Emerging Practices in Game-Based Assessment

Abstract

Educational assessment has evolved over the past several years from traditional pen and paper-based tests to the use of technology (such as games) and continues to evolve. The assessments must provide feedback to learners and diagnostic information to teachers. Game-based learning offers an interactive environment for the students to learn in a fun and challenging way while keeping them engaged in the learning process. Game-based assessment (GBA) offers a way to assess them in this setting while they are interacting with a game. GBA may be composed of built-in quizzes and surveys to assess the student learning while they are playing. However, such methods tend to distract their attention from learning to complete the assessment. Stealth assessment is a way to assess the learners while they are playing an educational video game without breaking their flow. The future of GBA will be made up of a content-agnostic stealth assessment with a model of student’s knowledge built into it. The student model will help to adapt the game-play and accommodate the game to an individual learner. Content-agnostic game engineering (CAGE) is a framework that helps provide multiple learning contents within a single game to achieve content-agnostic assessment. Finally, adding a student model which makes the game and learning adapt to an individual student driven by their pace and performance while learning in the game is the need of the hour.