Game-Informed Assessment for Playful Learning and Student Experience

Maria Pavlou

doi:10.1017/s2058631020000124

Abstract

The educational value of play has long been acknowledged. During recent decades, much attention has been paid to video games and the multifarious ways in which they can promote and enhance learning. Μy main objective in this study is to weave game principles, learning and the notion of playfulness into assessment principles, in an attempt to investigate how what I call ‘Game-Informed Playful Assessment’ (GIPA) can affect student learning and particularly students’ experienceoflearning. The GIPA was designed with a view to promoting students’ agency, autonomy, collaboration and playfulness, and was introduced in an undergraduate course on Archaic Greek Lyric poetry at a Greek-speaking university. My data was generated through in-depth interviews with ten of the students that attended the course. While the GIPA was favourably and even enthusiastically received by students, the research also brought to the fore several other issues that call for attention, such as the stress that innovative assessment may provoke in students, and the readiness of students to be playful within an academic framework that typically contrasts serious work with playfulness and play in general.

Highlights

‘I find no point in knowing this Sapphic distich by heart.’ I once received this response to a relevant question on a final exam paper from one of my students
What quality was I rewarding through my question on the Sapphic distich, and what meaning was I communicating to my students? Was the design of my assessment methods responsive to my teaching? How might I have designed the final exam differently, and how would this have affected the student experience? This article is primarily about assessment
The research presented here was conducted within the framework of an undergraduate course on Archaic Greek Lyric at a Greek-speaking university

Summary

Maria Pavlou

Much attention has been paid to video games and the multifarious ways in which they can promote and enhance learning. Μy main objective in this study is to weave game principles, learning and the notion of playfulness into assessment principles, in an attempt to investigate how what I call ‘GameInformed Playful Assessment’ (GIPA) can affect student learning and students’ experience of learning. My data was generated through in-depth interviews with ten of the students that attended the course. While the GIPA was favourably and even enthusiastically received by students, the research brought to the fore several other issues that call for attention, such as the stress that innovative assessment may provoke in students, and the readiness of students to be playful within an academic framework that typically contrasts serious work with playfulness and play in general

Introduction

Assessment and Learning

Field of Study and Procedure

Findings

Biographical Note