Information trails: In-process assessment of game-based learning

Abstract

Assessment is an issue that is important to educators because without it, there is no way of telling if learners have arrived at the intended destination. Conducting assessments with game-based learning requires new tools and research methodologies because traditional face-to-face techniques do not transfer well into the multi-user virtual environments found in game worlds. Formative assessment is more useful to instructors and learners because it provides multi-point feedback to help them self-reflect and improve on what they are doing. This chapter describes an "all-rounded" assessment system for game-based learning, which take into consideration the needs of multiple consumers (of information), namely, the Administrators, the Trainers or Educators, and the Learners. The assessment system made use of Information Trailsa viable assessment methodology to collect user-generated action data as the game-based learning is occurring (hence, an in-process assessment). The data collected are then remotely transmitted to an external data storage using telemetry, and displayed in real-time via a data visualization application known as Performance Tracing Report Assistant (or PeTRA). The final online assessment report can be tailored differently according to individual needs of the Learners, Trainers, and Administrators.