Notes on assessment of game-based learning (GLS 2008)

The presentations on assessment were full.
Assessment of game-based learning is challenging!
According to David Shaffer current assessment models only focus on knowledge and skills, but that is only half of an epistemic frame where there are four interconnected aspects: knowledge, identity, skills and value.
The proposed models for assessment are very resource intensive. In one it requires a teacher who is in almost constant dialog with each learner/player/game designer.
Learning follows a trajectory, e.g. between point A (knowing nothing) to B (knowing enough). Of course there are other aspects to just the knowledge. Gee: in open-ended games, e.g. Oblivion, there are different paths to get to a point in the game. Over time those paths can be generalised into trajectories. So in the future the game might be able to tell a player, at any time, where they are on that trajectory. The game could even give advice for how to move players towards a desirable place. In theory, then, “testing” could happen based on closeness to trajectory and so a player — a learner — can “pass” as being skilled enough in a particular subject when they are far along enough a trajectory. Assessment then happens in situ, not on a given day in a room different from the classroom where the learning has happened.