69´«Ă˝

Special Report
Classroom Technology

Q&A: Designing Game-Based Assessments That Engage 69´«Ă˝

By Robin L. Flanigan — March 10, 2014 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
Email Copy URL

Game-based assessments are making it easier for teachers to more quickly evaluate students in a dizzying number of ways. Arthur C. Graesser, a of experimental and cognitive psychology and the 2011 winner of the American Psychological Association’s award for distinguished contributions of applications of psychology to education and training, spoke with Technology Counts Contributing Writer Robin L. Flanigan in a telephone interview about the current and future role of game-based assessments in the classroom.

BRIC ARCHIVE

On a psychological level, how is it different for students to have game-based, rather than traditional, assessments?

Graesser: You’re not going to get a valid assessment if students are bored and tuning out. Having an assessment that matches their style of living would be the hope. If they’re used to playing games, the contrast between that and looking at academic material can be huge. It really intensifies the growing schism between formal and informal learning environments.

What’s next for game-based assessments?

Graesser: I’m involved in a group that’s commercializing a game with Pearson Education. In the course of a 10-hour game on research methods and scientific reasoning, it collects 6,700 measures. One of the major avante-garde waves of the future is figuring out how you map all these measures onto psychometrically valid constructs. For example, how discriminating are students in making subtle distinctions? So as they progress through the game, you can get a peek at how well they’re doing in each skill at any time.

Can there be such a thing as too much information for teachers?

Graesser: Oh, yes. Yes. And maybe there should be an open learning environment where students get to take a peek at their own profiles and don’t necessarily share them with the teacher, to help build self-efficacy before the teacher tests them in a more conventional way. All of this needs to be explored.

How can teachers be sure they’re choosing the right games to evaluate students?

Graesser: In the commercial market, there are a lot of games that look visually sensuous and captivating but don’t have deep tentacles to the learning sciences and rigorous assessments. That’s one of the challenges with informal learning environments, because if games look as if there’s anything academic in them, kids think they’re being tricked into learning something. You have to be very subtle in smuggling in serious content.

One thing to look for, and this is the real world we live in, is whether the assessments are aligned with the common core, Educational Testing Service, and other organizations that have a solid scientific foundation.

What else should teachers know?

Graesser: One purpose of the assessments is for the teachers, but there’s a different set of goals to think about, and that’s for students to become motivated enough to want to do their personal best. Just the feedback can be motivating in itself. That’s what makes assessments fun, rather than a drag.

Related Tags:

Events

School & District Management Webinar Crafting Outcomes-Based Contracts That Work for Everyone
Discover the power of outcomes-based contracts and how they can drive student achievement.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in 69´«Ă˝
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by 
School & District Management Webinar EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?
What issues are keeping K-12 leaders up at night? Join us for EdMarketer Quick Hit: What’s Trending among K-12 Leaders?

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.

Read Next

Classroom Technology Parents Are Virtually Monitoring Their Kids in Class. Teachers Aren’t Happy
Thirty-seven percent of teachers, principals, and district leaders said in a survey that this is happening in their schools.
4 min read
Illustration of laptop with eye on screen.
iStock/Getty
Classroom Technology Opinion Has Technology Been Bad for 69´«Ă˝ and Learning?
Education technology is supposed to build knowledge. We need to wrestle with the possibility that it might not.
7 min read
The United States Capitol building as a bookcase filled with red, white, and blue policy books in a Washington DC landscape.
Luca D'Urbino for Education Week
Classroom Technology Opinion Why School Cellphone Bans Are a Bad Idea
We cannot ignore the powerful relationship between students and their phones—and what they mean for equity in our most challenged schools.
Brandon Cardet-Hernandez
4 min read
Trendy halftone collage. Hand holding and using cell phone.
Natalya Kosarevich/iStock
Classroom Technology From Our Research Center How Strict Are School Cellphone Policies?
New survey data show that schools are trying a variety of approaches to curb students’ cellphone use.
2 min read
Young student using on smartphone in classroom
Leonardo Patrizi/iStock/Getty