Work-in-Progress—Game-Based Assessments for Programming

Abstract

Concerns exist regarding the methods used to implement various assessment types and how they affect students' learning and participation. Assessments require a large amount of time to mark and to provide feedback to the student which comes after the task is completed and lacks interaction and engagement of students. Game-based learning has been known to enhance the interaction between learner and teacher and is useful in embedding interactive tasks. Game mechanics and principles can be used to develop Game-based assessments (GBAs) to assess a student’s understanding of learning concepts enhancing the use of assessments in classroom settings, albeit GBA is still in its infancy. In order to incorporate assessment tasks for programming courses, this paper offers a basic prototype of how game mechanics, domain knowledge, pedagogy, and learning mechanisms can be linked to design GBAs to align with learning objectives.