listening during short lecture time-periods!
Get Students Grading their Drafts:
@JohnHonish gets students grading their drafts. After a few days of scoring, students can self-reflect and self-assess their draft strategy with a grade, an explanation, and a few tips about how to improve. You didn't research what was trending in the news before the Draft? (D+) You didn't use your resources during the draft to select higher-scoring countries in the final few rounds? (C-) You picked up an awesome free agent no one else saw immediately after the draft? (B+) Then you can formatively grade these write-ups by adding points to teams.
Publish Analysis and Predictions:
@MrHuesken organizes a political podcast with students and uses his class spaces to facilitate student publishing. You can also use the "Reset Scores" feature in your Game dropdown. Gerry has students create their own team flags as they learn about their countries and gives out some fun learning awards!
Reward your Students!
