I believe my best piece of work for CEP 813 was my Minecraft Creation. While I am proud of the end result, it was really the process of getting to the final creation that was very transformational for me in regards to thinking about assessment and assessment design.
My initial exploration in the MinecraftEDU world was not a very positive experience, and as I think was evident in my Minecraft Screencast, I was very skeptical that I would be able to find any value in using the game with my particular group of students. As I mentioned in the blog post and screencast of my Minecraft exploration I am a very experienced gamer, and the world of Minecraft was initially very frustrating. I was not looking forward to the process of creating what I initially believed would be an assessment that I could never actually use with my students, but was just creating to get credit for an assignment. The process I went through in working toward my final creation ended up being extremely valuable.
The feedback I received after my initial screencast provided strong motivation for me to continue to explore and try to find a very practical use for Minecraft in assessing students. In response to my stated frustrations of the controls within Minecraft, I was asked by my instructor if I would have different problems with a game I was more familiar with. From this feedback I was able to go beyond the possible constraints I was seeing in Minecraft and think more theoretically about the types of interactions within a game world that would allow my students to apply knowledge and demonstrate learning in a way I could use as an assessment tool.
My explorations in designing tasks within the game world allowed me a way to think about assessment and feedback in new ways, especially in regards to the subject matter and objectives I was using as a base for the assessment piece. The game world allowed for interactions that allowed student to determine immediately if they were correct in application of knowledge, and the ability to rework the task again if they were incorrect. The ability to receive the instant feedback, and try the task again without waiting for manual instructor feedback is in my opinion the greatest benefit of digital assessment.
My process of creating the Minecraft assessment was also aided greatly through an excellent online meeting with my instructors and a fellow student. Through what became an almost collaborative dialogue on my creation, I was asked many questions about how my design would provide me with the information I needed to determine my students understanding of the material. While we discussed many possible options for interaction with the game world, what I realized as a result of the discussion was that I was still designing assessments resulting in simple right or wrong answers, not gathering meaningful information that would allow me to provide my students with specific feedback to advance their understanding.
While I do not believe my Minecraft creation accomplished all my assessment goals or should serve as an exemplar for a digital assessment piece, through its creation I was able to develop a process of assessment design with a very critical eye towards how the assessment design assesses student understanding, whether the assessment gives me meaningful information on my students understanding, and how the assessment can be used for feedback. For those with a more traditional education background this may seem rather basic, however this is a large shift in practice from the education culture in my profession that relies on the multiple-choice exam as the epitome of assessing knowledge.
While the entire semester has been very beneficial in regards to expanding my understanding of assessment, there was something particularly challenging about the Minecraft creation assignment that drew me in and caused me to spend many late nights not only placing blocks and levers, but thinking very critically about assessment design as a whole.
Brian M. Claesson-Patten 