Implementation of Game-Based Formative- Assessment Strategy in Blended Learning for First-Year Engineering Students

Abstract

Engineers need to make decisions and resolve ethical conflicts/dilemmas that they may face in their profession. Effective pedagogy must be devised for learning ethics and practicing it in a dynamic environment. As learning should apply to a specific context, contextual learning and retention of the learned concepts are essential. Advancements in Technology in recent years led to the building of many interactive tools to address these concerns. The shift in learning technologies like online, blended, or distance learning has thrown more challenges in individual student learning processes. One way to address these challenges is to continuously assess students to monitor their progress, provide individual attention to each of them and give feedback. In this context, formative assessment has proven to be an effective way to address this. Through this, the learning progress can be monitored, which helps the student and teacher take necessary action when required. This study aims to equip the student with reasoning and decision-making skill to solve any ethical dilemma they encounter in their dynamic and complex environment using game-based formative assessments in a blended learning mode. An experimental design strategy was set up for first-year engineering students. The intervention is brought in the experimental group by introducing game-based formative quizzes instead of the traditional synchronous session using quizizz online platform. The Control group was carried out with traditional synchronous sessions after the asynchronous content learning. Case-study based evaluation was conducted to understand the effectiveness of this intervention for solving ethical dilemmas. The results are evident in showing that formative assessment helps students retain the concept that they learn.