Privacy-conscious leaderboard

The problem

Two failures haunt every leaderboard. The first is cruelty: a public wall of scores, sorted by performance, with names attached — turning marks into a spectator sport. The second is uselessness: no leaderboard at all, so students have no idea whether their 74% is strong, average or concerning in the context of their class.

How it works

nuSkor threads the needle. Rankings are computed from the weighted overall score — every published assessment, weighted as the course defined — and displayed around your own row. Your entry shows your position and score; the entries around you are anonymised, so you can read the shape of the class (“the top ten cluster in the low 90s”) without reading a class list.

Discovery is bounded, too: you see your neighbours in the ranking and aggregate statistics, not the full ordered list of everyone with scores attached. And your own row is the only one with your name on it. The leaderboard answers “where do I stand?” — not “what did everyone else get?”

The rules behind the ranking

• Only published marks count. An assessment that has not been published contributes nothing — a pending item is not a zero.
• Weighting is the course’s. If the course says the final is 45% of the grade, the leaderboard treats it that way. Ranks move when reality moves.
• Anonymity is structural. Other students cannot read your name through the leaderboard, because the exposed rows do not carry identifying names.

Why bother with a leaderboard at all?

Because aiming blind is miserable. A fair ranking, read privately, gives students exactly the information they need to decide where their next hour goes — and removes the performance-anxiety theatre of public score walls. That balance is the point: see yourself clearly, see everyone else only in aggregate.