CHUTES & LADDERS: GAME-BASED ENVIRONMENT FOR COLLABORATIVE ASSESSMENT IN COMPUTER SCIENCE EDUCATION

Resumen

Learning assessment is a daring activity in educational settings. In Computer Science education, freshmen show certain resistance at the moment to develop assessment activities, according to our experience in teaching the first courses. To face such situation, we propose the use of a game-based environment for collaborative assessment. In such environment, students are grouped in teams of 6 people, then each team designs a questionnaire based on a specific topic of the course, according to the directions of the professor. When the questionnaires are ready, teams exchange them by using the “chutes & ladders” metaphor as a computer game in classroom. The game is about reaching the goal in a board of 100 cells, starting in the initial cell and controlling the progress of each player through the roll of a dice. Students must pass a series of predefined questionnaires to advance and respecting the ladders to ascend, and the chutes to descend. In this vein, the computer game is seen as a motivational tool, which can create a ludic scenario for collaborative assessment. Each team solves the other's questionnaire in a game scenario. This paper involves theoretical background, methodological aspects, tests, and results from actual contexts.