Assessment for Game-based Learning

How to assess learners' performance in game-based learning (GBL)?

This is still an issue concerned by quite a lot of academics and practitioners of GBL. Herewith some of the assessment approaches and methods which can be used by GBL researchers or practitioners:

Approach 1: Objectivism

1.1 criterion-referenced assessment, assessing content knowledge acquisition 

1.2 creativity assessment, assessing novelty, quantity, practicality and aesthetics

Approach 2: Relativism 

2.1 norm-referenced assessment

2.2 ipsative assessment 

Approach 3: Subjectivism

3.1 coding for themes, qualitative assessment of theme matching, e.g. digital tagging (Kapros et al, 2016)

3.2 coding for narrative, qualitative assessment of players' accounts, e.g. blogging 

3.3 heuristic assessment 

Approach 4: Emotivism

4.1 affective domain of learning, 5 levels of engagement / 5 degrees of attitude 

4.2 levels of satisfaction, quantitative rating or ranking of feeling

4.3 levels of satisfaction, qualitative accounts of feeling

4.4 levels of player-centric emotion, measuring the size of eye pupils for visceral level emotion

Formative assessment and summative assessment are two major temporal assessment