Game-Based Assessment of 21^st Century Skills: Communication and Creative Thinking in Foreign Language Education

Abstract

This paper aims at evaluating the instructional effect of game-based learning (GBL) for the assessment of creative and communication skills in the context of foreign language training. It analyzes theoretical perspectives on creative thinking, explores how the GBL can be employed to design creativity-supportive assessment, and suggests an assessment framework that could be employed to evaluate creative and communication skills within game-based instruction in a foreign language classroom. To investigate the instructional effect of the developed framework, the study adopted an explorative design based on qualitative methods of research and data analysis. The experimental work sought to analyze the instructional benefits and concerns of game-based assessment in communicative teaching and learning. It involved educators and students who assessed the validity, reliability, and practicality of the game-based assessment framework in a foreign language classroom. The findings reveal that educators, in general, consider game-based instruction motivating and beneficial for the cognitive activity of learners; however, there are several constraints that should be addressed in the development of language training courses. From students’ perspectives, the GBA is an interesting, engaging, and fair form of assessment; however, some students report having concerns attributed to the design of the GBA.

Appendix 1

Scenario: business meeting.

Scenario description: XXXXX.

Teaching context.

Social Domain	Context	Tasks	Activities	Materials, methods, technologies	Level of language proficiency
Occupational/ professional	Organization: Multinational company Participants: contractors and customers	Making a proposal Contributing an opinion on other proposals Convincing the audience to choose a certain proposal	Listening as a member of a live audience Spoken Interaction Spoken production	Power-point presentations Scenario description Formal discussion Multimedia resources	B1 + - B2

Assessment framework: competences and skills descriptors.

Learning Domain	Skills/competence	Can do statement	Criteria Domain	Score
				1	0
Cognitive domain	Creative thinking skills	Observe, describe relevant experience and information	Inquiring
		Explore, seek and generate ideas
		Make connections, integrate other disciplinary perspectives and knowledge	Imagining
		Stretch and play with unusual/risky/radical ideas
		Prototype new product / solution /performance	Doing
		Present new product or ideas in original and innovative ways
		Appreciate the novelty of solution and/or possible consequences	Reflecting
Interactive domain	Strategic competence	Intervene appropriately	Appropriateness Coherence Fluency Range
		Follow up what people say
		Overcome gaps in vocabulary with paraphrase
		Monitor speech to correct slips and mistakes
		Reaches communicative goals
	Pragmatic competence	Express abstract ideas
		Develop an argument
		Justify opinions
		Summarize information
		Use speech markers
		Use communication for a range of purposes (e.g., to inform, instruct, motivate and persuade)
Linguistic domain	Grammatical competence	Use passive forms
		Use conditional sentences
		Use modals of deduction
	Lexical competence	Use topic specific vocabulary
		Use domain-related collocations
		Use specific terminology
Social domain	Social competence	Demonstrate ability to work respectfully with diverse teams	Flexibility Collaboration
		Assume shared responsibility for collaborative work, and value the individual contributions made by each team member
		Utilize multiple media and technologies for different contexts, and know how to judge their effectiveness as well as assess their impact
Total max: 27 Suggested scores and marks at levels: Level 1 – 7–15 (C) Level 2 – 16–22 (B) Level 3 – 23–27 (A)