Assessing the educational values of digital games

In other words, games allow us to examine a student's process of problem solving, not just the final product at the end. These observations can help educators make valuable inferences regarding students' mastery over skills, while offering new ways to assess factors not easily measured on multiple-choice tests, such as problem solving, critical thinking, collaboration, persistence, and creativity. It is important to note that the term "invisible" does not imply that learners or teachers do not know that assessment is happening.

Rather, it implies that the actual activity of assessment is not visible, or interrupting the classroom. Just as when playing a game, players get feedback and scores as a regular, expected part of play, so with all digital learning activity, we can be providing information about proficiency and suggestions for other activity.

Educators must be careful, however, not to confuse educational games with the "gamification" of education. Gamification is generally defined as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts. A game, on the other hand, is a system where changing one element results in often unforeseen changes to many other parts of the system. There is little to no evidence that applying only selected game elements outside of a game will yield positive learning outcomes.

Quality educational games must balance engagement, assessment, and learning as three equally important components. The key is to balance these factors so that games are both fun and educational, while providing the information educators need to assess and improve student outcomes.

A number of quality games exist today that successfully balance these factors and have tremendous potential as tools for both learning and assessment.

However, much work is still needed to maximize their value, particularly in the area of integration. As of today, games and game data often exist in a silo. By making them a seamless part of curricula, there will be less of a burden on each individual teacher to determine when and how to integrate games into the classroom.

The purpose of this study is to develop an assessment tool to examine the educational values of digital games. In the first phase of this research, the research team developed the indices for assessing the educational values of digital games. An expert panel consisting of game scholars and professional game designers was established to construct the indices for evaluating digital games in three focus group discussions. Seventy-four game evaluation indices were sorted into seven categories: mentality change, emotional fulfilment, knowledge enhancement, thinking skill development, interpersonal skill development, spatial ability development and bodily coordination.

In the second phase of the research, the game designers were asked to assess certain games by using the 74 indices. Meanwhile, the game scholars were also asked to evaluate the same pool of games by the same indices.

The assessments by both the scholars and designers were then compared and the similarities were found. This research provided a preliminary framework for future game designers, parents and teachers in assessing educational values of digital games.