Press Play! How Immersive Environments Support Problem-Solving Skills and Productive Failure

Abstract

Well-designed video games provide exciting prospects for teaching, training, learning, and research. Moreover, immersive virtual reality (VR) environments offer flexibility to design learning and training scenarios that are authentic. Gameplay in immersive environments often requires players to test and refine new strategies when confronted with progressively more challenging scenarios where learning from failure is a function of game design. Over time, players hone their skills through internal game mechanics and interactions with the environment, such as feedback and pedagogical agents to support long-term learning. This is known as productive failure. However, there are still challenges in assessing learners’ targeted competencies, for example, problem-solving skills, during video gameplay. In this chapter, we examine how student interactions during gameplay can be assessed in immersive environments without disrupting the flow of gameplay. This type of assessment is known as stealth assessment. We also describe the challenges with assessing productive failure in game-based learning and implications for future research on assessment of learning in immersive environments.