• Lecturers, tutors and course leaders who design assessment and feedback for their learners
• Intermediaries with a role in supporting practitioners with assessment, and technology-enhanced assessment (learning technologists, e-learning/ILT champions, staff developers, educational developers, academic registry)

During gameplay, students naturally produce rich sequences of actions while performing complex tasks, drawing on a variety of competencies. Evidence needed to assess the competencies is thus provided by the players’ interactions with the game itself (i.e., the processes of play), which can be contrasted with the end product(s) of an activity—the norm in educational environments.

This presentation will describe the design and development of evidence-based assessments (embedded in a game) to measure 21st Century competencies. When embedded assessments are so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the learning environment that they’re invisible, called ‘stealth assessment’ (Shute, 2011; Shute, Ventura, Bauer, & Zapata-Rivera, 2009). Stealth assessments within games provide a way to monitor a player’s current level on valued competencies. That information can then be used as the basis for support, such as adjusting the difficulty level of challenges or providing timely feedback. One to two examples of the approach will be provided, time permitting.

Audience members are encouraged to participate and contribute.

More details, including link to local times for your time zone from the Transforming Assessment site: http://www.transformingassessment.com/

The event closed off with an awards ceremony awarding prizes to some of the institutions and individuals who submitted case studies to “Best of the West” – a collection of examples of effective and innovative practice, to help share knowledge and expertise across the region.  There are about 50 of these, and they are well worth a browse – covering a wide range of tools and technologies across a range of disciplines in FE and HE. My own case study – Using Web 2.0 Tools to Develop and Support a Multi-Campus Class – has a bit of everything bar the kitchen sink, as I used a bunch of different resources and technologies to allow me to develop new materials for a multi-campus class with limited time. The class finished after writing up the case study, and I’m pleased that it received some of the most favourable feedback I’ve ever had from students. Re-writing the module as it was being taught was undeniably hard work – but the technologies and resources used both made it easier and made it better than it would have been otherwise.

On Friday I was extremely surprised to find out that my case study was one of six shortlisted in the Teaching and Learning category of the awards – and somewhat taken aback when I was awarded a Highly Commended prize. As you can see by the breadth of my smile here.

The recording of “Assessment in Virtual Worlds with SLOODLE” held on
30 November is now online.

Download and view in a number of formats via
http://www.transformingassessment.com/events_past.php

The system has kind of worked – it has engaged some folk, and once folk have got into it, they have indeed kept up regular participation. But a number of students started, and quickly stopped – while others never really got started.

I’ve just watched a video of a presentation on by Amy Jo Kim from GDC 2010 that might have helped me better design my points and badge system – MetaGame Design: Reward Systems that Drive Engagement. This has given me food for thought, and I can see a couple of ways I went wrong – particularly on the need to provide more ‘early’ rewards for people getting started, and making those more visible. (A way to automatically tweet or send a Facebook message  from Moodle would be nice to make this easier!)

Overall, I think I’d have been limited by what I had time to implement though, so I’m not going to beat myself up too much about it… but perhaps there is a good student project in this – building the system I need to do this better next year.

From first glance, the relevant projects are (apologies for the ALL CAPS – thats how they are listed!):

• INTEGRATING VIRTUAL WORLDS AND WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGIES IN EDUCATION – SIMULATION AND COLLABORATION IN NURSING DISTANCE EDUCATION (PHDCOM019)

• A FRAMEWORK FOR ADAPTIVE SERIOUS GAMES (PHDCOM020)

• A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSMENT INTEGRATION IN SERIOUS GAMES (PHDCOM021)

• A FRAMEWORK FOR CONTENT INTEGRATION IN SERIOUS GAMES (PHDCOM022)

• AN INVESTIGATION INTO LEARNING 2.0 AND ITS ROLE IN THE ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CREATIVE COMPETENCIES WITHIN HIGHER EDUCATION (PHDCOM036)

• USING MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES IN ORDER TO ENHANCE LEARNING AND COLLABORATION AMONG VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES (phdcom037)

• OPEN-SOURCE AND ONLINE GAMING COMMUNITY APPROACHES TO EDUCATING COMPUTER PROFESSIONALS (PHDCOM038)

Last week we released the Sloodle quizHUD for use in Second Life. This is a Second Life user interface ‘HUD’ extension which allows students to explore a 3D environment and participate in assessment (formative or summative) in that environment. There are some obvious similarities with the some of the tools created for the PREVIEW project (see previous post), and some significant differences. More details below…

The HUD has two modes of operation: Explore and Quiz.

In explore mode, clicking on objects in the environment results in pages of information being displayed on the student’s interface. Descriptive text can be combined with images in these pages.

In quiz mode, questions appear in the interface window. These can be multiple choice (either requiring knowledge gained from prior exploration or which may be answered by looking at visible clues in the environment). Other questions might require students click on objects in the 3D environment to answer.

Pages and questions are authored using a web-based authoring system, and quiz responses are kept online. Tutors can opt whether to allow multiple attempts at the quiz, or single attempt only.

The quizHUD is currently a stand-alone tool and authoring system, but our intention is to integrate this into the main body of the Sloodle project, and integrate the quiz system with Moodle.

A news piece on the BBC revealed that:

High levels of computer technology in schools can improve attainment to an extent, a four-year study has found.

(My emphasis added to the very key phrase ‘to an extent’, but the results are worth looking at a little closer)

Overall the picture is a bit mixed, with some groups showing no significant different, and amongst one group students opting to attempt fewer A-level exams than comparators. With younger students showing greater improvement than older students, perhaps that deserves some attention. The summary findings reported on the BBC are repeated below:

• at Key Stage 1 (aged seven): “no significant differences”
• in Key Stage 2 tests (aged 11), the rate of improvement was higher for Test Bed schools and some even passed the national average for English
• at Key Stage 3 (14-year-olds): no significant differences
• at GCSE (aged 16): no difference in overall pass rate, but Test Bed pupils did better than those in comparator schools in getting five good grades including English and maths
• post-16: little change – Test Bed students scored same points per exam but took fewer A-levels than comparators.

Now comes this call for research proposals from Eduserve. And what do I find? Not only does it make explicit mention of Second Life, but you can even submit your application INSIDE Second Life!

Crikey.

Feedback from a range of British universities found that many courses were moving first year material into the second year, second year material into third year and creating new courses to teach students how to learn. (At Paisley we have introduced one new first year module called ‘Programmer Development’ – I think its quite a good one, actually. The goal is the same – help students learn how they can further develop their own programming skills. I am aware of some courses at other universities which now avoid teaching programming in the first year at all.)

A lot of blame is set on over-assessment and league tables in schools – with teaching directed purely at getting passes and grades. Teaching to the exam, rather than teaching for the sake of education.

That the students now starting university watch more television and play more computer games than previous generations does not seem to have helped much.