DEVELOPING AN EMBEDDED ASSESSMENT TO ASSESS STUDENT PERFORMANCE AND PROGRESSION WITHIN A GAME-BASED ENVIRONMENT
Abstract
This dissertation study presents a methodology to develop an embedded assessment within a game-based environment, implements this methodology, and investigates the results of the design, development, and implementation steps of this assessment. To achieve this goal, this study reviews the literature, designs and develops the assessment, and analyze the required steps for this assessment. This study first reviews the literature in two sections. The first section reviews the theoretical foundations of embedded assessment in simulations and games, and reveals the driving dynamics of the design, development, and research of embedded assessment benefiting from the pioneers of the field. The second section of this review investigates what research studies have been done in the field, how assessments were designed, modeled, analyzed and implemented, and finally, what needs to be done to advance scientific research in this field. As a result of this systematic review, 43 studies were identified and evaluated by a rubric generated using the first section of this review. After reviewing the literature, this study investigates whether an assessment embedded into an educational 3D video game can successfully measure student learning performance after gameplay. To achieve this goal, this study presents the design and development steps of this assessment by showing the implementation of the assessment in a game-based environment. After this step, this study presents the analysis of the validity, reliability, and fairness of this assessment methodology. The results of the analysis present strong evidence for the validity, reliability, and fairness of the assessment to assess student performance using an embedded assessment. Finally, this study proposes a new model for data design and data mining for an educational video game. Using the data mining strategy, this study investigates how different in-game variables affect student performance as well as their progression in a game. The scores aggregated from students’ gameplay were analyzed using four different statistical methods. The results of these analyses show that in-game tools can be a predictor of students’ progress and performance in a video game environment.
Citation
Oren, Mehmet (2020). DEVELOPING AN EMBEDDED ASSESSMENT TO ASSESS STUDENT PERFORMANCE AND PROGRESSION WITHIN A GAME-BASED ENVIRONMENT. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /191807.