The word “assessment” can mean a host of activities that provide insights on learners. Assessments can be certification tests and standardized examinations, oral dissertations, a quiz in the classroom, a self-paced test in a virtual classroom, or even a one-to-one interaction with an instructor. They provide information on what learners know or have learned to the trainers, employers or the learners themselves.
One of the ways that assessments are conducted now is through games. Game-based assessments, or GBAs, have been gaining popularity in both gaming and training circles. Unlike tests, which can give learners a lot of anxiety, game-based assessments provide a fun way of effectively evaluating learning. There are many reasons behind the success of GBA.
Aligning Assessments to the Level of the Learner
Many recreational games gather information about the player’s experiences, successes, capabilities and weak areas in order to adjust the pace of play or the nature and level of the challenges they offer — all with the aim of providing an engaging experience. Similarly, in a GBA, the level of questions asked can be adjusted based on the prior knowledge or experience of the learner.
Assessments That Also Teach
GBAs can provide information to students as they play or at the end of sessions or challenges. Information might be organized around what the player has accomplished so far, like the detailed reports of weapons, energy and battle results of “Civilization.” Other information might be organized around standards as they apply to the specifics of the challenge. This type of information calls learners’ attention to higher-level or cross-cutting ideas and promotes reflection beyond the actual actions within the game.
Formative Assessments for Instructors
Instructors working with groups of learners can use assessment information to lead classroom discussions on key concepts or to trigger follow-ups with certain learners.
End-of-Course Assessments
End-of-course assessments can shed light on how familiar learners have become with the topics, representations, interfaces and expectations of the game. For formal validity of the assessment, instructors can use a general grading system.
Large-Scale Accountability Assessments
Organizations sometimes plan large-scale accountability assessments for a large number of learners, providing the assessments according to the learners’ established levels. Game-based tasks can increase engagement in such assessments for some learners, though there are some drawbacks. They may be unappealing to other students and thus provide less information about their capabilities. Cost can be another drawback of this model. Issues of familiarity with interfaces and expectations and wide variation across task content and narrative features can also mitigate the effectiveness of GBAs for a large number of learners at a time.
Large-Scale Educational Surveys
Educational surveys present samples of tasks to samples of learners in order to provide a snapshot of learners’ capabilities across an organization. A GBA could provide information to researchers and trainers about learners’ capabilities in such environments and help them learn more about the variation that can diminish the effectiveness of GBAs, as described earlier.
There are many benefits of game-based assessments, as they encourage learners to work inside a safe environment without the fear of mistakes. They learn through successive failures and practice. By tracking a learner’s failures and resulting behaviors in a game, we can understand how well she or he is understanding and applying concepts. There are many ways to utilize game-based assessments, all proving that the trend of GBAs is indeed here to stay!
Arunima Majumdar is a senior marketing consultant at G-Cube and an e-learning enthusiast.
