Serious Assessments in Serious Games

In the past decade the serious games initiative has produced a number of games being used today as adjuncts to institutional training. Many of the games produced through the serious games initiative do not incorporate adaptive assessment to assure the acquisition of real-world skills from virtual training. Detailed performance assessment techniques are often lacking. Successful performance assessment in virtual training requires that students are placed into multiple simulated contexts and are challenged with different tasks to perform under various conditions, to specified standards. The aggregate of training situations must adequately cover the space of real-world situations. This article discusses important concepts related to virtual training performance assessment including critical tasks, performance criteria, forward recommendation, errors of commission, red screen alerts, reusable competency definitions, ill-structured domains, violent domains, and other game design templating. By integrating these concepts into serious game design, trainers can develop sufficiently varying simulated tasks to ensure that serious games meet real-world adaptive needs.