Can I sell assessment by using a game metaphor?

I have been continuing to read Prensky about the role of video games in students lives and the implications for education.

Prensky describes facets of games -

• the role of levels which enable players to learn basic skills through doing; moving into greater complexity and collaboration.
• the role of game mentors who give players help, training and resources when needed.
• the role of AI which adapts to students learning - understanding their strengths and weaknesses and providing support while at the same time gently moving players into their uncomfort zones.... deliberately with-holding stuff they might need.
• And the learning zone - this is the zone that is just the right amount of engagment - enough challenge, enough rewards, enough learning edge, enough complexity - and when you are in it you are feeling good because all the right endorphins are running to your head!

Ok, now I believe in Holistic Education... so where do video game metaphors come into soul based, connected, transformational learning? Well if video games are where a lot of kids are at, maybe entering into that metaphor and then value adding it with soul might prove interesting.

Anyway, I slept on it and I woke up this morning wondering if I could design a journalism game. Or whether in fact my journalism class was already a game, but perhaps I needed to make it clearer to the students.

The media syllabi have been rewritten in the last couple of years, moving from a one level course with 10 criteria to a course which can be assessed at 5 stages of 10 criteria with A, B, C, t standards in each - 150 different standards. I found it really hard getting my head around it all and the students found it quite inaccessible. How do they know what stage they are at, and at what ranking? I am keen for self assessment but the documents are so unweldy... a thick book, dense text, teacher jargon. And with this new syllbus I have found myself moving back into being the arbitrator, whereas my classes in the late 90's were based on student self-assessment and setting their own targets and seeing how they were reaching them.

So now I am wondering if I can perhaps get across the standards and stages using the video game metaphor - because after all many students are used to games with up 50 or more levels and are used to debriefing forums where they discuss the hidden rules of the levels. They are motivated to do so because they really want to master that next level. But in journalism there isn't that motivation. The notion of attaining Stage 4 versus Stage 3 has no real point for quite a few of my students who are doing journalism as an experience. Why not? How can I tap into the strong drive that students have to master game levels as well as tapping into their skills for game reflection?

I will continue to think about it. Meanwhile I have written for my students a game advertisement for journalism which might help them to see how the stages unfold and why perhaps it is good idea to move up the stages. Yes I have made individual competences into a story. See the next post. What do you think?