Gamebrics (2021-2023)

Designing effective games for learning purposes, for instance for learning analytical skills, is quite a challenge. Gamebrics at the Open Universiteit took the novel approach of integrating rubrics (formative evaluation instruments) into the actual gameplay of these serious games. Rubrics connect evaluation criteria to descriptions of mastery levels (e.g. ranging from “poor” to “excellent”). By integrating rubrics, players’ progress on various analytical skills can be automatically monitored and visualized to players via dashboards. These dashboards also provide feedback on how to improve oneself.

Rubrics were integrated into three actual games in the faculties Management, Psychology and Educational Sciences of the Open Universiteit (OUNL). More specifically: Kastanjehoeve (a virtual internship in an elderly home), Junior Scientist (players advising a company on statistics) and EduMythBusters (in which players ‘bust’ common myths about education). Early results from evaluation studies have shown that the integration of rubrics indeed provide advantages in terms of learning effectiveness as compared to the same games without rubric integration.

In this project, I was a member of a multidisciplinary team. Among other things, I focused on the creation of rubrics for analytical skills based on previous literature (e.g. Bloom’s taxonomy, Kendall’s New Educational Objectives). Besides, I was responsible for the dissemination work package, with tasks ranging from coordinating the creation of a project video to preparing a conference paper and an article for an educational magazine.

Gamebrics Trailer (video/AUDIO: MickHummel.nl, script/STORYBOARd: Hugo Huurdeman/Gamebrics):

Project website:

gamebrics.nl

Related publications:

header image: cutout from “skills wheel”/Gamebrics project